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Investigation on the effect of oral breathing on cognitive activity (2021)
- cidd 4y agoSwimming makes you stupid eh?
- Geee 4y agoWhy would someone breathe through their mouth if there's no nasal congestion. I'm pretty sure that you'd have to be cognitively impaired to begin with.
- adaml_623 4y agoCan I ask where and how you developed your knowledge about the relationship between breathing and intelligence? Is this common knowledge where you are from? How often are you aware of how others are breathing? Is this something discussed in your family or friendship groups?
- Geee 4y agoSomeone who breathes through their mouth keeps their mouth open, which is easy to observe. Someone might keep their mouth open for other reasons, such as being overwhelmed or surprised. This might explain why the mentally impaired might be observed with their mouth open more often than normal people. I'm not sure if there's a connection, but if there is, I would assume that mental impairment is the cause rather than mouth breathing.
- adaml_623 4y agoCome on that's half an answer! Is this something you've known for ages? Is it something you remember learning from adults when you were growing up? Why do you personally have an opinion about this at all?
- Geee 4y agoNo, I haven't heard of this connection until recently. I've seen 'mouthbreather' used as a derogatory term online, which is probably where I've seen it the first time. Top entry for 'mouthbreather' on Urban Dictionary is from 2017: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Mouthbreather https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Mouthbreathe...
- tfigment 4y agoIts way older than 5 years old. Wonderfalls (2004) had a character refered to the mouth breather in derogatory way. I know my brother used that in similar way growing up but im sure there are better/older references but those are mine.
- caeril 4y agoBecause: 1. Some people's nasal passages are partially or fully clogged. 2. Even when fully open, there is not enough airflow through the nose to facilitate anything more strenuous than light walking.
- balaji1 4y agoBreath by James Nestor. Great book.
- Glench 4y agoYeah, to expand on the parent comment James Nestor talked extensively about mouth breathing vs nasal breathing in his book. He even volunteered to plug up his nose for a study on the affects of mouth breathing. TLDR: he felt awful when only breathing through his mouth for a few weeks and his performance on various tasks was objectively worse. It was that book that made me get a deviated septum / nasal blockage surgery which helped a lot.
- iamacyborg 4y agoWhat was your experience with the surgery? I’ve got a deviated septum and frequently struggle to breathe through my nose even through very light exercise.
- voidee 4y agoI think it really depends on the severity of the deviation and blockage. Before I I had the surgery, the difference between nostrils was significant. Left side was normal and the right was like breathing through a very small diameter straw. Post surgery, I sleep much better and rarely snore. I feel more comfortable when running or biking long distances while only breathing through my nose. Do yourself a favor and get an evaluation if you have a blockage or deviated septum!
- twojacobtwo 4y agoOne of my friends had this issue for years and he said that it did wonders for his sleep quality and general clarity of mind. The recovery period was apparently terrible -two weeks of not being able to breathe through your nose at all while experiencing significant sinus pressure/headaches- but it must be worth it because he said he would do it again.
- Glench 4y agoAfter the deviated septum and turbinate (?) reduction my breath improved noticeably, my sleep got better, my headaches were significantly reduced, and anecdotally I felt a lot less anxious. The ENT doctor told me "things were pretty deranged back there" after the surgery so it makes sense this would help. That said, I still do the neti pot every day since I wouldn't say my breathing is "completely" clear.
- bitwize 4y agoRepeat after me: Your NOSE is for breathing, your MOUTH is for eating.
- sn41 4y agoGreat advice. I'll just pass it on to my autoimmune disorder to unclog my sinuses. /s
- agumonkey 4y agowhat disorder is this ? overproduction of mucus ? or inflammed tissue blocking air flow ?
- sn41 4y agoThe first. If you have some advice on this, I'll be extremely glad to follow up on it!
- agumonkey 4y agoI wish, I think I developed a form of this. For a year or so I've been having huge episodes of nasal problems. - large amount of mucus (I stopped counting tissue after the 1000 mark [0]) - strange consistency of mucus (thicker, and glue like) - very narrowed nasal cavity I've been allergic half my life, so nose issues are not new, but not of that nature and that scale. And your comment reminded me of this.. I wonder if I took something that altered my body immune response (or maybe my brain just lost it) [0] it got to a point where I was physically exhausted from sneezing, abdominal cramps and nausea.. "surprising" to say the least
- agumonkey 4y agohi again, this video about vitamin D physiology popped on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDBZM1n_uDE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDBZM1n_uDE apparently it's an important control molecule for the immune system
- fulafel 4y agoNot very strong: > Twenty-two healthy participants (mean age, 22.27 ± 1.42 years) performed a two-back (2B) working memory fMRI task And then they looked only at the pictures in the MRI they supposed indicated more cognitive function, and ignored task performance.
- riedel 4y agoHopefully closing the mouth does not affect the postprocessing algorithm of the MRI software (remember tons of fMRI studies invalid due to software artifacts [1]). I guess it really far to easy to generate such results, but difficult to really validate them. [1] https://www.sciencealert.com/a-bug-in-fmri-software-could-invalidate-decades-of-brain-research-scientists-discover https://www.sciencealert.com/a-bug-in-fmri-software-could-in...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- notahacker 4y agoThey did look at task performance, it's just the oral breathing being marginally quicker and marginally less accurate wasn't statistically significant. If there's no difference in task performance, an alternative explanation is that for the nasal breathing test participants wasted cognitive cycles on remembering to keep their mouth closed (versus oral breathing participants who had their nose plugged)...
- clumsysmurf 4y agoSadly, people with allergies and/or deviated septums often breathe through their mouth. Also... breathing through your nose increases nitric oxide in the upper airway.
- canadianfella 4y ago[dead]
- adaml_623 4y agoReading through this article and comment thread makes me feel like I should be using a throwaway account to admit that I've been worried for years about the proportion of time I breath through my mouth due to feeling that I don't get enough air through my nose. This sentence, "Every participant practiced becoming familiar with oral breathing until the participants could naturally switch their breathing pattern from nasal breathing" made me feel like I must be an alien. I will say however that there are a fair number of comments in this thread that are not really up to the standard I'd expect from HN. I'm quite intrigued to see "mouth breathers" referred to in such derogatory terms. What kind of social indoctrination has triggered that response?
- loopdoend 4y agoThe book Breath by James Nestor really sparked a popular awareness about breathing.
- adaml_623 4y agoThat was published in 2020. It doesn't feel like the root cause of the opinions being voiced in the comments.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoI read this few months ago. I did not like it.
- tapia 4y agoI am (was) one of those people (allergies and slightly deviated septum). I started to really breath through my nose about two years ago. I always thought that it would not be possible, because I felt that I could not get enough air. I started practicing while cycling to work everyday. At the beginning it really felt super hard (especially since I have to ride up the hill, about 200m altitude difference), but after a few days of this, it was not hard anymore and I started to breath exclusively through my nose without problems. I think that allergies, although still present, are less intense and it doesn't impair me to breath properly. So, just try.
- code51 4y agoLooks like they were trained in nasal breathing and asked to close their mouths during the nasal breathing session. "Unexpected activity appeared in the superior and inferior frontal gyri independent of working memory" - seems their brain was focused on properly executing these nasal breathing instructions/training - which would be expected. Doesn't say too much considering sample size. A better study could be configured by observing twins (one with broken nose at one point, leading to majorly deviated septum and inherently limiting nasal breathing vs the other twin)
- dchftcs 4y agoGiven that breathing is a normal, natural activity, there should also be a "ground state" MRI where someone normally does nasal breathing is examined without being given any instructions to do so. I also don't see how they conclude from this the effects of "prolonged" breathing activity. Their strong claims relative to the sample size and the quality of the experiment makes me doubt their level of motivation to do proper science. Just another flimsy paper used to pad resumes.
- jeffrallen 4y agoA funnier title would be "NIH confirms mouth breathers really are stupid". :)
- zakember 4y agoI was about to say, this reaffirms the word 'mouthbreather'
- Aardwolf 4y agoI'm not a native English speaker, but pretty good at it, but the word "induce" here gets me. Does "induce impaired cognitive function" mean something good, or something bad, for cognitive function?
- mort96 4y ago"Induce" basically means "cause", so it's bad.
- shoo 4y ago... because it causes impaired function. if it caused enhanced function, maybe that'd be helpful.
- madaxe_again 4y agoBad. Induce means “to lead to”, from the Latin. Think ducts and dukes.
- rwmj 4y agoEven as an English speaker, the abstract is hard to follow.
- hattori31 4y agoIt makes sense. Just trying to breathe from the mouth for a while makes me feel sick.
- iamacyborg 4y agoThat is not a normal reaction.
- hattori31 4y agoWell, the word sick was too much. Not normal? I don't know it feels wrong.
- 0atman 4y ago22 people in the study :eyeroll:
- munch117 4y agoYou can dismiss a study with 22 participants as unscientific, if they could have reasonably done a study with many more participants, or if someone else has already done so. In this case, it's an fMRI study. fMRI access is expensive, and analysing results is time consuming. It's reasonable to start small. If the smaller study comes up with anything interesting, then you can do a larger study later to confirm, and the experience you gained in the smaller study will help you design the larger one.
- JustLurking2022 4y agoYou probably should dismiss the results if they publish the study of 22 people rather than doing that larger follow-up.
- twojacobtwo 4y agoShouldn't all studied publish their results, regardless of followup studies? Also, assuming they don't already have funding for the larger study, it seems they would need to publish in order to garner attention from the study to secure the future funding.
- Havoc 4y agoHow much of this is just them breathing deeper as a result of more conscious focus on it? Bit like breaths (in my experience) tend to be deeper and more "purposeful" even if the doctor says take a normal breath. Struggling a bit to convey this right but you get the idea hopefully...
- tgv 4y ago> The [fMRI imaging] results showed more brain activation and connection during nasal breathing than during oral breathing. That doesn't prove anything. Apart from the problems in imaging connections, there's no reason to assume "more brain activation" means better cognitive functioning. Perhaps less is better, since a faster processing leads to a smaller BOLD response. There are more useful statistics in the article: the error rate and the response time. It looks as if "oral" was a bit faster, and had more errors. That might be enough to explain any imaging difference. Does it mean impaired cognitive function? Well, that would depend on how strong your a prioris are. Is there any reason to assume it does? If not, then this most likely is a chance result. Perhaps oral breathing slightly impaired vision in the scanner or interferes with motor skills. Or perhaps it's the plug in the subjects' noses. This study needs a lot of additional support.
- echelon 4y agoI know the paper is lacking in evidence, but it proposes such an interesting phenomena. It's worth exploring more. It made my mind jump to perhaps a second, potentially worse outcome of mouth breathing - seeding the lung mucosa with oral flora. That seems like it could enhance the spread and inflammation. And cause deleterious downstream impacts such as slightly increased risk of cancer, pulmonary diseases, etc.
- ngoilapites 4y agoReally it can get that bad?
- raphman 4y agoPat Volkerding, Slackware maintainer, suffered from Actinomycosis in 2004 - quite a chilling read [0]. > To help me avoid more tooth decay my dad bought me one of those fancy > rechargable electric toothbrushes that really powers away the plaque. > It also creates a fine aerosol mist of plaque, and I started to wonder > if 4 years of using this brush had caused me to breathe in some of this > plaque mist and moved an infection into my lungs. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20050206180243/http://www.slackware.com/~volkerdi/PAT-NEEDS-YOUR-HELP.txt https://web.archive.org/web/20050206180243/http://www.slackw...
- 323 4y agoThe nose also does some dust/pathogens filtering.
- seper8 4y agoGonna sound like a kook here but mouth taping improved my sleep.
- Insanity 4y agoMouth taping? How and why did you start doing this? :o
- Gigachad 4y agoI met a guy who did this to prevent snoring.
- anon84873628 4y agoUnfortunately it only works for certain types of snoring. If it doesn't work for your, consult an ENT doctor.
- trifurcate 4y agoI tape my mouth because I hated waking up with a dry mouth that tasted horrible. I've also read that this contributes to tooth decay. It's just a small piece of tape, as big as half a fingernail. It's placed on my lips right in the middle, and it works more by reminding my brain to keep my mouth closed and less by actually mechanically holding my mouth shut. If my nose is stuffed, I can just open a slight gap between my lips to breathe through. Otherwise, though, when my mouth is that close I will automatically close my lips and breathe through my nose through the night, which anecdotally improves my sleep quality and reduces morning breath.
- adaml_623 4y agoGeneral question for anyone with an opinion. Is it common knowledge in your society/culture/family that "mouth breathing" is a bad thing? I'm really fascinated by this because some of the comments I've been reading here are very opinionated but I don't know what they are based on.
- drukenemo 4y agoI recommend the book Breath by James Nestor. A well researched book, in which he makes the case for nasal breathing.
- adaml_623 4y agoThat's not an answer to my question at all. I'm asking about the comments and attitudes that seem to treat mouth breathing as bad and wondering where they come from. I'm (relatively) sure that a book published in 2020 isn't the root cause.
- LanceH 4y agoHistorically, it feels more like a class thing. A proper, civilized person would keep their mouth closed. As for the current mouth vs nose and belly vs chest breathing, it really feels like a fad/cult. There seem to be a constant stream of very small "studies" with questionable methodologies with just enough results to warrant further investigation.
- jamiek88 4y agoIt’s been a thing in uk for hundreds of years and because of the internet cultures are merging.
- soneca 4y agoNot an idiomatic expression in Brazil. There is some cultural behavior of my parents telling me to “close my mouth” as it was an inherent bad/impolite/ugly/improper thing.
- nobody9999 4y ago
- sam_goody 4y agoNot breathing at all impairs cognitive functions even more significantly, even before the system shuts down [eg. divers that are running low on oxygen]. Though it is hard to measure what are the effects of panic and what stems the shortage of oxygen.
- permo-w 4y agoI remember learning this when I was a child. what’s new about this?
- avidphantasm 4y agoAnother reason to have my deviated septum repaired.
- annoyingnoob 4y agoJust had mine fixed. On week 5 and still healing... recovery has not been fun but there has been an improvement.
- avidphantasm 4y agoHow is your sense of smell. I worry about losing my permanently as a complication.
- annoyingnoob 4y agoMy sense of smell is as strong or stronger than ever. Though I did mostly lose it for a couple of weeks. The first week was pretty miserable, with my nose completely packed, the rest has been fine, overall not as painful as I thought it would be. For the first two weeks or so I lost the feeling in my upper lip and upper front teeth, this was alarming and no one mentioned it ahead of time but it cleared up. Just seems to take a long time to heal but it was worth it.
- callamdelaney 4y agoMy left nostril appears to have collapsed at some point, I really should prioritise getting it sorted, it reduces the amount of air I can breath through my nose significantly, especially if one nostril is blocked.
- bira 4y agoThe less 02 you breath in, the more the CO2 build-up and, per the Bohr effect, the more efficiently you'll absorb the 02. Just don't mouth breath and you'll be fine. Actually, you'll be healthier because of it.
- sys32768 4y agoOddly enough, same happened to me many years ago. Only thing that helps slightly is Breathe Right strips. My father had the same issue so maybe our left nostril DNA got dented.
- greyface- 4y agoMaybe the periodic olfactory stimulus is useful to the brain in non-olfactory ways? The study says: > previous studies have observed [...] there was a decline in working memory performance for [...] olfactory memory task caused by oral breathing in healthy adults referring to "Respiration Modulates Olfactory Memory Consolidation in Humans" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6596216/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6596216/ Anecdotally, I find that listening to repetitive music can be surprisingly helpful when programming. I can imagine repetitive stimuli of other forms having a similar effect.
- GravitasFailure 4y agoConsidering how tightly memory and smell are connected, plus the effects gastrointestinal health has on cognition...your suggestion isn't even remotely the weirdest thing that could be true about the human body and brain.
- djohnston 4y agoQQ, when I go running or exercising hard, I always end up mouth breathing. Is it harmful in this context?
- algoatecorn 4y agoNo. Almost everyone will need to mouth breath while at max effort. It may be beneficial to deliberately nose-breath as long as possible, especially at Zone2. I try to transition to nose-in, mouth-out as a fallback before going mouth-in, mouth-out. Honestly, I don't even know how big of an effect it has, but I've been trying it for the past year to test it out. Been training for over a decade so I just enjoy testing new things.
- tgv 4y agoIt's (also) a matter of capacity. You need to inhale a lot of air during exercise. Your nose is just too narrow.
- refurb 4y agoGenerally when scientists see some phenomena they tend to view it through the lens of "what is a plausible mechanism for this observation?". So the question is - what would be a plausible mechanism for oral vs nasal breathing having an impact on cognitive function?
- trilbyglens 4y agoLends some credence to the insult "mouth breather" doesn't it.
- leoff 4y agoAnecdotal evidence, but I've noticed how Magnus Carlsen, the current best chess player, is often mouth breathing when very focused in a game. When I was a kid I often also caught myself mouth breathing when focused on a videogame, and I think this is a common tendency for people. I wonder if this really has a negative impact, or rather a positive one.
- gcanyon 4y agoInteresting. I have a strong subconscious urge to keep my mouth shut -- not kidding, I think inspired by watching Mary Poppins as a kid: "Mouth closed, Michael, we are not a codfish." So even when I am most focused, my mouth is always closed.
- amelius 4y agoI often catch myself grinding my teeth while being focused. Which of course makes mouth breathing impossible. When I am really focused for a long time, this even causes my jaw to become stiff and speaking becomes very difficult for a while.
- shadowgovt 4y agoWithout devising a research project with flawed methodology that nonetheless gets published, my wild-ass guess would be that conscious cognitive function is maximized by allowing breathing to be managed by the unconscious mind. Maybe he opens his mouth because it's the most comfortable thing to do in the moment.
- manmal 4y agoSome people have insufficient airflow through the nose. If you look at Magnus‘ nose (and midface), it looks slightly recessed, which could result in partial airway blockage. Him mouthbreathing could be a strategy to get more air in. I‘m not sure that can be generalized.
- joshspankit 4y agoIt could also be that he has to consciously keep his mouth closed, and when he’s deep in a match he stops concentrating on it.
- vmh1928 4y agoI've found that keeping my nose hair trimmed makes a big difference in nasal breathing air-flow and inhalation ease. And by trimmed I mean using a battery powered trimmer with the circular cutting head with slots and getting as far back as I can reach with that.
- blastro 4y agoalright you've sold me on testing this idea out
- blastro 4y agonose breathing is a must in tai chi
- TheCleric 4y agoI didn't get a chance to read the full paper, so this may be covered, but do they account that the causality may be reversed? Meaning that instead of nasal breathing causing more brain activity, instead the subjects had to concentrate more on consciously breathing through their nose and the activity is due to that? I.e., the brain activity is actually "causing" the nasal breathing?
- vkadfa3 4y agoAs some people have already mentioned, this study needs more support. Just think about this, if you go to gym, do some sport, crossfit, whatever, you'd know it is certainly impossible for a human being anywhere on the planet, to even run 200 mts. without oral breathing at some point. If you keep doing physical activity your body eventually would have gone through years of orals breathing just by doing regular physical activity. You actually need to breath by the mouth to increase the air pumped to the lungs, without that you rapidly exhaust the nose capability and you can't perform beyond marginal movement, i.e. you can fastly walk, but you won't run for long just by breathing by your nose. So it looks a lot like from the point of view of evolution, our bodies are precisely made to breath by the mouth for short periods, which eventually account for long periods, and hours, months or years in the long run. So it looks a bit like oral breathing is an expected normal function of the body. ok, it is not that is a perfect function, or that it will keep you healthy at a 100% of the attempts, but is - this is my take - probably that breathing by the mouth is one more body function, a standard one, evolved to be regularly used, with some trade-off, cost / benefits involved. It looks like we are beginning to underping those tradeoffs, but it is actually almost impossible to live normally without using those functions. An example could be using teeth, which leads to quite a lot of bad issues in the mouth and probably affect lungs, the hearth, and a lot more. But you can't just stop eating and oral hygiene goes so far, it won't fully prevent issues, eventually something is going to fail there.
- anon84873628 4y agoAccording to the book "Breath" by James Nestor, elite athletes were able to improve their performance by nasal breathing at all times. Apparently this innovation made a big impact at one of the Olympics, and has been part of training regimens ever since. Oral breathing during exercise is a crutch for the body.
- rojeee 4y agoSample size of 1 but I will do a 20km tempo run at about 4.00min/km and nose breathe the whole way. I also have a deviated septum.
- mancerayder 4y agoI think the nose warms air as one of its functions. I've been trying to breathe in through the nose running, and breathe out through the mouth (at least in the winter when there's more than just air that would be released from the nose otherwise). I find that my nose hurts because the air feels cold and I start to feel inflammation - this happens indoors as well. This is separate from the capacity issue, and feels like my body telling me not to do that anymore. When I was a small child I had an operation in my nose that did something - that my mom doesn't remember. To this day I imagine they removed or fixed something and no one knows what they removed or did, I woke up in a recovery room with my nose bleeding (inpatient procedure). I had terrible allergies as a kid.
- blast 4y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoxXKKQYJYQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoxXKKQYJYQ
- healthyusa 4y agoSo the Yogi’s were right after all? They have been “nasal breathing” for centuries. :-)