04. Nasal vs Mouth Breathing

How can you improve your breathing so you can get enough oxygen delivery to your body? Firstly, you have to ensure that you are primarily breathing through your nose and not your mouth. 

Breathing primarily through your nose is the best way to get enough oxygen delivered to your body. 

The only time you would not breathe exclusively through your nose is if you are:

• Eating 
• Drinking 
• Talking 
• Intensely exercising to the point you need extra air

Nose breathing is that important! It's actually beneficial to try to exercise with your mouth closed! 

Nasal breathing facilitates appropriate breathing volume to ensure you are not over-breathing and getting rid of too much carbon dioxide. Mouth breathing results in a higher volume of air exchange averaging 12-15 L/min compared to nasal breathing which is ~ 6 L/min. 

Therefore, if you mouth breathe, you are nearly doubling your air volume and thus excessive CO2 loss! As explained in testing your O2/CO2 levels where you can test your own levels here, this negatively impacts your cells ability to uptake oxygen. Furthermore, taking in an overly large volume of air can predispose your airway to collapsing during sleep. Mouth breathing is associated with sleep apnea.