The Diary of a CEOThe Breathing Expert: Mouth Breathing Linked To ADHD, Diabetes & Child Sickness!
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,081 words- 0:00 – 2:03
Intro
- JNJames Nestor
You can exercise all you want, eat all the right foods, sleep eight hours a night, if you are not breathing right, you will always be sick. (beep)
- SBSteven Bartlett
James Nestor, international bestseller on breathing.
- NANarrator
As a species, we've largely lost the ability to breathe correctly. James travels the whole world trying to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it.
- JNJames Nestor
99% of people are breathing dysfunctionally. They don't realize the damage they're doing to their bodies and brains by being this way. Look at the way we sit all day long, the way we sleep, the way we eat. The modern world is conspiring to make us sick. Diabetes, asthma, metabolic and autoimmune issues, anxiety, even ADHD. Experts said it is 100% related to your breathing, at night especially.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Really?
- JNJames Nestor
Bad breathing habits are a recipe for disaster, which is what has happened for so many kids today. So if you're a parent, and if you can hear them breathing when they're sleeping, this is a big red flag. But I believe that everybody can become a good breather, and these steps are free. We can do this while we're seated here. So, the first thing is to... (chair creaking)
- SBSteven Bartlett
Carbon dioxide is seen as this poison. Why?
- JNJames Nestor
Levels over 800 into 1,000 can have serious issues with cognitive and physical functions. And I've been recording our CO2 during this interview.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's going up.
- JNJames Nestor
And if we were to continue working in here for the next few hours, you will... (device beeping)
- SBSteven Bartlett
Jesus. (beep) I think this is fascinating. I looked at the back end of our YouTube channel, and it says that since this channel started, 69.9% of you that watch it frequently haven't yet hit the subscribe button. So, I have a favor to ask you. If you've ever watched this channel and enjoyed the content, if you're enjoying this episode right now, please, could I ask a small favor? Please hit the subscribe button. Helps this channel more than I can explain, and I promise, if you do that, to return the favor, we will make this show better, and better, and better, and better, and better. That's a promise I'm willing to make you if you hit the subscribe button.
- 2:03 – 9:15
My Mission Will Fix People's Health
- SBSteven Bartlett
Do we have a deal? (music plays) James, of all the things you could've committed your life to, you could've committed a decade of work and effort to, you decided to commit it to the subject matter of breath and breathing. Why?
- JNJames Nestor
Hmm. It was a number of things that happened, eh, personally, professionally, over a number of years. I never set out to write a book about breathing. I mean, what a boring subject, right? (laughs) Until I started having breathing problems, uh, that came back year after year. I was... I surf a lot in San Francisco, so I was getting bronchitis. I was getting pneumonia, mild pneumonia. Um, it was nothing to worry about. I'd go to my doctor, I'd be given a pack of pills and sent on my way. And this kept happening year after year, until a doctor friend of mine was looking at me. We were out having a drink, and she's like, "I think there's something going on with your breathing." I said, "Breathing?" You know, this is just something we do automatically. It's nothing I considered. She's like, "Oh, you might wanna go to a breathwork class." And I went to a breathwork class, and it completely blew me away on, on a number of levels. Um, I was able to get over the respiratory problems I had. I don't write about this in the book, 'cause I didn't wanna make my experience be indicative of everyone else's experience. But all the issues I had completely went away, 100%. And so I started looking into this more just personally, what else I could learn about breathing, and how it could benefit me for athletic performance, for sleep, and more, and noticed that my health was changing in all the right ways over and over again when I was adopting different habits. So that was more than 10 years ago, actually. That was probably 12 years ago. And then I started writing about free divers, started free diving myself, and learning the limits of breathing, and how you can do things that are supposed to be scientifically impossible by harnessing the power of your breath. And that's what really got me interested as a science journalist.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So your symptoms, the symptoms you had of... What were those symptoms at the time?
- JNJames Nestor
I was mouth-breathing a lot-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- JNJames Nestor
... uh, when I was working out. I was always mouth-breathing when I was jogging. I was mouth-breathing doing karate, mouth-mouth-breathing surfing. And I noticed at night, I could not remember a time when I did not go to sleep with a huge glass of water by my bedside. I would wake up numerous times throughout the night. My mouth was very dry, uh, very pasty in the morning. I thought this was completely normal. I also noticed that when I was working out at really high levels, I would start to wheeze a bit. (wheezes) Like, I could hear myself breathing, and I thought this was normal. And whenever I talked to people about it, they said, "Oh, welcome to old age. This is what happens when you get older." (laughs) And I didn't think that that was a good reason to be breathing so dysfunctionally. But it really took someone else to point it out for me to understand that maybe there was a problem there, and maybe I should fix it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And y- your friend who was a doctor then suggested this breathwork class. You go to this breathwork class.
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And is it the one session itself that helped you? Or was it the practices you took away from that session that helped you?
- JNJames Nestor
That one session completely blew my mind. So, it had all of the hallmarks of flakiness and new agey-ness, you know? It was... All the people flowing, flowing clothes, uh, there were some headbands. I said, "Good God, what am I doing here?" There's a lot of this stuff-
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- JNJames Nestor
... in San Francisco, so I'm kinda used to it. Dream catchers, all that. And it wasn't until I sat down and started... actually got rid of all of that, all those problems in my brain that were making me resist really giving myself to this practice. Got rid of that, started breathing, and I... I write about this at the beginning of the book, but I completely sweated through, uh, my T-shirt. It was not a warm room. It was quite cold in there. Sweated through my T-shirt. There's sweat marks on my jeans. My hair was sopping wet. And this was from sitting in a corner of a cold room.... just breathing at this certain pattern. So, it obviously released something in me. And when I mentioned this to doctors, I went back, they said, "Oh, you had a fever." Or, "Oh," you know, "the room was too hot." "Oh, you were covered in blankets." All of that was false. There was something else deeper happening, and they didn't understand it from their medical training. So, I tried to get answers elsewhere, and that's what I spent years doing.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You spent years doing. I mean, your, your book on the subject matter comes out almost a decade later.
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So in hindsight now, you have those answers on why you sweated through your clothes, and why you had that physiological reaction. What is the answer?
- JNJames Nestor
(laughs) I do not have opinions as a science journalist.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, really?
- JNJames Nestor
That I am a filter.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- JNJames Nestor
So, uh, my job is to talk to absolutely everybody. And especially when people, doctors tell me, "Oh, don't talk to those people. They don't know what they're talking about," those are the first people I'm gonna talk to. So, I talk to everybody and try to synthesize what I've learned, the truth according to all of these different cultures, all of these different ways of learning, and put that in a book that the general public can understand. So, I have my own personal views on it, but I try to keep my personal views out of what I write.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And then, the, the sort of next significant, I guess, catalyst event that was an inspiration point for your work, was in 2011. As you say, you went and covered the free diving championship in Greece.
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What did that experience add to the inspiration cloud that would then form the book? What did you learn about the nature of breath from that?
- JNJames Nestor
Yeah, it's so funny. Uh, you know, as you go through life, there are some experiences that you have, that you have no idea that you were opening a completely different door, and you're just going to be walking through that door for the next decade.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- JNJames Nestor
So, that's what happened in Greece. Didn't really know anything about it. Go out there, and just have my mind blown. I mean, you have these people who are at the surface of the water, take a single breath of air, one breath (inhales) , and dive down 120 meters on a single breath of air. And come back up five minutes later, and go-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Jesus.
- JNJames Nestor
... and then get out of the way for the next competitor. You watch them, the water's very clear there, right? It goes down, visibility's 150 meters. You watch them just disappear into nothing the size of an ant, and then completely disappear into the ocean and come back. And I said, "My God, there's so much we don't know about breathing, and also about the limits of the human body. I wanna learn more about this. I wanna experience this as well. Not diving down that deep, but I wanna access more of what I've been given, because I think we've been sold pretty short on what our limits are and what we should be doing and shouldn't be doing. But I think our bodies are, have much more potential than that."
- 9:15 – 14:46
Why Breathing Is The Pillar of Our Health
- SBSteven Bartlett
When I was, when I was reading through your book, you describe breath as a pillar of health, which is a pretty big statement to make.
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
'Cause when we think of pillars of health, we might think of, you know, exercise or, um, diet. But breath hasn't been considered a pillar of health. I think, to be honest, for the first 27 y- um, for the first 29 years of my 30-year-old life, I purely viewed breath as this thing that just happens unconsciously that is inconsequential. And it's only in recent times, because your work has influenced some people very close to me, that I started to second guess that. Where do we stand as a society at the moment, w- when we're talking about the majority of people, in terms of our view of what breathing is and the role it plays? And then I also want to understand, um, why that's wrong. Because as I said, I thought of breathing as just this thing that happens.
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And it was, it was quite, um, unnerving to understand that that view has potentially been im- impacting me in profound ways without me knowing it. Like you said, I've been pointing at the wrong thing. I've been thinking, "I need some pills," or, "I just can't sleep," or, "I've g- I've got in, I'm..." You know, someone might think they're an insomniac or whatever. But you make the case, quite profoundly, that breathing is much more than an unconscious act that we just do without thinking about.
- JNJames Nestor
Well, breathing is something that just happens, and how wonderful-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JNJames Nestor
... that is, that we've evolved to not have to think about every breath we take, right? That would be a real problem. But that doesn't mean we can't take conscious control of our breathing and then elicit different effects from our body. So, we have adopted habits, according to our breathing, from our environment, from the way we sleep, from our mouth structure, and more, that are not the best habits to have for breath. So, the reason why people spend so much time doing breath work and rehearsing slower breathing, lower breathing, breathing through the nose, is to reset a natural habit so that you don't have to think about it. I mean, I don't wanna have to constantly be checking in on my breath throughout the day. I want that to be automatic. But that takes a lot of time to get back to that healthy state, to make it unconscious.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Where do we get these bad habits from? And because I think, you know, surely my body, I'm the product of, you know, several, I don't know, thousands, gazillion years of evolution. Surely my body is doing it correctly by default. What is, what has changed-
- JNJames Nestor
No.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... that is causing me to do it incorrectly?
- JNJames Nestor
Your body is not doing this correctly by default. What has changed is this modern environment is conspiring to make us sick. And I don't think that that is an exaggeration at all. If you look at the way we sit all day long, if you look at the way we work, if you look at the way we eat, if you look at the way sleep, of all the pollution, noise pollution, air pollution we're surrounded by, this is why we are so sick. It is the environment. The human body is so well a-... equipped to live a healthy life, which is why indigenous cultures, the few left, they don't need to go to a cardiologist, or a pulmonologist, or a dentist. They have straight teeth, they breathe perfectly, they don't have all of these problems that we have today. So, these are diseases of civilization. The vast majority of problems we contend with, we have created in the last few hundred years. And one of the problems with breathing is that our facial structure does not allow us to breathe in a healthy way anymore, and it did hundreds of years ago, and we know that from skeletal record.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What are some of the, um, the most common modern problems, then, that the environment we live in, um, have caused? And we- I'm- here, I'm talking about diseases.
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What are the, the everyday diseases that you've discovered are byproducts of our misunderstanding and our bad ha- breathing habits?
- JNJames Nestor
Show me a list of the top diseases (laughs) and they're all related to it, even diabetes. Who would've thought that the onset of diabetes could be triggered by poor breathing habits at night? But that is exactly what researchers have found. Because if you are choking on yourself all night, as so many people do, (choking sounds) you aren't resting, you aren't entering stages of deep sleep, which means your body never restores and your body is going to break down. So, researchers have, have known this for 50 years. There are scientific studies showing this over and over again. So, that's just with, with diabetes and metabolic issues. Autoimmune issues for the same reason, you're constantly breathing like this, stooped over, (panting sounds) you're causing undue inflammation to your body, you're causing nervous system dysfunction, you're in that sympathetic state, which after a while will trigger a bunch of autoimmune issues. So, so many of these things, not exclusively are related to breath, they are exclusively related to diet, exercise, sleep, and breath. You can eat all the right foods, you can sleep eight hours a night, you can exercise all you want, if you are not breathing right, you will always be sick. And I've heard that six years ago by a researcher, and I believe it more now than I ever have.
- 14:46 – 21:07
Groundbreaking Experiment About Nose Breathing Benefits
- SBSteven Bartlett
At the very start of your book, you, you test these things on yourself.
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You did an experiment, which I found really, really interesting. I think that experiment has actually stayed with me for a long time, bec-, I mean, it's impacted me in the gym a lot. Every time I'm on that tread- bloody treadmill, (laughs) I'm thinking about what I read. But, um, what, why did you want to do that experiment on yourself and what was the experiment?
- JNJames Nestor
I didn't want to do this experiment on myself.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What did you do?
- JNJames Nestor
I really did not want to do it. No one else was going to do it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Really?
- JNJames Nestor
There had never been a human trial of nasal breathing versus, versus mouth breathing for this amount of time. And I was talking to Jayakar Nayak, who's the chief of rhinology research at Stanford, the top, top of his field, and I said, "We know what happens to animals when they breathe this way. We know all the deleterious effects of mouth breathing on kids, on adults, on old people, on sleep, on athletic performance. Why can't you test this? Let's get a big group of people and test this." He said, "It'll never happen. We're not gonna find funding." And he thought ethically there would be problems doing it, because he knew what damage could be caused by becoming a mouth breather. And so, after all this, I just kind of gave up. And then I had an idea, I said, "Well, what if I did it, and what if I got one other person? We will sign up, we'll sign whatever waivers." And we did it. Doesn't, you know, it's just two people, but that was the maximum we were allotted. And he said okay, but he had no money for it, so we had to pay for this experiment at Stanford, which was not the cheapest thing I've ever paid for in my life.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- JNJames Nestor
Um, but I wanted to know. I, I'm writing about mouth breathing, writing about all the problems, I'm writing about my subjective experience of how it transformed my life becoming a nasal breather. I wanted to see that experience dictated and documented in data by machines. And that's why we did it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And how did it go?
- JNJames Nestor
Terribly. It was awful. Um, so just to let, let people know-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- JNJames Nestor
... uh, this was an experiment in which for 10 days, we had our noses plugged up, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yep.
- JNJames Nestor
And then for another 10 days, we had all of that stuff released from our noses and we were almost exclusively nasal breathing. Everything else in those 10-day periods was exactly the same. We ate the same foods, we walked the same number of steps, we exercised the same. So, exactly the same. And we did scientific, um, studies and took a bunch of data before, during, and after. We were collecting data three times a day as well, looking at what was happening to our bodies, our sleep, our inflammation, and more. And we knew this wasn't going to be pleasant, uh, but I didn't know it was going to be this bad. Like, it was really ... Not trying to be over dramatic, but it was awful, awful. And, uh, I'm so happy I never have to do that again. At the same time, I feel so sorry for people who do not realize that their noses are stuffed up, who have been living this way for years and don't understand that this is their main source of their issues with migraines, sleep problems, and more.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I can, I could, I could see it in you when you described it as being awful, that you were almost teleporting yourself back to that, to that chapter.
- JNJames Nestor
(laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
I could see it in your face.
- JNJames Nestor
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What did y-
- JNJames Nestor
A little, little PTSD from that still. Uh, it was bad. Um-
- SBSteven Bartlett
When you say bad, what do you mean? Specifically, as in...
- JNJames Nestor
It was the, the first few days. So, I did this with, uh, breathing researcher and breathing therapist, Anders Olsson, from Sweden. He was the only person that would do this. Uh, and he flew from Sweden on his own dime to try to understand this. He had been talking about nasal breathing for 10 years, right? And so, he said, "Okay, I wanna put this to the test. I wanna see if I'm right or wrong." So, the first few days, we were kind of laughing. It was like, "How bad did you sleep?" You know. And we were comparing ... We went from zero snoring to full-on snoring and sleep apnea within a couple of days. And so, we were comparing and kind of showing off how sick we were. But then after about a week, we saw it three days ago, like I wasn't able to sleep at night, and I was dreading every single night going to sleep because you're (yawns) . My mouth was so dry, and my sleep was so bad. I was so tired after sleeping nine, 10 hours a night. I was so tired, and, and the data proved that as well. So, it got really bad by the 10th day. Uh, we were in really bad shape. And, and again, I want to mention, like so many people, especially during allergy season, are plugged up for months at a time, and they don't realize the damage they're doing to their bodies and brains by being this way.
- SBSteven Bartlett
How many people are breathing incorrectly, in your view? How many people, if they, if they went and did a practice, or they had the understanding that's in your book and that you speak about-
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... do you believe would have better overall health and wellbeing if they made a change to their breathing?
- JNJames Nestor
By taking simple steps, I believe that everybody can become a better, what is considered a good breather. And these steps are free, and they're available for everybody. If you look at the percentage of the population who is breathing dysfunctionally, I've heard different percentages from different people, respiratory therapists who do this all day long, to elite trainers of Olympians, they say 95 to 99% of the people that they see are breathing dysfunctionally. So, it's basically everybody. Some people, obviously, there's a curve to that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JNJames Nestor
There's an asthmatic with panic attacks that is breathing very dysfunctionally, and then there's an athlete who can push through the pain and win that competition, but is still breathing dysfunctionally. So, there's a, there's an arc to that.
- 21:07 – 31:05
What Are We Doing Wrong With Our Breathing?
- SBSteven Bartlett
You referred to tribes there, and, um, people that are not living in our environment. And also, you know, you, you talk a lot about breathing as a lost art.
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I'm so fascinated by ... I think I spent the last couple of years really fascinated by how our ancestors lived their lives and how they did things. You know? I was talking to Dr. Daniel Lieberman about-
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... running and feet and muscle strength and all those things, and spoken to so many other people about processed food and, you know, all of these modern sort of misalignment diseases where we're not living in alignment with ourselves have, have become a really important part of my understanding of how I should be living now. Breathing as a lost art. What did you learn when you looked back through history about how people breathe, and, um, what did that tell you about how we're doing it wrong?
- JNJames Nestor
I learned that we didn't need breath work classes hundreds of years ago. We already had bodies that were able to breathe in, properly. We were living in an environment that supported healthy breathing. I love Lieberman's work, by the way.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- JNJames Nestor
I've learned so much from him, including a lot of the stuff on scales and, uh, and, and breathing.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JNJames Nestor
So, I learned a lot, a lot from him. So, you know, people say, "Well, how do you know that? We can't go back in time." What you can do is look at indigenous cultures, which is what Lieberman and so many other people have done. And they found they don't have problems with their feet. They don't have problems with their backs. They don't have heart disease. They don't have asthma. Why is it that Mennonites, uh, this is, these are these groups in, uh, the US that live this very traditional lifestyle, right? So, some people say that asthma is, is genetic. So, Mennonites and Quakers who don't, aren't around any technology, right? They have 0.5% of their population has asthma. Meanwhile, in the US, 10% of the population has asthma. So, obviously, the environment has so much to do with our health, and it absolutely affects our breathing for all of the things I mentioned earlier. How are you sitting? How are your stress levels? How are you sleeping? How are you working out? All of these things will weigh upon how healthy you are, uh, able to breathe.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And so, the, in the c- the context of the modern world, so if we didn't need breath work, you know, a couple of hundred years ago, the introduction of things like pollution I understand, but are there everyday things, like the chair I'm sat in right now and the way that I work every day, that have impacted breathing and then the modalities like asthma and these other things?
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Yeah, and we could go through a few of those things.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Please.
- JNJames Nestor
So, when you're sitting, as I sit eight hours a day, I try to stand at the standing desk as well, you are inhibiting your ability to breathe properly. So, I'm sitting forward in this chair right now. Even if I wanted to take a deep breath, it's really hard. I have to struggle to do that. Because my diaphragm, which g-... is right underneath the lungs, is unable to descend properly to allow for that proper inhale.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Give me an explanation-
- JNJames Nestor
So-
- SBSteven Bartlett
... of what the diaphragm is.
- JNJames Nestor
Oh, sure. The diaphragm is this umbrella-shaped muscle that sits underneath the lungs. The lungs are just like two balloons. They don't inflate themselves. They need the diaphragm to come down, and it creates a vacuum, and air comes into the lungs. When we exhale, that diaphragm pushes up and pushes the air out of the lungs. So, that's how we breathe. It's not the lungs doing the work. The lungs are just these fleshy bags, right? It's that diaphragm descending, creating a vacuum, (inhales) air comes in, and that diaphragm ascending, lifting back up, and pushing that air out. So, you need proper diaphragmatic movement in order to breathe properly. When our bodies aren't allowing us to do that, when you're sitting on a bus or sitting on a plane for 12 hours at a time, and you're seated like this, you aren't able to breathe properly. That means you're only breathing into your chest. You aren't accessing all of this other area.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Ah.
- JNJames Nestor
If you're just breathing into your chest, you have to breathe way more breaths. The reason is, so much of that area you're bringing that air into does not participate in gas exchange. It does not soak up that oxygen that's in the air. So, most of us spend most of our days like this, (exhales)
- SBSteven Bartlett
Slumped over in the chair, like you. (exhales)
- JNJames Nestor
(exhales) And breathing like that. We can live this way, doesn't mean we're healthy. We can live on three pieces of pizza every day, right? We have enough calories to do that. Doesn't mean we're healthy. So, that's- that's the number one thing. You can sit in a chair properly to breathe, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
(inhales)
- JNJames Nestor
But it takes some effort.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(exhales)
- JNJames Nestor
And if you look at indigenous cultures, again, look at how they're sitting, look at their spines. Like, it's a beautiful thing. They're sitting in a way that is conducive to proper breathing. Any statue, any ancient statue, look at the posture.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The posture is- For people that can't see this right now-
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... the posture is straight up, or is it-
- JNJames Nestor
It is-
- 31:05 – 34:56
Why Do We Have The Ability To Breathe Through Our Mouths If It's So Bad?
- JNJames Nestor
of many different components, looking at the posture and its relationship to healthy breathing.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The, um, when I was reading through your work and I was thinking about having this conversation with you, this is really, I guess slightly obvious, but I also can understand how it's a stupid question, um, which is if nose breathing is so beneficial for our health and wellbeing, then why do we (laughs) have the capability of breathing through our mouths? Do you see what I'm saying?
- JNJames Nestor
It's a great question. How wonderful that we have a backup system in case anything happens to our noses that we don't suddenly die, right? So you can drink through your nose, right? It's really hard to do that-
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- JNJames Nestor
... but you can and it goes down to your stomach, but that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. Just like with breathing, again, look at the animal kingdom. Look at a cheetah running at 100 kilometers per hour. How is it breathing? In and out through its nose. The only time that a horse starts breathing through its mouth is when it's sick. So that is a sign that it's sick. A horse running at a sprint is breathing through its nose. This is what we, this is the organ we are designed to breathe through, and no one who has studied rhinology would argue otherwise. There are 30 different functions that the nose does for breathing. So not only does it help filter air out and heat air, but it helps capture moisture, about 40% more moisture, so you don't have to constantly be drinking water. When I see people jogging and they're breathing through their mouth and they're carrying, like, four different water bottles, they wouldn't need those water bottles (laughs) if they just learned to breathe through their noses, 'cause the body is designed to capture that moisture. That's what the nose does and all of those hairs do. And then there's nitric oxide, which is this miraculous molecule that plays an essential role in vasodilation, circulation, and more, and it kills viruses and bacteria. This all happens in the nose. This does not happen in the mouth.
- SBSteven Bartlett
N- nitrous oxide is, is, only happens in the nose? What do you mean?
- JNJames Nestor
Nitric oxide, yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Nitric oxide.
- JNJames Nestor
We get six, six times more nitric oxide just breathing through the nose. Six times more.
- SBSteven Bartlett
How? I don't know.
- JNJames Nestor
And if you... Because of all of these different tissues-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh.
- JNJames Nestor
... they, they release nitric oxide, and there is some science showing that this boost of nitric oxide can significantly help us defend more from viruses and bacteria, including colds. So breathing in and out through the nose. There is a lot of work in nitric oxide in COVID rehabilitation. Who knew we can produce so much of it in our noses? And if you hum, you can increase that to 15-fold. So humming, mm, you're gonna annoy everyone if you do this-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- JNJames Nestor
... increases that nitric oxide 15-fold. And there was one study that showed this guy completely got rid of his rhinitis, uh, just by humming for about 10 minutes four times a day. So these are simple tricks you can do. They are free, available for everyone. The humming also helps to calm the body down because we have the vagal nerve, right, vagus nerve-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JNJames Nestor
... vagal tone is right along here. So when you hum, mm, you're sending s-
- SBSteven Bartlett
(hums)
- JNJames Nestor
... signals to the vagus nerve and you're calming your body down.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What, what, what is humming doing?
- JNJames Nestor
Humming is stimulating more nitric oxide and allowing it to break free from all of those tissues.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(hums) So you hum in your nose like (hums) .
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and you can feel the vibration there. So somebody sent me this device, like, three months ago that they now have a device for people who don't want to hum that goes on your nose and hums for you. If that's gonna help you hum, you can do that. But I've found it's just kind of easier to pick a song you like and hum that.
- 34:56 – 36:36
The Benefits of Breathwork for Long COVID
- JNJames Nestor
- SBSteven Bartlett
When you talk about the common cold and, you know, flu and infection, did you see a clear correlation between people that had good breathing habits and the common cold and, um, bad breathing habits?
- JNJames Nestor
There have never been, like, a huge study done, done on that, on humming and nasal breathing and the common, and there never will be, right? No one's, no one's gonna fund that. I can say anecdotally, absolutely. And if you look at the biochemistry, if you look at the physiology, if you look at all the functions of the nose, you can deduce... It seems very clear to me that you will be susceptible less to certain viruses, certain bacteria, by breathing in and out of, of your nose.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You mentioned COVID there.
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Your book came out-
- JNJames Nestor
(laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
... right as COVID hit, which is unbelievable timing, I have to say.
- JNJames Nestor
Yeah, yeah. Some people thought I had planned that somehow.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- JNJames Nestor
Uh, it was, it was interesting, um, the first week the book came out, somebody criticized it for taking advantage of this pandemic without bothering to notice the book was printed and in warehouses six months before (laughs) anyone had ever heard the word COVID, you know?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Uh-huh.
- JNJames Nestor
And I worked on this book for years and years and years. So yeah, lockdown in the US was in March. This book came out in June.... uh, right-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Wow.
- JNJames Nestor
... on the heels of it, which was absolutely bizarre to me. And all of the research looking into breathing patterns, looking into nasal breathing, how that can help rehabilitate people with long COVID and with acute cases of COVID is very solid. And I still don't see anybody talking about this.
- 36:36 – 51:46
Children Breathing Wrong Is Causing Them To Suffer
- SBSteven Bartlett
What, what are the most important things that we're not talking about as it relates to things like COVID from, from your research and your book?
- JNJames Nestor
I think the most important... Well, it depends on, on who's talk... People in breathwork communities have been talking, yogis have been talking about-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, yeah.
- JNJames Nestor
... Buddhists have been talking about it. So, I think, in Western medicine, you come in and your doctor assesses your health, listens to your heart, maybe looks at your cholesterol. They're not looking at your breathing. And this is especially important for kids. I cannot tell you how many hundred- thousands by now of parents have written me. Their kids are on all these different pills. None of them are doing anything. They have ADHD. They're flunking out of school. And I am astounded that more pediatricians and more doctors aren't looking into this, because so many millions of kids are suffering because of their breathing is, is so terrible and it's been so terrible for so long that their, their bodies are now rebelling against them.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And why are kids breathing in such a way? Because you think of- you think of a kid, you think, they... Uh, I think we form these bad habits when we're adults or later on in life, but the thought, the thought that a kid has developed such a bad habit somewhere is quite hard to take.
- JNJames Nestor
See, all roads go back to those skulls, right? (laughs) And that anthropology and those ancient cultures, right? So, these kids are not able to breathe well, because their facial development is, is so retrognathic, which means it has grown so far backwards that their airways aren't able to open up enough. So, whenever they put their heads on a pillow, (snoring sounds) that's what it sounds like. So, it is a problem with facial development that we did not have hundreds of years ago. And you can see this. I spent years looking at ancient skeletons, and they did not have these problems. So, right out of the gate, we're messed up, right? Our s- our facial function is messed up, and it's making it harder for us to breathe. Add on top of that pollution, bad sitting habits, bad breathing habits, and you have a recipe for disaster, which is what has happened for so many kids today.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So, I have to ask-
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... where that facial, um, issue started, and how that is being passed on. 'Cause, in my mind, evolution or de-evolution or whatever the word would be in this case, stopped. (laughs) I thought we stopped changing and evolving, because we are no longer being selected out of the gene pool.
- JNJames Nestor
There is no stopping evolution. Evolution means change throughout time. It does not mean progress. So, when people use the word evolution to mean we're evolving, uh, better and we have these better capabilities, that's not what the word actually means. It's change throughout time. And we can change for better or for worse. And for the past few hundred years, we have been changing for the worse. This is not my opinion. This is a scientific fact. So, it comes back to that question, why? Why would an animal change for the worse? It goes back to my answer, the environment. We can trace the exact point that our facial structure started growing in this deformed way to make us less susceptible to, to healthy breathing, to... That changed in such a way to make us such poor breathers. And that point is right when industrialized food came into different cultures. So, that happened at different times. Came in first to England and France, then it spread to Germany, then it spread to, you know, Scandinavia, then it spread through the rest of the world. You can see, in a single generation of eating industrialized foods, things that were canned, things that were bottled, things that were baked, things with sugar in it, single generation, 50% of the population will have crooked teeth that didn't have it before. Crooked teeth are indicative of having a mouth that's too small for your face. Your mouth grows too small, teeth have nowhere to grow in, so they grow in crooked. What else is a problem with having a mouth that's too small for your face? You have an airway that's too small. You aren't able to breathe properly. So, we can see that exact point. And researchers have done this for decades and decades, and I've seen these skulls before, after industrialization. And the same story plays out, no matter where you are on the planet. So, that is what is, what has ruined our faces, and that's why we look so different than we did 300 years ago, 2,000 years ago, 20,000 years ago.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Why did our mouths get smaller at that point?
- JNJames Nestor
Because of, industrialized food elicits very little chewing. You don't need to chew very much when you're eating soft food. So, every... If you think about it, our ancestors chewed for, like, three, four hours a day, chewing raw meat, bones, roots.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Ah, yeah.
- JNJames Nestor
Think about the food you ate today. Well, maybe not you, 'cause you're probably eating (laughs) healthy food. But, uh, the food that most people are eating-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JNJames Nestor
... everything's soft. Takes a few bites, it's gone. There's no rigorous chewing. And if you don't get that early on in life, your skeleature does not develop properly, and your musculature does not develop properly, and you grow a different kind of face that makes you much more susceptible to poor breathing habits.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Does that then mean that one way we can avoid these-... breathing-related disorders later in life, would be to have our children eating more difficult foods when they're younger.
- JNJames Nestor
Absolutely. And if you look at the reasons why our ancestors all had these pronathic, really strong faces, these huge airways, it's because they were breastfed for a minimum of two years, and after that, they weren't weaned onto applesauce or baby food. They ate adult food, right? (laughs) There was no such thing as Gerbers back then, a few hundred years ago. They went from being breastfed to eating adult food, which requires a lot of chewing. That's the main driver behind how our faces have developed and devolved in the past 300 years.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The point there about being breastfed for two years-
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... why is that consequential?
- JNJames Nestor
This is where I get into a lot of trouble here. So I want to be very- (laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- JNJames Nestor
Don't worry. I'm gonna-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Do I get in trouble as well? (laughs)
- JNJames Nestor
... throw it out to you.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs) Do you just care? (laughs)
- JNJames Nestor
You might, you... Trust me. So I want to be extremely clear here.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- JNJames Nestor
I am a journalist, and I go out and talk to experts in the field. These are not my opinions. What I'm telling you is what I have been told by dozens and dozens of experts, and I'm not shaming anyone for feeding their children any way they want. That's none of my business, okay? What I have learned from several experts is the stress and chewing required for breastfeeding will help pull the face out and develop a larger airway. Again, I want to be very clear, I'm not shaming modern mothers. You're under an incredible amount of stress. Bottle-feeding, perfectly fine. You want to do that, I think it's great. But that stress... And, and you think about it, like, for two years, if you're constantly pulling that face out, the face is gonna develop differently, right? So, that makes sense to me. But even if a kid is, is bottle-fed, which is great, if you want to bottle-feed a kid, as long as they're eating healthy food that they actually chew after that, I believe, my personal opinion is, you can develop all of that proper facial structuring. You can also use some different orthodontic devices to help push that along, and you will be perfectly fine.
- 51:46 – 57:04
The Surprising Greatest Indicator of Longevity
- SBSteven Bartlett
going further back up this train of thought then, we're talking about, um, exercise and nose breathing at the very start of this thread of thought, and I have sat here with a few people now, I think it was Peter Attia who was talking to me about VO2 max.
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
A subject matter I don't s-
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... still fully don't understand, but from what I understood, it was the amount of oxygen we're able to take from each breath.
- JNJames Nestor
Yep. Yep. So that's, that's a general measurement of the amount of ox- how efficient you are of- at taking up oxygen, which is related to breathing, but it's also related to the respiratory system and how you're able to extract that oxygen from your lungs into your bloodstream. And it's a good gauge of general athletic performance. It's not everything-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JNJames Nestor
... and there's been some pushback against using that as a, as a measurement. But, but, it's a general, general gauge, a good tool for that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is there a correlation between our health outcomes, how long we'll live, and our lung capacity, our VO2 max, and all of that stuff? Is there a correlation there?
- JNJames Nestor
So I had the same question years ago, and I started looking into it, and it turns out that numerous studies have found that the healthier and larger your lungs are, the longer you will live. That is the greatest indicator of lifespan, was lung size and lung health.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The greatest indicator of lifespan.
- JNJames Nestor
The greatest indicator. According to these studies, the Framingham study looked at 5,200 people over the course of 70 years, and they found that the people who lived the longest had the largest and healthiest lung function. They even did studies in which they were looking at people who had, uh, uh, lung transplants, so surgically implanted lungs, those who were given larger lungs lived way longer than th- those given normal size or smaller lungs. So no matter how you get these larger lungs, it's better. And luckily, we don't need to get a transplant to do this. We can practice healthy breathing, we can practice stretches, we can exercise, and this naturally can keep our lung size up. It's very sad when you start looking at these charts of what happens after you're 30, you're almost there, so get ready, it's a, it's a real bummer, but your lung function starts dropping off, uh, th- uh, very quickly. And especially for women, uh, around 50 and 60, your lung function and your lung size starts shrinking, shrinking, shrinking up, which means at the time you need more oxygen more easily, it's much harder to get that. And that's where people's health really starts, uh, disintegrating, they start having problems. The good news is you can stave off this deterioration, this shrinking of your lungs, by doing all the stuff we're talking about. By doing breath work exercises, by exercise. What is yoga but stretching-... and breathing into this lung, and breathing into that lung. So, the yogis knew this thousands and thousands of years ago.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And it's the, uh, it almost feels like that downward spiral is kind of s- self-reinforcing and self-fulfilling, because if my lung capacity deteriorates, my movement and my exercise, um, capacity will deteriorate, which means my lung capacity will deteriorate, which means I'll move less, which means... It's kind of this downward spiral, right?
- JNJames Nestor
Ab- absolutely. And it's my belief, after studying this stuff for so long, that that is the thing you want to pay attention to, more, more than anything else, especially as you grow older. Your lung function, how much air you can pack into your lungs, how long you can hold your breath. All of this is indicative of your general respiratory function and your general health. So, that, that little hint of using a breath hold every morning to see where you are physically and mentally, I think, is good. They've used it for thousands and thousands of years, and now it's coming back. This is something that a lot of these longevity experts aren't looking into. They're looking into nutrition and exercise. They're not looking into lung capacity. We get more energy from breath than we do from food and drink, right? We take 30 pounds of air in and out of our lungs every single day. And so I- I- I find it interesting, they're focused on all these micronutrients. All that stuff's important, right? I believe, most of it. But from what I know, a lot of them aren't focused very much on their breathing.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I want to make sure that I have something to, that I can take into my own life there-
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... for the expansion of my lung capacity-
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... because I, I'm sold on the importance of it. So, um, exercise-
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... expands my lung capacity?
- JNJames Nestor
Yeah, 15, 20%. Just, just by exercising, by virtue of exer- if you're a good exerciser, your lung capacity will, will stay up.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Cardiovascular exercise, I'm guessing?
- JNJames Nestor
Yes, cardiovascular exercise.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And then-
- JNJames Nestor
There's ways to access that a little more. If you're-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Please.
- JNJames Nestor
... dysfunctionally breathing when you're working out, you're not doing yourself too many favors. So, you have to... Remember those simple, basic things? You have to learn how to take a proper breath, then apply that to your workouts. You will see such an incredible difference once you do this. This is what yoga is good for. It's hard to do yoga without breathing well, right? You can do it, but by virtue of all those different poses, they're meant to open up your chest, right? (sniffs) To expand this area.
- 57:04 – 1:02:40
Practical Steps: Change the Way You Breathe
- JNJames Nestor
- SBSteven Bartlett
So, yoga, cardiovascular exercise with proper breathing through my nose, breath work practices-
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... at the start of the day.
- JNJames Nestor
I think biomechanics, the first thing is awareness to any of this stuff. You can take your hands. We can do this while we're s- seated here. You can put it above your sit bones here.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- JNJames Nestor
And when you breathe in, breathe very, very low. And you want your hands to move out laterally. I don't care what your stomach's doing. Moving out laterally. So, as you breathe in... (inhales)
- SBSteven Bartlett
When you say low, you mean in my belly? (inhales)
- JNJames Nestor
You want your hands to be moving outwards, okay? (inhales) I don't care what's happening with your lung, uh, with your, uh, stomach. I can hold my breath and move my stomach in and out. So, when people talk about a belly breath, that's not what we're doing. When your hands are moving out laterally, that means your diaphragm is descending. That's how we can see if you're taking a proper, deep breath. So, as you breathe in (inhales) you want your hands to be moving outward. And if you take a cloth measuring tape, you can actually measure your progress this way. The next thing you want to do is take your hands, okay?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JNJames Nestor
Take your four fingers, place them on your collarbone, and put your... This one's very weird. Place your middle finger right there, so it's only your middle finger that's touching, okay?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JNJames Nestor
And we're gonna breathe deep. Then we're gonna move that breath up into our chest, okay? (inhales) (exhales) Don't move your shoulders. (exhales)
- SBSteven Bartlett
(inhales)
- JNJames Nestor
You want to see those fingers naturally separating, okay?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Ah.
- JNJames Nestor
So, this is not a flexing thing.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- JNJames Nestor
Your shoulders stay down.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Like this?
- JNJames Nestor
Just like this, fingers on the collarbone.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JNJames Nestor
We're gonna take a big breath in to our lower abdomen area.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(inhales)
- JNJames Nestor
Move it up. And you want your chest to be expanding outward.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(inhales)
- JNJames Nestor
The last thing we want to do, take your hands and put them, especially you-
- SBSteven Bartlett
(inhales)
- JNJames Nestor
... you need to do this.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(inhales)
- 1:02:40 – 1:13:17
How Our Psychology and Stress Are Affecting Our Breathing
- JNJames Nestor
- SBSteven Bartlett
One of the things that, um, I think causes shallow breath is this kind of constant state of fight or flight, stress, anxiety, screens, social media. And it's funny, 'cause whenever people would- would have been listening to this podcast and started- heard you talk about breath, and they would realize that they were probably, at that exact moment, doing really shallow breaths. You talk about these free divers who are able to extract, you know, 80 ... use 80, 90% of their diaphragm or more.
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Where y- you said w- we use 10, roughly 10%.
- JNJames Nestor
We use about 10%, and- and oftentimes less than that, the average person.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What is the correlation between, like, stress and breathing? And also, I'm talking now about, like, the everyday angst of life.
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm. So, we've talked about the skeleton, we've talked about anthropology, we've talked about biomechanics and posture, but something else that ties into this, you're 100% right, is- is psychology, is your brain. So, how you breathe affects how your brain works, affects your anxiety, but your anxiety also affects how you're breathing. So, again, it's another one of those circles. What happens so often is, when we're at work, we're so sensitized to threats and to fear that we overreact when something happens. Even though it's not threatening our life, we get a nasty email from a friend or a email from the boss that's disappointed at the last project you did, and we get stressed out, right? And so, what- what is the physiological response to stress is (inhales deeply) we clench up, we hold our breath, and then we breathe like this. (exhales sharply) And we hold our breath again, and we breathe like this. (exhales sharply) You think about thousands of years ago, when we were out in the wild, what would we do if there was a threat approaching? You'd hold your breath to be silent, and then you breathe too much to get your respiratory system ready to either fight it off or to run away. So, we're having this same response in our day-to-day lives now because we're so over-sensitized to it. So, researchers have different names for this. They call it emal apnea, or continuous awareness. I mean, there's an academic name for it, partial attention syndrome. Um, I prefer emal apnea. Easier to remember. No matter what you call it, it's the idea that when you're in the office place, you're breathing dysfunctionally because of this constant stress loop. And they've found ... And there was some NIH studies on this. They've found that breathing this way can have long-term damage to your health, high blood pressure issues, all of the things we had talked about, metabolic dysfunctions and more, which makes sense 'cause you're just (inhales deeply) constantly in this loop of fear and threat and stress. So, the quickest, most effective way, way more than drugs, to take control of this stress is to take control of your breathing, and this has been documented time and time again. So, when you notice you're breathing this way, you stop.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(inhales deeply)
- JNJames Nestor
What I like to do is breathe two breaths in and then an exhale. It looks like this. (inhales deeply) (exhales deeply) That resets your respiratory system. That resets your breathing pattern.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(inhales deeply)
- JNJames Nestor
And then you can do a few rounds of that and go back to very simple five second in, five second out. So, let's just pretend-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- JNJames Nestor
... you're in line at the airport.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(growls)
- JNJames Nestor
Someone's cut you off. You ordered something at Starbucks. They gave you the wrong-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Ah, it's
- NANarrator
That happens often.
- JNJames Nestor
You know, all the things that are just-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- JNJames Nestor
... drive us crazy nowadays. At that moment, I want you to breathe in.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(inhales deeply)
- JNJames Nestor
Pause. Breathe in again.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(inhales deeply)
- JNJames Nestor
Let it out.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(exhales sharply)
- JNJames Nestor
Relax yourself a little bit when you're doing these breaths, okay?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Again? (laughs)
- JNJames Nestor
Breathe in.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(inhales deeply)
- JNJames Nestor
Breathe in again.
- 1:13:17 – 1:14:13
Ad Break
- SBSteven Bartlett
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- 1:14:13 – 1:16:49
Are Face Masks Actually Making Us Sicker?
- SBSteven Bartlett
you try this out. (page turns) Well, we, we talked about the pandemic earlier on and COVID. One of the big conversations you must have seen playing out was that-
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... masks are, um, bad for us, because it's like trapping carbon dioxide in-
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... inside the mask, which is making us sick. I even see people having this conversation right now on- online in the wake of the pandemic. They're saying, you know, these masks that we put on kids, they've caused sickness and illness in kids. Um, carbon dioxide is kind of seen as this poison. What is your POV on all of this?
- JNJames Nestor
Oh, man. This is even more controversial than the whole breastfeeding thing-
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- JNJames Nestor
... but let's go there. Okay, so surgeons and dentists have been wearing masks for 100 years.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- JNJames Nestor
They're able to function just fine. They wear good quality masks, and they wear them when they need to be wearing them. There are several studies that support if everyone wears a mask, and if everyone is wearing that mask properly, it does seem to stem some transmission of COVID and other viruses. That's, that's the truth. Now, let's look at the other side. Has been telling... Uh, we've been telling people that social distance, at least in the US, they s- after six months of social distance- distancing, which absolutely worked, they said, "No, now you can go out as long as you're wearing a mask." Did that do anything to stem the spread of COVID? From what I see, no. (laughs) So there's, there's a number of problems. Most of the masks that people are wearing are terrible quality. They're filled with chemicals that you are inhaling, and they're causing a lot of health issues. Okay? That's, that's number one. Second one is most of us are wearing them improperly. We're not wearing them in the right way. The third one is people feel this sense of comfort, uh, that they're actually protected wearing this mask, which is not the case in many situations. And this is because I've done my own research looking at carbon dioxide levels in indoor environments and have found these places that we were told that we could go to and we would be safe as long as we're wearing masks, completely not the case. Some of these places had such high CO₂ that it meant every seventh breath you were inhaling was someone else's breath backwash, was someone else's exhale. So I don't care how many masks you're wearing, they are not going to stop the spread of these diseases if you are in an environment where so much of that air has been recycled.
- 1:16:49 – 1:28:03
Why The Air In Your Room Is Slowly Killing You Every Day
- JNJames Nestor
- SBSteven Bartlett
So, that's really interesting to me. I've never heard this before. The, the idea that the amount of carbon dioxide in the room you're in, which I guess is determined by how well ventilated it is, has a relationship with how much recycled air I take in. How?
- JNJames Nestor
Absolutely. And this, I learned all this after the book came out. I was talking to a pulmonologist who said, "You really need to look into indoor CO₂." I said, "Well, why?" He said, "That is a good, uh, way of determining how much of the air has been recycled." So I bought one of these, which is a carbon dioxide meter, and I've been recording our CO₂ during this interview.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Jesus Christ. (laughs)
- JNJames Nestor
(laughs) And, um, so, um, if you are outside, it's about 418... It depends where you are, 418, 19 parts per million CO₂. That's healthy, right? Even though CO₂ is going up, it's causing climate change. We all know that. But for breathing, that is perfectly healthy. Once you get into 800 parts per million, some studies have found that-
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs) Sorry, it's going up.
- JNJames Nestor
... when they are testing people, when they are testing students, you see a 20% decline in test results just from 800. By the time you get to 1,000, you start suffering from things like eye irritation, sore throats, other issues. So we're probably breathing in every one in every 30 breaths that I'm breathing in is your breath or the cameraman's breath. By the time you get to 2,500, you're in really bad shape. One in every 17 breaths is, is a breath you're breathing from somebody else. So, we have been told by authorities that we should only worry about levels that are up to 5,000 parts per million. That is completely false. There are over 18 studies that show levels over 800 into 1,000 can potentially cause problems with bone demineralization, uh, kidney calcification, and chronic inflammation. And so just since we've been sitting in this interview, we started off at 700 and now we're at 1,100. And if we were to continue working in here for the next few hours, this could be up to 1,500, 1,700, which has been shown to have serious, uh, issues with, with cognitive function and physical function.
- SBSteven Bartlett
That's very scary. And it, it calls for a redesign of this studio, because I mean, putting on the air conditioning, would that help? Because that would, th- that would be-
- JNJames Nestor
No. It's recycling the same air, unless that air is, is coming in from outside. The-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Does that air come from outside?
- JNJames Nestor
I don't think so. I think it's recycled. And, uh, a really scary study I read was, a lot of schools are at 1500 to 2000. Um, several studies have found this. They have shown a 50% dic- decrease in test results when students were exposed to air with that much CO2 in it. 50% decrease in test results from 1500 to 2000. I've recorded levels up to 4000 and 5000 in bars and subways and more.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Jesus.
- JNJames Nestor
Yeah. This isn't my, uh, uh, hypothesis either. This is something I was told about, about a year after the book came out. And I've seen a lot of scientific studies since, and I sent some of those to your team, just to show that this isn't something I'm making up.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The, the ones you sent to my team, I've, I have, um, some notes here I can pull up. Um, in one study of 24 employees, cognitive scores were 50% lower when the participants were exposed to 1400 PPM of CO2, compared with 550 PPM during a working day. We're nearly there. (laughs) So I am 50% dumber because you've been breathing so much. (laughs)
- JNJames Nestor
I start to, uh, and I recom- highly recommend nobody get one of these.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Why?
- JNJames Nestor
Because you go crazy.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Really?
- JNJames Nestor
Wherever you are. On an airplane, I've, uh, seen 2700-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Really?
- JNJames Nestor
... parts per million. And you wonder why you feel like crap after a long flight. And sometimes it goes up and then it comes down, 'cause they put in more oxygen, but usually when the plane is warming up, it's 25, 2600, which is why a lot of people just immediately go to sleep, you know. I think maybe they're doing it on purpose to mellow everyone out. But if you think about cognitive function, I mean, this is a 50% decrease-
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's-
- JNJames Nestor
... in test results is insane. And to think you have kids in these schools taking tests to go into college and all of the air is recycled, I mean, it's just... When I mentioned at the beginning of our chat here that the modern world is conspiring (laughs) to make us unhealthy, I think this is an example. And from what I've seen, very few people are paying any attention to this, and it's real. You're reading the scientific studies over there. This isn't stuff that I'm feeding to you.
- SBSteven Bartlett
This, it almost sounds like I'm smoking. It sounds like I'm inhaling... You know, 'cause we talk about s- people have got to smoke outside to keep us healthy.
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So we changed the laws in this country so you can't smoke indoors.
- JNJames Nestor
Mm-hmm. Well, at least smoking is fun and it gives you a buzz, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- JNJames Nestor
CO2 is, you can't smell it. It's really hard to sense it. It's invisible. And yet, it's always there. Any outside environment, you don't have to worry about it. But indoor environments, especially in the buildings we've created now that don't have windows, I can't tell you how many hotels, sometimes really nice hotels, I go to open the windows, my God, they've glued the windows shut, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
Episode duration: 1:58:20
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