The Breathing Expert: Mouth Breathing Linked To ADHD, Diabetes & Child Sickness!
James Nestor (guest), Steven Bartlett (host), Narrator, Narrator, Narrator, Narrator
In this episode of The Diary of a CEO, featuring James Nestor and Steven Bartlett, The Breathing Expert: Mouth Breathing Linked To ADHD, Diabetes & Child Sickness! explores how Modern Breathing Habits Quietly Destroy Health, Sleep, And Minds James Nestor explains that most modern humans breathe dysfunctionally, and that this under‑appreciated habit underpins a huge range of illnesses from diabetes and asthma to anxiety, ADHD and chronic fatigue.
How Modern Breathing Habits Quietly Destroy Health, Sleep, And Minds
James Nestor explains that most modern humans breathe dysfunctionally, and that this under‑appreciated habit underpins a huge range of illnesses from diabetes and asthma to anxiety, ADHD and chronic fatigue.
He describes how industrialized food, poor posture, mouth breathing, indoor air quality, and chronic stress have deformed our faces, shrunk our airways, and broken the ‘automatic’ breathing patterns evolution prepared us for.
Through his own experiments, clinical research, and practical demonstrations, he shows how simple, free changes—especially nasal, slower, diaphragm-led breathing and better sleep breathing—can radically improve health, cognition, and emotional stability.
Nestor argues that breathing should be treated as a core pillar of health, on par with diet, exercise and sleep, and that parents, doctors and educators are missing a huge lever by ignoring how children and adults actually breathe.
Key Takeaways
Prioritize nasal breathing—especially during sleep and exercise.
Breathing through the nose filters, warms and humidifies air, recaptures moisture, and boosts nitric oxide production up to sixfold, improving circulation and immune defense. ...
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Treat noisy or mouth breathing in children as a medical red flag, not a quirk.
If a child habitually breathes through an open mouth, snores, or if you can audibly hear them breathing at night, Nestor argues this is ‘cause for alarm’. ...
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Rebuild functional breathing mechanics via posture and diaphragm training.
Most people use only ~5–10% of their diaphragm because they sit slumped and breathe shallowly into the upper chest. ...
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Use simple breathing ratios to regulate stress and nervous system state.
Acute stress (email ‘apnea’, airport queues, arguments) pushes people into sympathetic over-breathing or breath-holding. ...
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Monitor and build CO₂ tolerance instead of chronically over-breathing.
Chronic anxiety, panic, and ‘office stress breathing’ are strongly associated with low CO₂ levels from constant shallow, rapid breathing and frequent breath-holds. ...
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Defend and develop airway structure early: chewing, breastfeeding, and food texture matter.
Industrialized, soft, low-chew diets and early weaning onto purées have radically weakened jaw muscles and altered facial growth, shrinking mouths and airways. ...
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Recognize indoor CO₂ and air quality as hidden performance killers.
Using a CO₂ meter, Nestor routinely finds indoor levels of 1,000–2,700 ppm in offices, planes, hotels and classrooms—far above outdoor ~420 ppm. ...
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Notable Quotes
“You can eat all the right foods, sleep eight hours a night, exercise all you want—if you are not breathing right, you will always be sick.”
— James Nestor
“What has changed is this modern environment is conspiring to make us sick.”
— James Nestor
“Some researchers said, ‘There is no such thing as ADHD. What that is, is sleep-disordered breathing.’”
— James Nestor
“The greatest indicator of lifespan was lung size and lung health.”
— James Nestor
“Look at a healthy infant sleeping. You can’t tell they’re breathing. That’s what healthy breathing is—it should not be perceptible.”
— James Nestor
Questions Answered in This Episode
For parents who suspect their child has sleep-disordered breathing but whose pediatrician dismisses it, what specific data, videos, or measurements would you recommend they bring to force a more thorough airway and sleep evaluation?
James Nestor explains that most modern humans breathe dysfunctionally, and that this under‑appreciated habit underpins a huge range of illnesses from diabetes and asthma to anxiety, ADHD and chronic fatigue.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
In adults already diagnosed with ADHD and on medication, how would you design a 90‑day breathing and sleep protocol to test whether their symptoms are significantly breathing-related—and what objective metrics (beyond ‘feeling better’) should they track?
He describes how industrialized food, poor posture, mouth breathing, indoor air quality, and chronic stress have deformed our faces, shrunk our airways, and broken the ‘automatic’ breathing patterns evolution prepared us for.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
You argue that industrialized soft foods deformed our faces and airways within a generation; what would a realistic ‘re-chewing’ program for today’s toddlers and school kids look like without causing choking risks or family rebellion?
Through his own experiments, clinical research, and practical demonstrations, he shows how simple, free changes—especially nasal, slower, diaphragm-led breathing and better sleep breathing—can radically improve health, cognition, and emotional stability.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Given how dramatically indoor CO₂ impairs cognition, what practical ventilation or monitoring standards would you like to see mandated in offices, schools, and airplanes—and how should people advocate for these changes with employers or building managers right now?
Nestor argues that breathing should be treated as a core pillar of health, on par with diet, exercise and sleep, and that parents, doctors and educators are missing a huge lever by ignoring how children and adults actually breathe.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Many people find intense breathwork sessions (like holotropic breathing) emotionally overwhelming or destabilizing; what screening criteria and safety guidelines would you impose so that powerful breathwork is therapeutic rather than traumatic, especially for those with a history of mental health issues?
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Transcript Preview
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)
James Nestor, international bestseller on breathing.
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.
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.
Really?
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)
Carbon dioxide is seen as this poison. Why?
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.
It's going up.
And if we were to continue working in here for the next few hours, you will... (device beeping)
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. 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?
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.
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