How to feel alive in an exhausting world

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0:00This message comes from Great Wolf Lodge. There's adventure for the whole family, including an indoor water park that's always 84 degrees, attractions, spacious suites, and more. You're just a short drive away from an unforgettable family getaway. Learn more at greatwolf.com. This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks. Our job now is to dream big. Delivered at TED conferences. To bring about the future we want to see.

0:30Around the world. To understand who we are. From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you. You just don't know what you're going to find. Challenge you. We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy? And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading. From TED and NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi.

The Age of Exhaustion

0:58Today on the show, the age of exhaustion. What's making us so tired and how we can get some of our energy back.

1:09Have you ever closed your laptop at the end of a long day and felt like all you could manage next was to crawl over to the couch to look at your phone or watch some TV or both? There was a day when this happened to me and I got so annoyed. Why didn't I want to spring up from my chair at the end of the day? I hadn't moved for hours. Where did my energy go? Obviously, a lot has happened over the past six years,

1:42which is when I first started hosting this show. A pandemic, of course. Political turmoil at home and abroad that has put us all on edge. And then there's that AI future that we seem to be careening towards. That's a lot to keep up with. No wonder the average U.S. adult spends over 12 hours a day interacting with media. All that time spent looking at screens, well, we've heard about the effect on our mental health. But what about our physical health?

2:13According to researchers at Johns Hopkins, every day the average 19-year-old moves about as much as the average 60-year-old. Over the past 20 years, rates of type 2 diabetes in young people have doubled. Three out of four American adults have at least one chronic disease, many of which are preventable. Modern life is clearly doing a number on us.

Antidotes for Exhaustion

2:38And so today on the show, antidotes for our age of exhaustion. How our anatomy is responding to a pace of change that feels relentless. New research into how the mind and body communicate on a cellular level. And what we can do to feel alive again. For me, as much as I felt frustrated with all the typing, swiping, and sitting I have to do, going off the grid is not an option. And so I wanted to understand why I felt so bad

3:09and how I could feel better without having to move to Walden Pond. All this led to NPR's Body Electric Project and a study in 2023 that you may have been part of. And a few months ago, I shared the story from the TED stage. So how can we stay connected without slowly destroying our health? That was the question running through my mind when I came across this guy.

Physiologist Keith Diaz

3:38Keith Diaz is a physiologist at Columbia University Medical Center. And he has spent his entire career trying to figure out how little can we get away with moving so that sitting doesn't kill us, basically. And in 2022, he published a small study that gives us a great idea. He found that just five minutes of gentle movement every 30 minutes had dramatic effects. It slashed blood sugar and blood pressure. In another study, he found that inactive people who traded 30 minutes of sitting

4:09for 30 minutes of movement every day could lower their risk of a premature death by 18%. And so maybe you're like, yeah, I worked out this morning, so I'm good. Or maybe you're like, phew, I'm so glad I got that standing desk. I am so sorry, but no.

4:31If you sit or stand for the majority of your waking hours, your health is in jeopardy, too. Don't stop working out, Keith told me. But he said, what you have to do is break up these long stretches of sedentary screen time. I decided I would join the study. So one day, I went to his lab, and I sat and worked on my laptop for eight hours straight. The next day, I took those movement breaks every half hour or so. They checked all my vital signs.

5:03And the results were actually quite extraordinary. My glucose was cut nearly in half. My blood pressure was down by five points. And my mood was so much better. The science was clear. But like, what did it matter if no one could actually do these movement breaks? Like, it was easy in the lab. Somebody tapped me on the shoulder and led me over to the treadmill. So we decided to ask people out in the world, out in real life, to see if they could do it.

The Body Electric Study

5:32We, our teams at NPR and Columbia, combined forces to create a podcast and a global clinical trial called the Body Electric Study. And over 20,000 people signed up. We had to cap it at 20,000 people. And they could choose a movement dose. So they could move five minutes every half hour, five minutes every hour, or every two hours. They could dance around the house. They could pace on calls. They could walk the dog. They could take out the trash. It didn't matter. They just had to break it up, break up those long periods of sitting.

6:05And you guys, I was so excited. I was like, we are going to launch a movement for movement. Yeah, I've got away with words. Those first few days of the Body Electric Study were tough. If you participated, maybe you remember how much intention and rebellion it takes to move more in a world built around screens and chairs. But people started figuring out how to integrate movement breaks into their lives.

6:36And when they did, they started having breakthroughs. My energy went way up. So when you get home from work, you don't feel like cooking dinner. You don't feel like doing anything. I didn't really get any of that while I was doing the study. I feel so much better, have more energy, can focus better, and I'm happier. I felt as if I could go for longer, and I really felt like the cloud in my brain kind of dissipated. That was Jordan Smith, Roger Eastman, and Dana Lopez-Maile.

7:11People told us they felt less pain, they were less tired, they could focus, and felt more positive. Surprisingly, taking breaks did not hurt their productivity. People said they got back to their desks and were able to concentrate better. But why? What was going on in their bodies? Keith explained to me some of the reasons why these gentle breaks can have such an outsized impact. So when we sit, our arteries get bent at our hips and our knees, kind of like a kinked vacuum hose.

7:42Blood starts pooling in our legs, and our muscles stop contracting. But leg muscles need to move, be stimulated in order to clear out fat and sugar and reduce blood pressure. If they don't, over months and over years, that's when those chronic conditions can start to creep in. And that is where screens come into the picture. So screens can mess with something called interoception. Interoception is the body's way of telling you what it needs. It needs a snack. It needs to go to the bathroom.

8:13It needs to move. The more we focus on screens, the less we listen to the signals that our body is sending us. Your body could be begging for a break, but what do you do? You keep scrolling past the anxiety, scrolling past the exhaustion. That eventually can lead to burnout, yes, and again, those chronic conditions. At the end of the clinical trial, we found that of the people who started taking movement breaks, 80% managed to stick with them for two solid weeks.

8:46To be sure, this was a self-reported study with lots of very motivated public radio listeners. But still, the data showed that the more often people took breaks, the better they felt. People who went outside got an extra boost. Some people lost a few stubborn pounds. And most people actually liked taking the breaks. So how did they do it? That's what I wanted to find out next. While Keith Diaz wrote up the research for Scientific Publication, which is now under peer review,

9:17I've spent the last few years combing through the surveys and stories and data that all the participants shared.

Mitochondrial Psychobiology

9:24I wanted to understand why some people dropped out almost immediately, but others stuck with movement breaks and thrived. And one of the many things I found was that different life stages required different tactics. Retired people, for example, they often moved more during the day, but they needed to take breaks around the house to disrupt long evenings usually spent sitting at screens. Information workers, those who sat at a desk all day long, were typically interrupted by annoying messages and pings from their colleagues.

9:57But when they scheduled purposeful interruptions and added five minutes of movement, they reported that the quality of their work improved. And they liked their jobs more. So, how can you start making a change in feeling better? Well, first, think about your most sedentary stretches of time. And then make yourself a mantra. So, like, if you are a student, you could say, I'll take an extra lap around the quad before class instead of checking TikTok so I get to class with more oxygen in my brain and I can actually focus.

10:32Or if you work from home, you could decide that on long Zoom calls, I will march in place in order to manage my glucose and avoid the post-meeting crash. If you're a parent, you could say, I will take a lap around the soccer field once so that I have enough energy to get through the dinnertime chaos. You can have a dance party while you microwave your leftovers. You can walk the concourse instead of sitting and waiting for your flight. A mix of all these habits will keep your muscles firing and your mood steadier.

11:04My favorite story came from a 43-year-old woman named Dana who works in HR. So, Dana was a type 2 diabetic with all kinds of health issues. Her doctor told her she needed to take a long, brisk walk every morning. And she was doing this, but her numbers just were not changing. So, with her doctor's permission, she decided to join the study. She started fitting in movement breaks between all of her meetings. And within a couple of weeks, she told me her blood pressure dropped by 40 points. Her cholesterol went down, and her doctor told her she could start tapering her insulin.

11:38She's actually off all of her meds today. I know. Yay, Dana. We love you, Dana.

11:45So, we know that too much time online is not great for our mental health, but it's not just in our heads. It's in our bodies. We need movement to be as much a part of our lives as screens are. We need our schools, our neighborhoods, our workplaces to give us time and space just to move. You can help push this reset forward. Take movement breaks. And when people look at you like you're weird, just tell them why you're doing it.

12:15Because you just want to feel a little better. Get them to put down their phone and join you. Start soon. Start small. Should we start now? Yeah! Can we have some music? You could do... You could do the march. You could do the shuffle. Put our hands in the air if you can't get up. Feel it. You're alive. You're alive. I'm Manoush Zomorodi, the host of NPR's TED Radio Hour and the author of Body Electric,

12:49the hidden health costs of the digital age and new science to reclaim your well-being. You can see my TED Talk at TED.com. And if you participated in the Body Electric study, thank you so, so much. When we come back, new research into metabolism and how your body gives you energy on a cellular level. On the show today, antidotes for our age of exhaustion. You're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

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14:51It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. Today on the show, the age of exhaustion. What's making us so tired? And how can we get our energy back? There are some people who just seem to be up for anything. They are always on the go. There are certainly people who look and feel and behave as if they have more energy than others. That's a fact. This is Martin Picard.

Martin Picard on Mitochondria

15:23He's a medical scientist who studies human energy on a cellular level. And Martin thinks the answer to why certain people have more energy might be found in... Those beautiful little things that are in our cells, the mitochondria. Yes. Researchers are taking a new look at mitochondria, the tiny organelles that swim around in some of our cells. What we've discovered in the last few years is that different people have very different kinds of mitochondria. And some people's mitochondria seem to be quite a bit better at flowing energy.

15:58If you haven't thought about mitochondria since middle school, here's a quick refresher and some new knowledge about how they work in the body. Every living creature is made of cells. But if it wasn't for the energy flowing through the mitochondria, then we wouldn't be alive. So the difference between a thinking, breathing, conscious person, like you and I that are having this discussion now, and a cadaver, the main difference is the flow of energy. And what mitochondria do is they take energy in one form, which is food,

16:33and then they transform it first into a little electrical charge. So they literally create this little electrical charge, and then they use that electrical charge for all sorts of things, dozens of things that mitochondria do. I remember learning mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cell. Are we right? Yes. The powerhouse analogy was very useful in the 60s, 50s, 1950s, 1960s. 80s. And more recently, my kids were told it was the powerhouse analogy.

17:04I was told that too in school, and I still hear this from new students that come in the lab. That analogy is too simple. A powerhouse is a little machine. It does one thing. Mitochondria are living beings, and they do dozens of things. So mitochondria produce hormones like cortisol and the sex hormones that allow pregnancy and testosterone, and that allows the male characteristics. They regulate ions inside the cell, like calcium.

17:37They are responsible for regulating oxidative stress inside our cells, turning on genes, turning off genes, regulating the epigenome. So mitochondria do a number of things that are critical to cell life. As a medical scientist, my team and I work hard to understand the basis of human health. Martin Picard explains more in his TED Talk. As Peter Sterling says in his book, What is Health? Health is the ability to optimally respond and adapt to challenges.

18:09Why do some people remain healthy for decades, while others get sick often and die early? For the past two or three decades, scientists have approached this question by focusing on genes. It's static stretches of DNA packaged in the cell nucleus. But you see, our genes are like the inert stuff inside our phone. The screen, the computer chip, the charging port, and health is more like the interactive nature of your phone. Like how it vibrates when you press something, or how the screen turns on when a call or text comes in.

18:44Without charge and energy, there's nothing on the screen. Blank. The hardware doesn't allow you to experience or to connect with anything unless it's energized, just like your genome. And in terms of longevity, the best research from over 50 million people shows that genes predict less than 7% of how long we live. Less than 7%. So when it comes to health and longevity, science shows that genes are mostly not in control.

19:17I think medicine has failed to understand health so far because we've essentially focused on the hardware without understanding the role of energy in our health. Okay, so we know now that genes are not as responsible for as much of our health as we used to think. But you've been studying how genetic defects of mitochondria can teach us more about how important they are to our overall biological system. Yes, so for many years now, I've been going to the clinic where I see patients with rare mitochondrial diseases that impairs the ability of their mitochondria to flow energy from food to oxygen.

20:01And more than 90% of them, the thing that bothers them the most is fatigue. They feel like they have no energy. So we know it feels like something when your mitochondria cannot flow energy properly. So then the next question is, well, is this then the driving force behind other people who feel fatigue and tired, like people who have chronic fatigue syndrome or long COVID or any other normal human being who goes through a phase in their life where they're completely depleted and exhausted?

20:34Is this because of mitochondria are impaired? And we don't know the answer to that question, but it's quite possible. But let's say I have like a cold and I'm tired and I don't feel like eating. What is making me tired with that? What's the thinking and how does that relate to mitochondria? Yes. What's going on there? That's a great question. What happens then is not that your mitochondria are broken or dysfunctional or that something's wrong with the energetic circuitry of your body.

21:05What's happening here is what we call energy trade-offs or energy constraint. And when one part of the body is burning more energy than it should, it steals energy away from other parts of the body. So the body makes really rapid decisions about where is energy most essential. So if there's an infection to survive another day, another week, you need to allocate energy towards the immune system. So as a result, because the immune system is burning all this energy, it kind of steals energy away from the mind and from cognition and from everything else in the body.

21:44So that feels terrible and rightfully so because then if you feel terrible, you just want to lie down in bed, conserve energy so that there's as much energy available for the immune system. And it seems like what we feel is not the total amount of energy we have on the body, but it's how well energy is flowing. Yeah, so I mean, I think we hear the mind-body connection and that sounds kind of woo-woo or something, but your research suggests that actually the mitochondria might be the sort of missing link, that the way that the mind and the body are conversing.

22:21Exactly. The mind and the body are not two things that are kind of conversing. There are two expressions of a deeper underlying process. And that deeper underlying process is energy transformation and the flow of energy, really. Fundamentally, the question that I think we need to solve in medicine and biomedical research is how is it that the biology of energy and other aspects of biology, how is that related to the human experience?

22:55How mind and body communicate to shape or long-term health remains one of the biggest mysteries in medicine. And that's not a problem of genes, but one of energy and communication. So what about mitochondria? Do they communicate?

23:15Well, if you look at their behavior inside the cell, you see that they function as a dynamic network. And just like your phone connects wirelessly to other mobile phones, mitochondria produce wireless signals that influence each other. Mitochondria can also often migrate around the cell nucleus. And as they surround your 25,000 genes, mitochondria dictate important information to turn on or turn off specific genes. They can even jump between cells to rescue other cells in trouble.

23:49For example, mitochondria have evolved into a social network. They're collaborative and communicative. And we know that this kind of biological communication is vital because losing that alone causes disease. For example, depression is caused by impaired communication between neurons. Alzheimer's disease involves impaired communication between different parts of the brain. And the ultimate loss of communication between cells causes cancer.

24:21Cancer cells are cells that have lost touch with their mitochondria and therefore start to rely on other energy sources. They effectively revert back to their ancestral bacterial nature before endosymbiosis, to their selfish unicellular state where growth is all that mattered. Because of that, cancer cells become disconnected from the rest of the network, just like a dead phone unable to connect to anything. Without normal mitochondria and communication,

24:54cancer cells end up breaking the social contract with other cells, which threatens the whole organism. So, it's becoming clear that to understand the basis of health, we cannot just study human biology or psychology, because the body and the mind are powered by the same thing and communicate via their mitochondria. Naturally, this led to a new interdisciplinary field of research called mitochondrial psychobiology.

25:25The goal of mitochondrial psychobiology is to map new pathways of communication between the mind and the body, or the mind-mitochondria connection, to better understand human health. So, all the mitochondria, when they're healthy, they are all talking to each other. Is that because they all work the same way? Or are there different kinds of mitochondria? Like, do different parts of the body have different types of mitochondria? Yes, different types of mitochondria in different types of cells and different organs.

25:55So, the mitochondria of the liver are very different than the mitochondria of the kidney, which are different than the mitochondria of the brain, and the heart, and the muscles, the pancreas, and so on. You can think of the human body as kind of a social collective, and there are different organs, different cells that play different roles. See, the brain receives, integrates data and input from all senses, and it coordinates every cell and organ. Just like your phone needs energy in its battery to receive, process, and send data,

26:28the brain needs energy to do this. A lot of energy. So, the cells in your brain are packed with lots of mitochondria. In fact, the brain is only 2% of your body weight, but its mitochondria consume up to 20% of the oxygen and energy of the whole body. It's like a phone with 100 apps running in the background, constantly needing to be charged. Every second, we breathe to bring oxygen into our lungs and blood,

26:58and our heart circulates the blood to carry oxygen to every cell and organ, including your brain. Just how important feeding oxygen to mitochondria is becomes obvious when things go wrong, like when a stroke or a heart attack cuts off oxygen to the brain. Without the constant delivery of oxygen to mitochondria, everything stops. Your inner screen goes blank, and your consciousness ends. Energy doesn't just power all biochemical reactions in the body.

27:30It gives us the ability to think, to feel, to worry, and to create. Energy powers our mind. Do you mind, like, I wonder if you just take me into a brain cell, put me in there with the mitochondria, and explain what exactly it's doing. So, let's imagine we shrink, and we enter the brain. And then there's this amazing density of neurons, different kinds of neurons. And then we see this one neuron, and what you would see as you enter the cell

28:01is these spaghetti, you know, bean-looking-like units, the mitochondria, that are kind of gently and slowly moving around in the cytoplasm, kissing each other, fusing with each other, dividing. And those mitochondria are there receiving inputs, integrating information, and then sending outputs to the cell nucleus that kind of sits there in the middle of the neuron. So, because of this little collective of mitochondria in the cytoplasm, which is what we call the inside of the cell,

28:34the neuron can come to life. And it can express the right genes, and it can receive information, and produce action potential, right? The neurons fire. That costs a lot of energy, and it comes mostly from the mitochondria, transforming energy. So, if you see like a scan of a brain, and they show you where there's activity, that means that the mitochondria are sending out the signals, electricity is being generated, and processing is happening. Yes. What you see is typically the oxygen levels that are changing in the brain,

29:07and the oxygen levels that you see on a scan really reflect the mitochondria consuming, breathing the oxygen of the brain, right? And then transforming energy.

29:20So, mitochondria are really, they're driving our metabolism. Is that fair to say? Exactly. Yeah, so let's talk about how we can, I mean, is that a good health goal to increase your mitochondrial health? There's science, certainly, that says if you have lots of mitochondria, it can flow energy easily. This is associated with better health, physical health, mental health, and with longevity. One way to do that, to make lots of well-functioning mitochondria,

29:53is moving, exercising. Because when you exercise, what happens is you cause energy resistance in the body. If you contract your muscles because you're running or lifting or swimming or biking, you're causing energy resistance in the body. And it feels uncomfortable because you're pushing and blood lactate increase. Then the body will say, next time this happens, I need to be ready. So, I'm going to make more mitochondria. So, that's called mitochondrial biogenesis. So, exercise is something that enhances overall health

30:24because it improves the number of mitochondria in your body. And then if you have more mitochondria, you can flow energy more easily. Fascinating. So, if I am like, I want to feel energized, I want to feel positive, what are some of the things you recommend doing so that we can keep our mitochondria functioning and talking to each other and getting energy into the rest of our cells? Yeah, great question. The first thing is moving, exercise, right? Anything you do that makes you breathe harder,

30:56including running, rowing, swimming, biking, making love, whatever it is that makes you breathe harder, you breathe harder because your mitochondria are using more oxygen. And then if you're driving mitochondrial energy flow, then the body is going to make more mitochondria to be ready the next time this happens. So, moving in, exercise, number one. Number two, not eating too much. When we eat too much, it seems to give mitochondria excess energy

31:28and then that drives energy resistance. And that's not good. If you feel hungry once in a while, what this does is it stimulates mitochondrial biogenesis. You get rid of the old mitochondria that are less efficient and you make more of the new mitochondria that are more efficient. And that's probably why fasting, intermittent fasting or 24 or 48, 72-hour fasting are very healthy in many contexts and why every ancient tradition in the world has a fast,

32:01you know, as part of their tradition or their practice. Unfortunately, the science that we've cultivated in the Western world, biomedicine, is all about, you know, the stuff, the biology outside of us. And the mind is kind of this one thing that we've thrown out the window and that we've left for others to study. I think we need to bridge this. Most of the actionable knowledge, right, the new things that are there to be discovered

32:31that will make a meaningful impact on our health, right, that the discoveries that have the ability to touch human lives lies at the intersection of disciplines and at the intersection of the biological sciences and the science of the mind. That was Martin Picard. He's a mitochondrial psychobiologist and a professor at Columbia University. You can watch his full talk at ted.npr.org.

33:03On the show today, the age of exhaustion and how we can feel better. I'm Manoush Zomorodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. We'll be right back.

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Breath and Breathwork

35:13I'm Manoush Zomorodi. Today on the show, the age of exhaustion and how we can get our energy back. We have talked about how movement and cellular function are crucial to feeling good in our mind and body. And now a look at another basic function that gives us energy. Breath. Without enough oxygen, of course, you're going to get tired pretty quickly. But should we be breathing better? I don't think that most people realize

35:44just how important how we breathe is. Breath and breathwork are hot topics on so-called bro wellness podcasts. I've talked about the video on polyphysic sleeping. How would you guys like to learn a 60-second breathwork technique? I just finished up like a seven-minute guided breathing session. Oh my God, bro. Why am I shaking? Whose idea was this? Yeah, well, writer James Nestor

James Nestor on Breathing

36:07has no time for this. Most of those bros who claim to be at absolute peak health are the worst breathers you can find out there. Really? I'm being serious because a lot of them are completely vain and they do not allow their stomachs to relax. Oh. If you are constantly inhaling and sucking up your gut, you're inhibiting the extension of the diaphragm,

36:37you're inhibiting blood flow, you're inhibiting the ability of the body to pump lymph fluid, you are causing stress because you are clenching your stomach and sending signals up to your brain that you are in a state of stress. So don't look to those bros for healthy breathing. James is a science journalist, but he embarked on trying to better understand what happens when we breathe properly because of personal problems. I was suffering from chronic bronchitis.

37:09I was getting mild bouts of pneumonia every year. I was starting to wheeze when I was working out and I thought I was doing everything right. You know, eating the right foods, exercising, sleeping eight hours a night, all of that. But I just kept getting sick with breathing problems. So it wasn't until a doctor friend suggested I look into my breathing habits, which is something I had never thought about before. And once I adjusted those habits and started understanding

37:40that it's not just that we're breathing, but how we're breathing, it had a huge transformational effect, not only on my respiration, but on other aspects of my health. Yeah. Can you explain like what is poor breathing and what is good breathing? Poor breathing is what you see when you look at around 90% of the population. It includes breathing through the mouth. It includes breathing up into the chest. It includes

38:11unconsciously holding your breath, breathing too much, snoring, sleep apnea, asthma, on and on and on. And what are the consequences of that? How does that impact a person's health? Because I think people think, well, if as long as I'm like breathing, I'm alive, right? Well, on the milder spectrum, the consequences are more asthma, more panic, more anxiety, more stress. On the more severe spectrum, if you continue having very dysfunctional breathing habits throughout your life,

38:42especially at night, that can lead to increased risk of stroke, heart disease, periodontal disease, diabetes. So all of these major chronic diseases that we're contending with have some sort of connection to how we're breathing. You call breathing like this a lost art. When did we lose it? It's hard to trace the exact moment, but you can trace a lot of this to the age of industrialization.

39:13We lost so much 400 years ago, 300 years ago. So we lost our food supply that used to be whole foods and natural and require a bunch of chewing, which allowed us to expand our mouths and tone our airways and breathe better. But we've also lost our ability to have proper posture. And without having proper posture, it is very difficult to take a proper breath. If you are hunched over, you can't extend your belly. You can't take

39:44that soft, slow, deep breath. All your breath gets caught up in your chest. And that is extremely inefficient. You're right. There's no room. I just caught myself. Like, I'm leaned over my laptop and there's nowhere for it to go. The air just has to go up. Whatever happened to stomachs and shoulders back? That's what I used to be told. The old days, yeah. So, if you are ever apprehensive about how you're breathing, look at how a healthy dog breathes, healthy infant breathes,

40:14a cheetah, a horse, a cow, they breathe very deep. Their stomachs expand very gently when they breathe. They breathe very slowly and they breathe in and out of their noses. So, the problem with chest breathing is that the majority of the area of the lungs that absorbs oxygen are those lower lobes. So, if you're just breathing into your chest, you're taking air in that you never use. About 50% of that air

40:45you won't be using. And so, that causes you to breathe more. And the more you breathe, you start sending stress signals to the brain. And if you have dysfunctional breathing habits in the day, absolutely, it's going to affect your ability to focus, to get oxygen efficiently, to regulate your emotions and more. In your book, you write about your participation in a study where you plugged your nose for 10 days straight, breathing only

41:16from your mouth to see what sort of effect it had on your health. Can you share that story, what it was like for you and what you ended up discovering? Yeah, I had been talking with the chief of rhinology research at Stanford and I said, why don't you get a group of 100 people and have them just mouth breathe and we can take a bunch of data and then have the other 100 just nasal breathe and he said, this is a great idea.

41:47I will never do it because of ethical reasons. Yeah, he said, I know the damage that will be done after just a week of mouth breathing and so I finally convinced him. I said, well, what if we did it with two people, me and one other person and for 10 days we were just mouth breathing and for the other 10 days we were just nasal breathing and a lot of my friends gave me a lot of grief because they said, oh, this is like some supersize me stunt, whatever, but we didn't view it this way. I mean, we really didn't

42:17because you've got up to 50% of the population is mouth breathing. They don't realize the damage that's happening to their bodies. So we tried to measure that over 10 days. That was the maximum he would allow and as advertised, it was an absolute disaster for our health, so much more so than we even thought. What did you find? So I do not snore. I do not have sleep apnea. Within a single day of becoming a mouth breather, I was snoring about an hour and a half throughout the night, within three days,

42:48about four to five hours a night, just constantly felt awful the next morning, every single time. The other subject in the study had the same thing. It was very hard for us to focus. our athletic performance went down. We were extremely agitated. Stress levels went through the roof. Blood pressure went through the roof. And when I shared this data with people in the field, they were not surprised at all. They said, of course this is

43:19what's going to happen. Right? We've known this for decades and decades. You just experienced it personally. So that's why mouth breathing is bad. But what's so good about breathing through your nose? What are the benefits? Let me just tell you a little another mouth breathing study that I thought was interesting. A study in Japan got a bunch of rats and they plugged the noses of one group of rats and they left the other rats as

43:49they were as nasal breathers. And they looked at them throughout several weeks and also tested them to see how efficiently they could navigate a maze. Those mouth breathing rats took significantly longer to get through the maze as the nasal breathing rats. And then they looked at their brains and they found that their brain structure had literally changed after around 15 to 16 weeks of mouth breathing. They had significantly

44:20fewer neurons in areas of the brain that are associated with memory, learning ability, brain development, more. So we know it's bad and I don't think you're going to find anyone who studied this who would say otherwise. However, the other side of this nasal breathing is so beneficial for us because it slows down the breath, which calms us down. It allows us to get about 18% more oxygen per breath than equivalent breaths through the mouth.

44:51It filters the gunk and the bacteria and helps sterilize viruses. It allows for better circulation. I mean, I can go on and on and on. So we also know that and there's no controversy around this. These aren't hypotheses. This is documented scientific facts. I have to say that chapter in your book every night I get into bed and I like consciously I'm like, okay, relax your mouth, close it. I even like this is a little TMI, but I stick my fingers up

45:21my nostrils to try to expand them because I don't want to wear one of those bandages, but it does help me. And I find that once I get into that position at night, I am able to most mornings I do wake up with nose breathing. That's a great habit to have. And various people use various different training wheels to get there. You can use those little strips that go on the nose that open up the nostrils allow for about 30% more air. You can use different

45:52flushes and sprays that help open up the nose as well. So everyone's different. So everyone needs a