Nose-Breathing Bestows Health. Mouth-Breathing Leads to Disease.

In 1830, George Catlin, an adventurous artist and researcher, left his boring job as a portrait painter for Philadelphia’s high society and headed west to the Great Plains to study and paint Native American people. He went by boat up the Missouri River, and for six years he lived with and got to know various tribes, including the Lakota Sioux, Pawnee, Cheyenne, and Blackfoot.

George Catlin (American, 1796–1872), Ball Players, 1844.

He spent the longest time with the Mandan people in what is now western North Dakota. This was a mysterious tribe of strikingly handsome people who stood tall and sinewy with bright eyes, beautiful skin, strong jaws, and flawless teeth. Catlin discovered that the Mandan consumed mostly buffalo, deer, wild plants, nuts, and water. He wrote that few of the Mandan men were less than six feet tall, and they had broad shoulders with lean muscular bodies. The women were nearly as tall and just as striking.

He described their teeth as perfectly straight and as regular as the white keys on a piano. Catlin also noted that none of them seemed sickly or had chronic deformities.

The Mandan attributed their good health to what they referred to as “the great secret of life.” That secret was breathing exclusively through the nose. These Native Americans believed that air breathed through the mouth sapped the body’s strength, deformed the face, and led to stress and disease. In contrast, breath inhaled through the nose kept the body strong, the face beautiful, and the teeth straight and healthy, and prevented all sorts of disease.

Mandan mothers made sure their infant’s mouth was closed and that they always breathed through their nose.

James Nestor, in his brilliant book Breath, writes how for millennia this habit of nose-breathing was instilled into the Mandan children as they grew up. George Catlin took this nasal breathing advice to heart and lived to age 76, about twice as long as the typical life expectancy at the time. He credited his longevity to the Mandan secret of life—always breathe through the nose. Modern science backs up much of this ancient cultural wisdom from the Mandan tribe.

Breathing through the nose confers health and beauty. Breathing through the mouth leads to deformity and disease. It’s simple and powerful advice, and worth taking the time and effort to keep your mouth shut while breathing, as much as possible.

Mouth-breathing contributes to periodontal disease, narrowing of the palate, and crowding of the teeth, even in adults. Breathing through the mouth also predisposes to bad breath and is the #1 cause of cavities in the modern world—more nefarious even than sugar or neglectful dental hygiene. Breathing through your mouth activates the fight or flight stress branch of the autonomic nervous system. Chronic mouth-breathing also contributes to snoring and sleep apnea. Many experts recommend that people who snore should tape their mouths shut when going to bed, to force them to breathe through their nose at night.

The benefits of nose-breathing compared to mouth-breathing are profound. When you breathe through your nose the nasal mucosa and sinuses release large amounts of nitric oxide into the blood vessels of these tissues. Nitric oxide relaxes blood vessels, improves blood flow and oxygenation of tissues and organs.

Taking a deep breath through your nose immediately lowers your blood pressure and pulse, and augments the vagal tone, which is the rest and relax branch of the autonomic nervous system. Immunity, weight, mood, circulation throughout the brain and body, and sexual function are heavily influenced by the amount of nitric oxide the blood vessels are producing. Breathing deeply through your nose is perhaps the best way you can consciously boost your body’s nitric oxide levels.

The other important point is that the more you breathe through your nose, the more your nasal passages open up, allowing for easier breathing. On the other hand, when you breathe through your mouth, the nasal passages tend to narrow down, making it harder or maybe even impossible to breathe comfortably through your nose. Breathing through your nose helps to humidify the air and filter out dust and allergens, preventing them from reaching the lungs.

Throughout the day, I remind myself to shut my mouth and breathe through my nose. I find that it takes a surprising amount of focused effort to do this exclusively. But as with all habits, the more you breathe through your nose, the easier and more automatic it becomes, and eventually will be your default pattern without having to think about it.