In my daily life I sometimes find myself breathing air that isn’t very clean. I’m thinking of situations such as walking through clouds of exhaust on the street, waiting for the subway in dank and stale subway air, or walking through clouds of construction dust. Is there any point in me consciously trying to breathe through my nose in those situations?
I know that breathing through my nose will filter out more pollutants than breathing through my mouth. But, at what point would there be a noticeable difference in my physical health? Assuming all else is equal, would the lungs of 90-year-old perma-nasal breather look different from the lungs of a 90-year-old perma-mouth breather?
It’s very hard to change you normal breathing pattern. If you are a heavy exerciser, you may tend to breath through the mouth more. Some people are natural mouth breathers. As a mouth breather, you are more likely to suck in a small bug. That could make you cough like crazy and in a worst case cause it to get in your lungs and cause pneumonia. Admittedly, that’s a long shot.
I see workers cutting concrete with a dry saw and surrounded by a cloud of cement dust while not wearing breathing protection. The nose will filter some of that out as shown by the amount on a handkerchief after blowing the nose. The wetness in the mouth will catch some of the airborne particles.
I think genetics and the nature of the air breathed, such as asbestos or chlorine, are more important longevity factors. My brother smoked four packs of cigarettes from the age of 12 until he died at 80. His lungs were clear. I said CLEAR. Doctors gave him multiple chest X-rays during his last 20 years because they felt their images were deceiving them. He breathed much of his air through his mouth with no filter either.
Although there might have been no real correlation…my personal health from age 0 to 12 and 12 and up was quite different…at age 12 I had surgery to remove “extra” nasal turbinate tissue that I was born with that finally allowed me to breathe through my nose for basically the first time in my life. I was in general a much healthier person afterwards (though I had to think to breathe through my nose for a long while before it became proper 2nd nature).
Another anecdote: I had turbinate / septoplasty at age 29 and for literally the first time in my life was able to breathe through my nose (until then, I was baffled as to why anyone would bother with Afrin and the like). My asthma definitely improved for a number of years.
Whether it’s a dramatic change in the long run, who knows (my asthma has since gotten quite a bit worse). But I did have a short-term improvement, at least.