So as I’m hitting the gym more and more, I’m noticing that when I’m doing cardio exercises, I’m still sticking to the advice my high school gym teachers always gave us when we’d be running – “Breath in through the nose, and out through the mouth.” IIRC, they said it would keep our heart rate at a reasonable level. Is there any merit to this? Why? Would I be better off breathing another way?
I haven’t noticed that my heart rate seems to be lower when doing this, but I don’t know if it’s just a placebo effect or if I’m just getting healthier so my heart rate stays down longer when I exercise.
Yeah I remember being told this when I was young, esp. when I was on my knees with all the world going white and me thinking that my eyes were gonna pop outta my head.
So a little googling brought this up to show why we should breath through our noses…
Maybe when you breath out all you are doing is expelling CO2 whilst using yout nose to breath in your body is collecting information that the mouth isn’t able to manage?
Thanks – that all seems to make sense. I wonder why the focus on the “out through the mouth” part from phys. ed. teachers, though… I’ll try using only my noise at the gym (to breathe, not to bench press!) and see if I notice any differences between that and nose-in, mouth-out.
*Yes, when possible. When we breathe through our nose, the hairs that line our nostrils filter out particles of dust and dirt that can be injurious to our lungs. If too many particles accumulate on the membranes of the nose, we automatically secret mucus to trap them or sneeze to expel them. The mucous membranes of our septum, which divides the nose into two cavities, further prepare the air for our lungs by warming and humidifying it.
There is, however, another very important reason for breathing through the nose. This has to do with maintaining the correct balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in our blood. When we breathe through our mouth we usually inhale and exhale air quickly in large volumes. This often leads to a kind of hyperventilation
(breathing excessively fast for the actual conditions in which we find ourselves).*
I think all of this can be classified under “Urban Legend, Eastern Division.”
Unless you can provide reputable evidence (from a juried publication) to the contrary, I’m guessing nose hairs have minimal filtering effect, especially for the few-micron-level allergens you’re talking about. Heck, a standard spun-fiberglass HVAC filter is far more efficient than a nostril full of hairs, yet these filters are notoriously poor performers. Besides, just how bushy are your nose hairs?
The part about warming air through the nose strikes me as a non-sequitor for most people, in most climates, during most seasons. There are thousands of Americans who run in freezing weather–breathing through their mouths all the while–and I can’t imagine this temperature differential is important whatsoever, unless one starts talking about sub-zero extremes.
The second part–about the correct oxygen/CO2 levels–sounds bogus as hell, like something from a New Age website. Again, I can’t believe that breathing through one’s mouth leads to anything remotely resembling hyperventilating. Many empirically-tested (lab-tested) relaxation techniques involve breathing through one’s mouth.
I know that my high school gym teacher wouldn’t know a thing about breathing or heart rates. What would be a ‘reasonable’ level?
Here’s the thing - at some level of exertion, you won’t be able to get enough air breathing through your nose. At that point, you’ll have to breathe through the mouth if you want to continue. There is nothing wrong with this.
If you start monitoring your heart rate, as your fitness improves you’ll find that your heart rate will go down for the same level of effort. If you want to continue to improve, you’ll need to increase the level of effort. I think it was Greg LeMond that said “It never gets easier, you just go faster”.
If you ever notice your breathing, you see that you breathe out a lot faster than you breathe in, especially after strenuous exercise. You have a far larger passageway to your mouth so its a lot less stressful on your lungs to compress back.
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