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b"When we think about improving our health, we typically think about altering our diet, trying to exercise\\xa0more, and taking vitamins and supplements. But my guest today argues that none of that stuff really matters if we haven't improved something\\xa0even more foundational: our breathing.\\n\\nHis name is James Nestor and his latest book is\\xa0Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art. At the beginning of our conversation, James explains why he paid thousands of dollars\\xa0to have his nose plugged up, and what happened to his body when he could only breathe out of his mouth. We unpack the dangers of the common problem of being a habitual mouth breather, including the fact that it can even change the shape of our faces, and why modern humans started breathing through the mouth rather than the nose. James then reveals what happened when he switched his experiment around and breathed only through his nose, and explains why simply switching\\xa0the passageway\\xa0of your breathing from oral to nasal can have such significant health benefits. He also shares his weird trick to switch from mouth to nose breathing at night, which I've tried myself and found effective. We then discuss the importance of getting\\xa0better at exhaling, and why you counterintuitively probably need to be thinking more about getting carbon dioxide into your body rather than oxygen. In the latter part of our conversation, we discuss more advanced breathing techniques, including hypoventilation training, where you double your exhales to inhales\\xa0to\\xa0acclimate yourself to higher levels of CO2, as well as other experimental breathing\\xa0techniques that may allow people to take conscious control of the supposedly involuntary autonomic nervous system in order to boost immunity and heal diseases.\\xa0\\n\\nGet the show notes at aom.is/breath."