5 Benefits of Mouth Breathing
In this post on the benefits of mouth breathing:
- the advantages and benefits of mouth breathing.
- the disadvantages of habitual mouth breathing.
- the benefits of nose breathing.
- how to take advantage or the benefits of mouth breathing.
Mouth breathing gets a bad rap lately! And I’ve been big critic. Just to be fair, I want to point out the advantages it can offer in certain situations.
Benefits Mouth Breathing No. 1: Moves More Air
It’s really just physics. The mouth is a bigger opening and you can move more air in and out of your lungs if you mouth breathe. At some level of exercise intensity most people will convert to mouth breathing, even if they are trying to breathe only through the nose.
The reason for this is to get rid of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is the breakdown product of energy metabolism. And the higher the exercise intensity, the more carbon dioxide builds up in your blood.
Carbon dioxide is also the main stimulation for the respiratory centers in your brain. It’s actually the build up of carbon dioxide that stimulates the urge to breathe more, not the reduction in oxygen.
Benefits of Mouth Breathing No. 2: Eliminates More Carbon Dioxide
The signal to take bigger breaths through your mouth comes from elevated carbon dioxide levels. Excess carbon dioxide, not lack of oxygen is the major stimulus for the respiratory center in your brain to increase frequency and volume of breath.
During intense exercise, carbon dioxide and lactic acid are produced at a higher rate than resting or lower intensity exercise. Both of these make the blood more acidic. Your body maintains blood acidity (pH) in a narrow range for optimal functioning.
An effective and efficient way for your body to bring the pH back up is to breathe more air and allow more carbon dioxide to escape during exhalation.
Benefits of Mouth Breathing No. 3: Gets The Body Ready For Action
Mouth breathing triggers the fight or flight response, which helps your body meet the demands of intense exercise. The heart rate increases and the body becomes more “ready for action”.
Benefits of Mouth Breathing No. 4: Helps You Run Faster
If you’ve tried to run breathing only through your nose, you may have noticed that it will limit your top speed. The nasal openings are simply too small for many people to move enough air to get rid of the excess carbon dioxide created inside your body during intense exercise.
Benefits of Mouth Breathing No. 5: Makes Exercise Feel Easier
Increased levels of carbon dioxide in the blood increase your perceived exertion at any given level of intensity or running speed. Mouth breathing lets you get rid of more carbon dioxide, thus making intense exercise feel easier.
The Downside of Mouth Breathing
Because mouth breathing increases breathing volume, it reduces carbon dioxide in the blood. When carbon dioxide decreases, oxygen transfer into the muscles is hindered. (Bohr Effect)
Less oxygen transfer into the muscles means performance goes down.
When mouth breathing is habitual, the carbon dioxide level in the blood is constantly lower. This reduces the carbon dioxide tolerance in the respiratory centers of the brain, making them more sensitive to increases in carbon dioxide.
This sensitivity to carbon dioxide causes a constant signal from the respiratory centers to breathe more, which facilitates more mouth breathing and causes the stress response.
The same stress response which is beneficial from number 3 above is downright harmful if your body maintains it too often during rest. (Reference)
The Appropriate Use of Mouth Breathing
So when is the right time to use mouth breathing?
Very intense exercise. Think of a sprint of 400 or 800 meters or a mile. This is usually an intensity where your breathing rate rises to a level where you can’t keep up without using your mouth.
Also, a Crossfit WOD or other High Intensity Interval Training such as the Tabata protocol is a good time to implement mouth breathing. I find the breathing method used by kettlebell sport athletes beneficial for this purpose. Emphasize the exhalation and take several breathes per repetition.
I have also had good performance benefits applying the kettlebell sport breathing technique to exercises such as burpees, kipping pullups, air squats, and rowing.
When to Use Nose Breathing
At any other time besides very intense exercise, it’s usually better to breathe through your nose. At sub-maximal running intensities, do your best to nose breathe. The intensity and speed that you can hold while nose breathing will depend on your carbon dioxide tolerance.
There is simple test for your carbon dioxide tolerance that I teach in this post on how to test your breathing. If you test yourself, you will be able to monitor progress.
As your breathing shifts more and more to the nose, your carbon dioxide tolerance will increase. You will be able to sustain higher speed running while nose breathing, which will increase your efficiency and feeling of ease at higher running speeds.
Also, if you limit yourself to nose breathing while doing higher intensity workouts, you will increase your carbon dioxide tolerance, although your immediate performance may suffer. In the long term it will pay off for you.
In this blog, I also teach several methods to increase your carbon dioxide tolerance for better exercise performance, along with methods to simulate altitude training without fancy, expensive equipment.
During sleep, it’s best to breathe through your nose. Using a soft paper tape keep your lips closed while sleeping can work wonders to keep you nose breathing while you sleep. This will tend to improve your sleep quality as well.
