James Nestor, it's with great pride that I welcome you to conversations with Connors, thanks for making this happen.
Thanks a lot for having me.
I've been looking forward to this, James. So I want to give you a little backdrop, your book was recommended to me by two people, like within the same week. So it was really interesting. So I'm like, Alright, you know, let me check this book out. And I've got the audio version, which by the way, anyone who is listening to this, I'd encourage that to get that version. But anyway, so I listened to the book. And it was so profound, that I listened to it two more times in a row. It was that powerful. And it made me change a lot of things that I do have changed my sleeping patterns. I'm sleeping on my side, now I tried the tape, I end up getting a mouth guard. And your book is probably now just surpassed the most books that I've referred. So well done, it's an honor to have you here. And I'm really looking forward to getting to know you, as a person, getting them to the hood of the book, and just learning. So welcome to the show.
Well, I hope this isn't terribly disappointing, then after that intro, but I'll do what I can here.
For those that don't happen to know you, do you mind just giving a quick synopsis of kind of who you are your background, and then kind of what prompted breath. Sure.
I'm a science journalist. And I'm the author of both breath and a book called Deep, which came out around six years ago. And I've been writing for magazines and newspapers for 15 years or so. And now just focus solely on writing about longer stories more in depth stories focused on books,
That is great. So there's so many things that were interesting from the book. But is it true that humans take in on average, 30 pounds of air a day?
That's exactly right. So we take in about 30 pounds of air so far more than we take in of liquid or food. And it's so important how we take that air in. So how we process that air, if you're doing something 20 to 25,000 times a day, that's how often we breathe in, breathe out. If you're doing it wrong, it's going to have a downstream effect on your health. That seems so obvious. And yet breathing really isn't looked at even in the medical community as a cause and contributor to so many chronic problems, which is exactly what it is.
So do you think that like or why do you think that is? Why would we know this? This has been going on for 1000s of years, and we can get more into how things have changed little later in the conversation. But why is Western medicine not highlighting this is just a money play?
Well, that's the big question, right? And I asked every single researcher, every single professor, every single pulmonologist or Ryan ologists, I said, The science is so clear on this. So not only do you have thousands of years of ancient knowledge about breathing techniques, but we have at least 70 to 80 years of scientific studies showing how powerful this stuff is showing what happens when you breathe incorrectly, and showing what happens when you breathe correctly. So I got different answers from a lot of different people. But the universal theme amongst all of them was that a lot of people think that since breathing is so simple, since it's so subtle, it won't have this big powerful effect. So we know what happens when we can't breathe when we have lung cancer when we get in a car accident when we get emphysema or COVID. But we're not looking at the more subtle problems of chronic respiratory maladies. So the way that the medical system is set up, which is great in many ways my father in law is a pulmonologist, by the way my brother in law's an ER doc. So I have nothing against Western medicine, it's I wouldn't be around without Western medicine is it's designed to fix serious problems. So you get in a car accident, don't go to a yoga class, like go to the ER and and have someone fix your lungs. But it is not focused on these milder chronic issues. And it's especially not focused on prevention, which is exactly what Eastern medicine has been doing and has been preaching about for thousands of years.
I completely agree. So people are essentially they're taking breathing for granted. Number one, the medicine I guess I just did a design of Western medicine number two is not designed that way. So we really need to implement this. This has to happen and I do think that your book even just in the circles that I'm running in the way that people are talking about it the the eye opening effect it's having on people like myself and other people I think is going to help to get us in the right direction. Have you heard any stories since your book has come out of of whether it's certain type of policy change in a hospital or how other doctors are reconsidering things.
One of the greatest things about it is to be contacted by so many doctors, and so many pulmonologists and so many cardiologists, and some of them are a little angry, because they've said, I've been saying this for 40 years, and no one's listened to me. So it takes an outsider to tell their story. And the credit really goes to the people who have been doing this research tirelessly for decades, and publishing it and top scientific journals. But for some reason, it just doesn't seem to have made it out to the general public, mostly because the language it's so hard to read through. And you know, I'd read thousands of these studies with these awful titles. And, you know, just tell me what the thing, what the things about and academics have a hard time with that. So I view myself as much more of a translator, where I'm translating one form of English into another form of English that people can understand. So about policy change, I do see that shifting, I've been in this world, in the breathing space for five, six years full time now. And I've definitely seen it change Stanford Medical School, just talk with them speaking at Yale. So it just seems that without a financial gain, this stuff is going to take a while to get off the ground, just like proper nutrition, took a long time to get off the ground. We've known for 100 years, that processed food is crap that it makes us sick. But only in the past like 20 years, have we really done anything about it? So I view breathing in that same category?
One of the things that I really enjoyed about your book, is -- Well, there are a couple things, obviously, but you had no angle you came in, you were just bringing the truth. And you did such a good job with your research. I can't even fathom how much again, like you said, 1000s of articles or books that you've read and, and the access to people and the conversations that you had with some of these people. How did you go about identifying the right sources? And then how did you go about kind of being able to have these kinds of conversations.
My job as a journalist, especially as a science journalist, is specifically not to have a bias, it's not to have an angle, I have no benefit of believing one thing, and then just pushing that belief system and ignoring something else. I had never written this deeply about medicine. I never written this deeply about breathing. So it was a very steep learning curve to learning about hemoglobin, or the electron transport chain, or all of this incredibly complex stuff. But what I found that was so confounding is I could have two conversations with two different researchers. And I would ask them the same question. And they would answer that question in completely different ways, and often contradict one another. And I said, How the hell am I ever going to write a book about this stuff? If these people in this field, aren't even agreeing with one another, but my father in law told me, he said, Listen, medicine is an art, it is not a science, what you need to do is to take this very deep dive into the data, and the studies, not people's opinions. And then to come back out and write about that, because no one's done that yet. And that's what I spent several years doing.
What do you think that made your? I don't want to take anything from it, but you really put things out in laymen terms. What was it that like you said that there's been literature going on for years? What was it about the way that you did it, that you think put this thing on fire?
complicated language is easy, it's really easy to use a bunch of jargon. simple language is really hard. Simple does not mean stupid. Simple is conveying something and it's just its kernalized form, you're distilling it so that a scientist can read it and appreciate it, and an eight year old can read it and appreciate it. And that's my job as a journalist. Why do I want to write something convoluted to make myself supposedly look smarter by using all of these really long, crazy words? No, I want to simplify things and convey them in a way that this information becomes accessible. And I think that this was one of the big problems with so much of medical science. Now, it's so hard to read these studies and this was not how it was 100 years ago, scientific studies were very easy to read. And nowadays, I think people are confusing jargon with intelligence. jargon, in my view, whether it's corporate jargon or medical jargon, is just beating around the bush simplify everything. And you'll do a service to yourself and everybody else.
So true. And it's great advice, a friend of mine, he was a Harvard Law, he worked for one of the white shoe are still does actually one of these white shoe law firms. And he told me that his secret to his success is being able to just speak in very layman terms, he goes that's i., I try to make my contracts as simple as possible. And to use the I forgot, I think he wanted six or seventh grader to be able to understand these complicated contracts. And he said, when you can do that, you know, then you shows that you really understand your subject matter that you can break things down in that type of way.
legalese is some of the worst, like lawyers are the worst, but they're doing this on purpose, they are purposely making it hard to understand. Because then if it's hard to understand, there are loopholes all over the place, read any contract, and this is what you see. So that guy, I mean, should be given a gold star because everyone benefits from simplicity, and clarity. And it's getting increasingly hard to find that in the modern world, whether it's politics, or legalese, or medical jargon or corporate talk or whatever.
I'll share that with him. Dave is his name. And I'll be sure to share that with. So you again, you've been in this field for a long time. And I'm sure that you're there are certain sources or outlets that you turn to, are there any in particular that are the highest regarded news outlets that you're reading that you know, have done, the type of research that you're doing.
There are medical journals, but mostly it's the studies themselves, because all of the stories told about this data and this research, start with these studies. So you can't, it's much harder to fudge data, even though it can be fudge, you can choose to look at one number and ignore the other. If you're just looking at raw data, you can then form a much more objective view on whether or not something works. And I think the the problem now is you can take data and even in some studies that are funded by Big Pharma, you can then take those numbers and try to pivot them into one direction or the other. But it's about looking going back to the foundations looking at the people affected the people that weren't affected looking at the interventions. So there is not one particular news source I look at in the news is getting so, so tricky nowadays for a number of reasons. So I really go back, I go back to the researchers who did the work who were there in the labs who shared their data with me. And then I tried this some of this stuff out myself and see what what it does for me. Yeah,
I thought that you're the experiment that you did you really put your money where your mouth was, I mean, not you figuratively did you literally did you even recruited somebody else to do it? No, take me through that, if you don't mind. And if you can give a an overview for those who might not have read the book, why you did that what that study was and the outcome.
So I started working with the chief of rhinology research at Stanford, a guy named Dr. Jayakar Nayak. And over several months, we had several conversations, these very long lunches, and he's a big nose guy, right? He's so frustrated that no one is looking at the nose and all the wonders of the nose and how it can defend the body against viruses and how it changes our hormones and how it changes our blood pressure. And that's all known, by the way, there's so many studies on that. And there's also so many studies looking at how injurious mouth breathing is to the body, how it affects our neuro chemistry, how it affects our respiratory health, how it can elicit anxiety, and asthma, and on and on and on. And again, not a lot of controversy. Science is very clear, but no one knew how quickly the damage of mouth breathing came on. How much mouth breathing would you have to do to suffer some sort of neurological problems or metabolic problems? or high blood pressure? Nobody knew. And I asked him, I said, well, you're at Stanford, why don't you study this? And he loved the idea. But he said that doing so would be unethical because he knew how injurious mouth breathing was the body. I said, Well, how about I'm going to remove that layer. And what if I did an experiment? And we use your lab and we use Stanford and I'll get one other person. He said, this sounds great. But I can't pay for it, I have no money allocated sounds like oh my god. So we ended up having to pony up so much money to do this study. And the study was 10 days of mouth breathing. So silicone up our noses, just breathing through our mouths, and then 10 days of nasal breathing, we would compare datasets, and see how it affected our bodies. And I know that this seems like some supersize me heinous stunt. But if you consider that 25, to 50% of the population habitually breeze through its mouth, it really isn't a crazy thing. We were just lowly ourselves into a position that so many people know the difference was, we were collecting data to see exactly what would happen.
And since reading the book, I'm Cognizant, every time I'm talking to people, that's what I focus on. I notice if they and I'm just thinking to myself, like process, God, how much better would their running how much faster or maybe longer would they be able to run if they were breathing through their nose or with my daughter, she's an excellent singer, she goes to school for singing. And I'm trying to get her to read your book, again, to hear about the importance of breath and how much what more she'll get out of that, do you mind expanding on a couple of those things, because I know that came up as well.
Sure, well, of course, when you're singing, singing and talking, it's all on the exhale. So it's very hard to sing on the inhale basically impossible. And so many people are focusing on the inhale of just gonna get more and more air in need oxygen, they're just packing air on top of air in their lungs. But that's not how the body wants to operate. what it wants to do is to take fluid breaths in deep breaths. And in order to do that, you have to get all that stale air out. So the exhale is what we should really be looking at breathing in is the easy part. It's exhaling that so many of us are so bad at doing. And by just exhaling, so our lungs don't inflate by themselves. There's this big skeleton, this amazing muscle that sits underneath the lungs called the diaphragm. And when we breathe in the diaphragm lowers, when we breathe out, the diaphragm lifts up. So that pumping movement actually helps with circulation in the body. Some researchers say that the heart is a secondary pump, the first pump is the diaphragm, it also does something else. So not only is this important to get air in and out of us, but the diaphragm helps massage our organs, and leach out and pump limp fluid, all the waste fluid. So if you're not engaging the diaphragm, you are allowing your body to be bathing in these toxins, you're allowing your body to be overworked every time you breathe.
Beyond powerful, I really hope everybody listened to that. I mean, even just the bathing in the toxins, just the visualization of that, to me, is enough to make me go out and properly start practicing. So again, since reading the book, I've been a conscious breather. I've got a lot to go. But like when I'm doing when I'm having a really hard time working out, breathing through my nose. I mean, I've been for years, I've been a mouth breather. And why is it harder to breathe through my nose? And then there's the follow up question to that is why does it then get easier once you get used to that, because one of the people that referred the book to me, he's a couple months ahead of me. So he told me that's kind of normal that he had a hard time as well. But once he got used to it, it's much easier and better.
So the nose filters air and humidifies air, it's moistens and it pressurizes it conditioned. It does all of these incredible things. It helps defend ourselves against viruses and pathogens and bacteria. So breathing through the nose is always optimum, it also allows us to upload 20% more oxygen than equivalent breaths through the mouth. And if you think that's not gonna make a difference throughout the day, you're crazy. So when we breathe in and out very quickly, we don't allow our lungs enough time to soak up that oxygen and participate in gas exchange. What happens is we just take air in to the top lobes of the lungs and we're just filling up our throats and mouths with air. We're using such a little amount of that air so breathing at a rate of about 20 times a minute, which is what you do when your mouth breathing quite often. You only use 50% of that air, but breathing slower through your nose because the nose slows down air it pressurizes it at a rate of about six times a minute, you get 85% more efficiency. So 35% increase a total of 85% efficiency. So breathing through the nose is, and again, no one is arguing this. People who study this stuff, know it. But it's sucks, especially if you've been chronically mouth breathing for 30 years for 40 years, even for 10 years to make the transition is really hard, which is why people give up and go back to mouth breathing. So what we know about the nose is it is covered in erectile tissue, which can expand the nose can be conditioned. So the more you're breathing through the nose, the more it's going to open up. And especially when you're entering into zone three, zone four, it gets very hard to breathe through the nose at the beginning until you acclimate to it. And it takes some athletes weeks or even months of practice to make the switch. But once you make that switch, the studies, again, are very clear performance, there's a good chance performance goes up, recovery can be cut in half, you will feel better doing what you're doing, you'll be able to work out harder and faster for longer, because you're working out more efficiently.
I mean, I believe in it. And hearing that. I mean, I've already noticed a huge difference. I tried the tape and didn't work for me. I know you said it doesn't work for everybody. But a few people I've referred the book to they've had success with the tape, but I did get the mouthguard. And that's changed, that's completely changed my sleep. I believe in it. So I'm gonna stick through the working out because again, like I said, the person who also has a couple months ahead of me, and he's swearing by it. That's good advice. And I appreciate that. So, as you were telling me about what it's like, so like with Stanford, you reached out to these doctors or any of the people, these experts in the field. Are they receptive to having a conversation right away? Or do you have to get referred by somebody else? Or what's that relationship dynamic like?
Yeah, that's a great question. It takes a while, because what you're asking them for is not only their time, you're asking them to open up to you. And some people have a negative view of journalists. and rightfully so, because a lot of journalists will come in and smear people for you know, and take take a biased approach. But I think it depends on what you've done in the past, what your reputation is, some of these people really thoroughly check you out before they really engage with you. But I've been lucky enough to have been in this in journalism, for a while have written for some, some well regarded magazines, I wrote a book called Deep, which was a deep dive in the science of the human body from the surface to the bottom of the ocean. So with that, it allowed me to open a lot more doors. Once you get in, then it's very important to get referrals. So these people, you can say, Hey, I'm working with Dr. Jayakar Nyak at Stanford, I'm working with Amit Anand at Harvard. And so you can kind of throw that around a bit. And that that can tend to open things up. But you know, it takes a lot of trust at the beginning. And they want to know that you're someone they can trust. And that's something that I hold very, in very high value. And it's great that every single one of these people that I talked with are now essentially my friends, I can call them up, we talk regularly, we exchange studies and information and data. And that's really the greatest gift of writing a book is to have that larger community. those connections now,
oh, man, you nailed it. That was like music to my ears. My business is about essentially really teaching people how to build trust, because trust is the holy grail, somebody knows you Yeah, maybe they'll take a call. But if they like you, they'll meet you. And they'll spend some time with you. But if they trust you, that's the holy grail, that's where they're going to share that information. That's where they're gonna put their name behind you and give you social proof with some of their friends. That's where they're gonna make calls on your behalf. So, and I'm glad to hear that they did become your friends, because it showed that you really did build the right kinds of relationships, and you continued the dialogue. And I'm sure that or I guess originally gave to you because they gave you information and their intellectual property. But now you've really essentially given back because you've highlighted a lot of their work. And hopefully good things have come to them as a result of this book. And and I'd love to know if there was anything in particular, that some of the people that helped you with your research, anything positive that came as a result of this book. Well, I
think that I just want to piggyback on what you were saying there. I think when you approach people, you have to approach them very clearly. No jargon. People don't no one likes jargon, you approach them clearly. And honestly, some of these people, I would say, Hey, I read these three studies, I don't understand this, I would love if you could help me understand this better, because it's contradicting so much of what I've learned otherwise, and to go in and be a sponge, and to be open minded, because again, it's easier for me to do because that's my job is to take in all this information, and then construct a story out of that, I was also very clear with them, say, hey, you can we're going to be doing various levels of fact checking on all the science, but you cannot control how I write about you. That is my opinion. Because sometimes people get so invested in the story, they say, I want to see the whole book, I want to see how you describe me, I want to see how you describe my interaction with patients. I say, No, that isn't my journalistic ethics, we can review the science. But I am going to remain objective here. And not to take in any outside views of how I'm telling this story. And a lot of people appreciate that. Does that mean they totally love their? How I portrayed them? In some instances? No. But they're still my friends. And they understood my reason for doing that. So that the second part of your question is so much amazing stuff has come out of this book, not just from me talking to you, and being on the radio and podcasts and all that, but on the research side, so I'm collaborating with two different organizations to get more studies into ADHD, and sleep habits. Because we know that it's not even a correlation. There is a direct link between unhealthy snoring, and sleep apnea in kids and ADHD, and bedwetting, and autoimmune problems, we know this to be true. But there's a dearth of science into it. So I'm helping to organize some of the top researchers, but these philanthropists and hopefully those studies are going to be up and running in a couple of years, or the results will be out within a couple of years. So also looking into sleep taping and what what that is, this sounds crazy, but is to use a teeny piece of tape at night to keep your jaw shut. So you breathe through the nose, I noticed when my mouth breathed, I immediately started snoring, I immediately had sleep apnea when I was nasal breathing, it all went away. I've heard this from hundreds of people now. But there's not a lot of science on it. Because there's not a lot of money to be made on using a free piece of tape and applying that to your lip. So that's a long winded way of saying, yes, this research is going forward and I feel so privileged to be a part of it. And and to connect the dots between these philanthropists and researchers, and other journalists who will be writing about this. From an ADHD standpoint, I
think that there could be some major opportunities. I mean, I have that I don't know if it's because I was a mouth breather, or obviously there's, I'm sure there's some genetics that have something to do with that. But maybe it is just mouth breathing. Who knows. But I know that there are a lot of other people that have children that have this that would love to figure out a way to not have to give them a forgot what they drugs that that gives them the Ritalin.
Yeah, it's incredible to me that you have this population of kids, and it's some crazy percentage now, and it's going up every year where they're treated for all the symptoms, right, but they're not looking at the core issue. So why is a kid wetting his or her bed? Why did they have ADHD? Why are they getting asthma. And if you fix the core issue, which is often tied to breathing, not always but often tied to breathing, specifically dysfunctional breathing at night, then those problems go away. And they all go away at the same time. And I've heard this dozens and dozens of times I've talked to these kids, I've talked to their parents. And yet when a kid goes into his doctor, and says, I have ADHD, what are they given Ritalin, see ya, this will keep you awake. But you know, the rest of the day, what is going on here, people? So that's starting to really blow open in a big way. And it's exciting to see again, top institutions taking real interest in figuring this stuff out.
Yeah, are now that you're seeing the power of this book and the stage the platform that you have your Are there any outcomes that you're hoping for anything specific. And again, I'm just shooting from the hip here, but that's almost like mandatory for when you have your checkup every year when they check your heart and they check your pulse that they make it mandatory to check to see if you're a mouth breather.
Well, I would love that to happen. That's not my job here. I can only do so. So much I can spend several years and tell this story in the clearest, most honest, objective way I can. And I hope I did that with this book, but I can't affect policy, I can't tell doctors what they should or shouldn't be doing. That's really the role of, of administrators and people working at hospitals, I hope that that's changing. I've talked to several of those administrators who are taking a real interest in this now. Because when you go to see your doctor, your they check your blood pressure, and they asked if you have headaches, Are you anxious, but they're not looking at your breathing, they're not looking at your co2 levels. And they really should, because breathing is tied to so many of those things, but I'll do what I can in the background. But um, as far as that systemic change, that really has to happen on a higher level, and my job is to get the word out. And it seems like that's starting to happen a bit. And hopefully with that, we can then push this thing forward. Again, I want to mention something that it's, there's no real money to be made here. With breathing, there's a lot of money to be saved by patients, whether it's asthma or autoimmune problems, but not a lot of money to be made. So just like there wasn't a lot of money to be made by telling people they should go to a farmers market, instead of going to Safeway to buy a bunch of Count chocula for breakfast. But the more information gets out, the more the word gets out, the more irrefutable the science becomes, the more that people will have the power to make their own decisions. And that's really what it's all about.
Well, what kinds of opportunities have come your way, as a result of this book? Meaning like, Who have you met? Have you got to know COVID is hindered travel? But maybe you still travel? I don't know, what kinds of other offers? You know, have you had? I don't know if there's any other topics that people are like, Wow, you've done a great job with the research. I love what you've done. Have you thought about, I don't know, octopuses or whatever it is some random. I thought of your other diving book, it made me think of that. But anyways,
well, it's because the pandemic otherwise, I think I'd be having a lot more fun. I think my life might be a bit more glamorous to be flying around and doing talks instead of sitting in my room and doing zoom calls all day. But I'm so so grateful for it. And we'll be touring once this pandemic sort of moves on by but it's, I'll be honest, it's been a complete trip to be to have Joe Rogan call up and say, Hey, want you on the show, and then to drive down from San Francisco to LA do that show and drive back because you can't stay anywhere in LA. It's a pleasure to know Joe now to be able to text with him to describe different stuff. I'm working on a few Royal Saudi families, I'm talking with them. It's just so so weird. There's there's some other stars and stuff that are into this. But again, that stuff is so ancillary to to the real point of this work. It's and it's in the point of this work is to help people understand that our health is not a foregone conclusion, that our bodies are elastic, that they can shift that we can take power into our bodies and adjust them in different ways and really get some huge benefits. So that's what I'm focused on. all this other stuff is entertaining. Don't get me wrong, and we're trying to put together miniseries about this. All right now that's in the works. But the main message, and the main mission here remains that one to try to show people that they can do so many amazing things, not by going out and buying a bunch of crap, but just by focusing on their own bodies. And understanding what an incredible organism This is.
Some of the things just seem obvious, I can see like with the heart, it's better for your heart to breathe in your lungs and for helping with snoring and allergies and asthma. Like a lot of that just seems I don't want to call it common sense. But it's not a far it's not far fetched. When you talked about the person, that gal that helped all the people with the scoliosis, I forgot that she was in Germany or forgot, do you mind just kind of elaborating on that? Because to me, when I heard that was like, That's amazing, like the power of breath and what it can do, and it can help there as well as, obviously teeth is a big piece is something that you talked about a lot also, which is interesting, but can you expand on the scoliosis?
Sure. So as I just started digging into this subject deeper and deeper, I started getting to the outliers of these people who've used breathing to do things that has been considered medically impossible. You've got Wim Hof, that this guy can sit in an ice bath for almost two hours and not suffer from frostbite or hypothermia. That is medically impossible. But there he is. There's the video of him doing it. They're the readouts of all. The sensors stuck to them. So as I went deeper into it, I started understanding the role of breathing and posture, we have these two huge balloons right in our chest, right? called our lungs. And when we take a big breath in, posture dramatically changes, when we take a big breath out, it changes as well. So breathing affects your posture, but your posture also affects your ability to breathe. So if you're crouched over a chair, in front of a desk, and your stomach's kind of out, you're not going to be able to take a deep breaths. So your posture will be affected by that. And there are so many problems associated lower back pain, headaches, migraines, on and on, we know all that. But as I was, I'm in San Francisco. So I'm very close to some great medical libraries of both Stanford and UCSF. So as I was looking through these, all of these books, all of this literature, I found this woman about 100 years ago, who was had scoliosis, as a teenager, that sideways curvature of the spine, and she was given a brace and given a wheelchair and given a bed and said, Have a good life. But she opted to try to fix herself with her own natural body, she developed something called orthopedic breathing, where she would bend, breathe into one lung, and then bend breathe into the other. So in other words, this was yoga, but she didn't know what yoga was. Because this was 100 years ago, in Germany, they weren't studying this. she breathed her spine straight. And then she went on to teach this to hundreds and hundreds of women that hospitals have given up on these women. And there's pictures of this. There's x rays, no one would believe this stuff. Unless it was in a scientific paper unless there were pictures and which is why I put 500 scientific references at the back of the book is like, I didn't believe this either people, but check the references before you call bs on it. And she went in and allowed these women within a few weeks, they were gaining inches in height, their spines, were starting to straight, straighten, and they were breathing better. Because if your spine is curved, you can't breathe, and you're causing so much stress to your heart and throughout your body. So that was just one of these little pieces of research that just seem to be completely ignored in the medical community. And and since then, I've heard doctors say this, they said, this is extraordinary. Why aren't more people doing this? And that's the question I would throw back. Why aren't you doing this? I can't do anything about this. Luckily, at Johns Hopkins, they, they've been studying this for years. And they use it. The problem is it's really hard. So it takes a lot of time. A lot of effort. You got to log off Facebook for a few hours a day and do this but to me, that seems like a very small sacrifice, straightening your spine and living a healthy life.
Yeah.
You know,
you mentioned Wim Hof. And I'm sure you everybody asks about Wim, but it was really interesting. I was listening to an interview that he did with Lewis Howes I think it was and he talked about he mentioned that his blood people study Wim, I mean, he's everyone thinks he's like this freak of nature. But he's essentially he's not he can teach. He's not the first he didn't come up with this. And there are going to be people passing him that he's just kind of popularized certain I think it's too young to forget the style of breathing that he does. So they tested his blood. They had his blood at Michigan, I think it was and they tested his blood at the Coronavirus, and the Coronavirus essentially just died off his blood was impenetrable, if that's even a word. And I heard that and I believe in that I believe I wholeheartedly believe as a result of this breathing and breathing properly and accessing your sympathetic nervous system that you can make yourself almost like invincible. I'd love to get your perspective on on Wim and I'd love to get your perspective on what I just shared.
I have not heard that. And that is the first thing I'm going to do once once we're off this call. I know that they've done a lot of research looking into Wim and immune function. And I'm not saying that breathing, B to mo or Wim Hof Method or nasal breathing is a panacea that is going to fix all your problems. All you got to do is breathe people now No, but it is a foundation of health and if you're not breathing, right, you're never gonna ever be healthy. I believe that the science has made that clear. But the studies that they've done with Wim, they've shot him up with E coli. And he was able to breathe in a rhythmic pattern to fight off the endotoxin and not to suffer any of the effects of E coli. So then the researchers said, Listen, you are a complete freak of nature. You're The only one on the planet that can do this. And Wim said, Why don't we test it. So he took a group of people, and for four days train them in his method, they brought them to the lab, they shot these guys up with E. coli, they suffered none of the problems. Meanwhile, everyone else said that there had been 16,000 people that had been shot up with E. coli over the years, every single one of them suffered from severe symptoms, headaches, sweating, nausea. So this isn't somebody superhuman, Voodoo crystal New Age power. This is what happens when you tune up your body. And when you use breathing, to elicit a sympathetic response to bolster your immune function. This is what the body is designed to do, which is why we breathe very intensely when we're hurt. Because when we're hurt, we're exposed to bacteria, and other pathogens, because we're usually cut, and we breathe intensely to help fight off that stuff so that we don't get infected and die. And breathing intensely like that as well will cause a bunch of vasso constriction, so that we don't easily bleed out. So this is part of our genetic makeup. And there's a reason why we're all imbued with these abilities. It's just the fact that today is seldom do we ever have to use this stuff, that doesn't mean it's gone, it's disappeared, we just don't use it. And Wim is at the forefront of not only rediscovering it, but distributed it out to the masses. And he's had such a profound effect on people's awareness of breathing. I talk to Wim quite often. He's an amazing dude. And I'm a big fan of his work.
Me too, and so much so that I have my kids, I'd almost rather they focus on breathing than their grades, and I'm not being sarcastic. Like I'm like, I really, it's something that I impressed if they do not do the Wim Hof Method of breathing every day they lose their phone. That's how important I maybe I shouldn't be saying this in public, but that it's that important to me. And more. So I used to have them do that. And then after actually reading your book, that's when I draw the line of like, not like I won't let it I'm not letting him budge on that. That's how important it is. One thing that I think is important to add to equalize study is the age range of people that went through that that he took on that journey. Do you recall the age differences? Oh, he's
he's taken people from teenagers to there's one practitioner who's 90 years old right now. Okay, and he's taking people with autoimmune problems, okay with MS, with eczema with psoriasis. I mean, you name it, and he's put them through this program. And by and large, they've had enormous benefits. But it's important to note that this breathing method isn't new. This isn't something Wim Hof, sat around and developed on his own. He's very clear about this. This stuff is thousands of years old. And before Wim in the 60s, this guy, Maurice Dunbar had chronic lung problems, they were going to remove his lungs surgically remove them. He said, No, no, I want to heal myself. He's now in his 90s. And he was doing everything Wim was doing, but he was doing this 30 years ago. So we know that this is what happens to the body when you start allowing it to heal itself when you return it to nature in so many ways. And I think that all of the publicity around Wim is fantastic. But to focus less on his Daredevil stunts, and more what on what he's doing to impact the lives to help heal people of quote unquote, incurable diseases. That's his real gift to the world. Yeah,
yeah. I would agree with you on that. Something that I think this audience could benefit from his email app or not benefit from email apnea. But do you mind explaining it? And do you ever fall trap to it yourself?
I do. Oh, all the time. And I learned this. Dr. Margaret Chesney is in San Francisco and had several conversations with her. She's been studying this for about 20 years with the NIH. And she calls it constant partial attention syndrome because she's an academic, right? I prefer email apnea. What this is, it's the morning, you log on to your computer. Oh my god, there's 50 emails. I got to get back to all these people. Oh, I got put in these calendar entries. Oh, someone's calling me on the phone. When that happens, your breathing goes to hell. apnea means breath holding. So a lot of us start holding our breath, even for 30, 40 seconds, unconsciously, and then we go. And we hold it again, because the perceived threat, that's the reason we're doing this is that we're in danger, because we're so over sensitized to external inputs right now. So when this breathing becomes dysfunctional, it can lead to chronic headaches, it can lead to metabolic problems, it can lead to ADHD to focus problems, and this is what Chesney has found. And these aren't subtle issues, by the way, they become very serious, the more dysfunctionally we breathe, and the data is very clear on that. So just to find out how susceptible to this I was, because for a while I was having these awful headaches, at the end of each day around three or four would roll around, and I went to a doctor, which is something I seldom do, and he told me to take four ibuprofen a day, so not to have those headaches. And I thought, that's not really why I'm here to talk to you, I want to figure out why I'm having these headaches. And I'm not bad mouthing all doctors. Okay, just to be clear, my doctor now is this amazing guy. But that's not a cure for anything. So I started wearing a pulse oximeter, which looks at your blood oxygen levels. And I noticed day in and day out, I was holding my breath, there were these huge drops in oxygen, then I would breathe way too much, then I would be holding my breath. And I would do this for hours and hours. So of course it was affecting my brain, of course, it was affecting my body. And one estimate says that 80% of office workers suffer from this. So good thing to do. So it's not all bummer information here people is you can get a timer, there's a ton of apps, you can get, they're all free, that can just help to train you in a healthy breathing pattern, especially in the morning. And some of these apps just have this nice little tone that goes and you breathe in and out to that, just to set the pace. I've noticed when I do this, I feel incredibly different. Because of course I do my body is working more efficiently.
Yeah, that's so important. Do you would you consider yourself more of like an investigative journalist or a writer? Or how would you kind of discern between the two,
probably the the former, I didn't set out to do that. I wasn't writing very deeply. And in science, and especially medical science. Early on, I was writing about adventure and sports and architecture and design and interviews and that kind of stuff. But when I kept suffering from constant problems, and not finding any real cures for it, I thought how many other people are getting the same story to told, told to take four Advil a day just so you don't get a headache. And that's where I started getting more deeply into this world. But when I start a project, my wife isn't too stoked about this, but I become completely obsessed with it. So this is not a nine to five thing for me. This is all day long. waking up in the middle of the night, I have a notepad writing stuff down. Every night, I'm reading books about a subject this goes on for years. And I'll admit, I love it to be so absorbed within this world, you can block out a lot of the noise from the outside world. I check email once a day when I'm writing a book maximum. And I just sort of start living within this other world and then constructing a story from it. And I'll admit it, I'm starting to miss that a bit now. And I'm looking forward to getting back into that calming space. It's a complete pain in the ass to write books, just to be clear, but it's a different mental set. It's a different way of living that enables you and actually requires you to turn off constant news feeds and constant external distractions. And there's a peacefulness in that. So you're all about immersion. Absolutely. That's the only way to do it. In my view.
Yeah, well, listen, that's why there are there are a lot of studies about some of the countries in the world that have the happiest people. It's actually because they don't have many options. It's actually they have less choices sometimes. So that makes things simpler, which is less taxing on their brains, which makes them happier in a weird way. So you're emerging, you're just focused. So when you're focused and you've got some purpose, you're driven, you've got something to look forward to and you're breathing right at night. You're going To get a good sleep,
I couldn't agree more with that, I think that we are gonna find all of the damage tied to multitasking all the time is less efficient. Not only is I think it's damaging to our brains and bodies, but it makes you less efficient at work. So the latest thing in my view is the mono tasking, pick one thing, put your mind and focus into that, get it done and move on to the next thing. And I think that's really the best way of accomplishing tasks. That's how I try to do it now as often as I can. And you look at these cultures, just as you had said, who don't have 400 different channels on their TV, who don't have a million different books they can read, and it seems like they're able to focus more on a single task and absorb themselves in it, and really reap the rewards from that.
So do you remember when we started the show? I told you that you bumped off? My number one referring book?
I do. And thank you for that. That is that honor.
You want to know whose book you bumped off?
Oh, I do not know. I don't know. Yeah, you tell me
if you bumped off Gary Kelleher's book. It's called the one thing. And I don't know if you're familiar with the one thing but it's essentially everything that you just talked about that and in that last question about the importance of focus and not by multitasking. And there's a great quote, I love this quote, I have it written down somewhere, but it says, you know, essentially kind of like the common thread amongst the entire book, and it is a quote, he says, what is it that you need to tell yourself is what is the one thing that I can do such that by doing it, everything else will, I want to say everything else will either will be easier or unnecessary. So it's all about focus. And that's, that's interesting. I've, you know, again, I I've noticed that, you know, throughout your journalistic career, that you are all in, I mean, it's just like you really immerse yourself like that. And again, and I think that's what happened. That's what led to breath, right? Because you do wrote about the freedivers. And you learned about these people that were regular people that then can now hold their breath for like seven or eight minutes, right? Is that what led you to breath?
Yeah, that was one of the things that led me to it is to learn that these people are doing something that was considered scientifically impossible, holding their breath for that long and diving to depths of 300 400 feet on a single breath of air. And I saw when I saw these people do this, I was sent out by outside magazine write write about this completely blew my mind. And what they told me is they said, this is just the tip of the iceberg of what breathing can do. It can allow us to dive sure, but we can heat ourselves up, we can heal ourselves. And it all sounded like complete BS to me until I went out into the field till I went to Stanford until I started talking to the experts, and found that it was all 100% true. So you know, I'm not saying that this approach works for everyone. There's some people in some jobs, air traffic control, don't mano task. Okay, you guys, look at everything that's, that's going on, please. But I'm lucky enough to have a job where I can get the benefits of doing that. And to really fall into this work. And the best part about this is it's so fun for me, this is a treasure hunt every single day to find these little nuggets, and then to organize them in a way and to put the story together. It takes me a very long time to write books, I think mainly because I just love the process so much that when you finally cast it off, you're just like, Oh, no, there goes, I guess I got to start over again.
Are you able to share your next venture?
I do have an idea that I've been chipping away at for actually a few years and it's starting to foment in some big ways. And it's taking me into some absolutely strange areas of research. I don't feel comfortable sharing it right now. But I'm, I'm really, really excited about it. I'm gonna plan to starting next year. I'm going to start picking away at it and get back on the road and see what I can drum up. Wow,
you set the table nicely for that one. I've you've definitely piqued my interest. All right, I got two questions, and then I'll let you go. I really appreciate the generous amount of time that you've carved out to make today happen. So I'll try to one of these questions is a little longer than the other so I'll um, my first question is, how do you go about what is the process I guess of like, like what you're going through right now you've got a book, you've got something in mind. So is it percolate a little bit till you kind of get a little more clarity on something that there's a need or do you do some research and then do you kind of get the buy in from when do you shop the idea to the publicist and Like, what are the steps, and you don't need to go intricate. But if you could kind of go high level, I think that there's some people that would probably be very interested in knowing at least the steps that you took.
So my initial steps on the process is just to be curious about everything and read everything. So I have about 12 different file folders in my office with 12 different ideas. And as I read things throughout the months and years, I just plunk them in these file folders just, which are around general concepts and ideas, whenever one of those folders gets big enough. And when I noticed that, I just keep thinking about the same subject over and over, I know that it's time to take the deep dive and do it. So sometimes those ideas aren't good for books, sometimes they're better for magazine articles, and then I'll just spin that off and into a magazine story. But with the book stuff, what I do is I spend a lot of time with these ideas, it's not like I come across a piece of research and say, Oh, that's a great idea, I'm gonna write a book about it, I'd spend a lot of time looking at all of the different angles, because to me for a book to, to work, or rather, I should say, for, if there's a subject that I want to write a book about, it needs to have a few different things going needs to have some historical angle, it needs to have real hard science behind it. And it needs to have a story. So if it has those three things, and that's what this current idea all has in spades, then I will the way nonfiction works is you you spend about three to six months writing a proposal. So this proposal is, these are the chapters, these are the subjects, this is what I'm writing them out, this is where I'm going to go. So it's basically a dress rehearsal for the book. And then you shop that around to publishers, I work with my agent who's I could not do what I'm doing with without my agent, and then you get a contract from that they give you a little bit amount of money. So you stay hungry. So you want to finish the book, and then you get your other advance after the book is done. That's the process in nonfiction fiction is very different.
Yeah. So I'm told. Now, my last question before I let you go is for those that have listened, they believe in they haven't read the book yet and they believe conceptually in the importance of nose breathing. What is one or two things that you think everybody that's listening right now what must they implement, and do immediately
breathe through your nose. Breathe less. Breathe slowly, and exhale fully. And these are things that doesn't matter if you are an asthmatic. If you're running ultra marathons, these are things that everyone can build upon. And that will become the foundation of healthy breathing.
James Nestor thank you for making today happen, my friend.