Gateway Reporter

New research shows that nasal breathing has led to positive benefits for exercising.

“I so love people who have yoga backgrounds going into endurance sports,” George Dallam, a professor in the School of Health Sciences and Human Movement at Colorado State University-Pueblo, told U.S. News and World Report. “That’s a useful thing."

Having a stuffed-up nose makes sleeping difficult, and that is where nasal breathing can come in.

“By not using our nasal passages, we just start to mouth-breathe because we can't or don't know how to use our noses,” Dr. Manish Khanna of Capitol Breathe Free Sinus & Allergy Centers told the Gateway Reporter. “Because it's stuffed all the time, it's inflamed all the time, it's not a good environment for our oral health.”

Dallam said breathing through your nose helps with physical tasks like running.

“People who habitually breathe nasally, they appear to do better on functional movement screenings,” Dallam said, according to U.S. News and World Report. “It’s a test, which is a series of movements to evaluate how well you move.”

A recent study published in the International Journal of Kinesiology and Sports Science studied 10 runners, male and female, who implemented nasal-only breathing for six months while exercising. Their maximum rate of oxygen consumption did not change from nasal to mouth breathing. But the study found that the runners’ respiratory rate, which are breaths per minute, and ratio of oxygen intake to carbon dioxide output decreased during nasal breathing.

In other words, their bodies didn’t have to work as hard to get the same amount of oxygen. When you breathe slowly and deeply through your nose as you do in yoga, you extract more oxygen from each breath, which allows you to breathe less.

One of the key aspects of any endurance sports is efficiency. It is not possible to work out consistently for 10 hours holding your absolute lactic threshold the whole time. The athlete has to be able to find a nice rhythm, and that takes a lot of time building an aerobic base. The more time the athlete can train heart rate zones while nasal breathing, is going to be a faster, more powerful athlete at a lesser effort.

Breathing through the nose while exercising promotes good form, good posture and therefore prevents injuries. When breathing slowly through the nose, we allow our lungs to fill up and use the diaphragm more effectively.

If you're interested in evaluating your symptoms and are considering seeing a doctor, take this Sinus Self-Assessment Quiz.