What’s the Best Way to Breathe?

Times you need to mouth breathe

That said, mouth breathing can play an important role during a fight-or-flight moment. "Usually, you are breathing harder and you're breathing faster, and usually through your mouth.… Your heart rate increases so you can get more blood to your to your legs and to your brain in case you have to run,” says Martin. When you get to safety, “you start to breathe through your nose. You become more calm and more focused and more relaxed,” she says. 

For the same reason, mouth breathing can be a good go-to during intense exercise when “your muscles are screaming for more oxygen right now,” says Atella. “Switching to bigger, faster mouth breaths lets you move a lot more air and dump carbon dioxide more quickly.”

Whether you are taking one of Atella’s hot cardio classes, running or walking, exercise enables you to become "a more lean engine, a more efficient engine,” says Dr. MeiLan Han, chief of pulmonary and critical care at the University of Michigan Health.

Lung workouts

Exercise, Han says, is one of the best things we can do for our lung health because it generates deep breaths, which helps open up the lungs. She says that when an individual exercises throughout their lifetime, or even if they start later in life, studies show better lung function in older adulthood.

And if they maintain or even improve their fitness levels, that actually leads to people having the absolute best lung function later in life. Exercise helps you “get air into the deepest part of your lungs. And the reason that’s important is, if parts of our lungs don’t get adequate aeration, it can lead to infection,” Han says.

Where you breathe from matters — “slower and lower”

We’re born knowing how to breathe — from our bellies. Look at any healthy newborn, or even a healthy dog, and you’ll see what it looks like to belly breathe. This is also called diaphragmatic breathing. The diaphragm is the muscle just below your rib cage. When it moves, you can visibly see the belly move.

Over time, sometimes for medical reasons, like polyps in the nose or a deviated septum, some of us become chest breathers. It’s a more shallow kind of breathing, and it actually requires a lot more effort; the muscles between the ribs and the neck work extra hard despite the fact that a lot less air is moving. 

Prolonged chest breathing can lead to a handful of problems, including coughing, hoarseness, tension headaches, chest tightness and anxiety, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Breathing through the nose helps us “breathe slower and lower,” says Nestor, who adds that it’s free and has no side effects.

Retrain yourself to be a better breather, but do not tape your mouth shut

There’s no medicine or quick-fix hack to help you breathe better. But it also doesn’t require a heavy lift, and it certainly doesn’t require something dangerous like taping your mouth shut while sleeping, says Han. Mouth taping has become a social media trend, says Han, and one that can do harm. “What that can actually lead to is not breathing at all in the middle of the night. And as we've seen, people go into atrial fibrillation from doing this,” warns Han.

To retrain yourself to belly breathe, all you need to do is practice — breathing slowly, rhythmically and deeply, says Nestor. “You don't need to sit in yoga pants in the corner and meditate,” he says. Just set a timer for five minutes and practice while you’re watching TV, reading a book, sitting in traffic, even when you’re doing the dishes. If you can’t get to five or six while breathing in through your nose and belly, count to four, says Nestor.

Sleep and other health benefits

For those over 50, breath awareness can be especially helpful because the autonomic nervous system tends to get a little less flexible as we age. That can show up as poor or disruptive sleep, problems with digestion, higher stress reactivity or simply feeling like it takes longer to relax after exercise or a busy day. Gentle diaphragmatic breathing can help make you feel more balanced.

Other research suggests those with GERD who practice belly breathing after eating reduce how often they experience acid reflux, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Those with sleep apnea and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) may find relief from belly breathing. Belly breathing also can slow your heartbeat and lower or stabilize blood pressure.

What we shouldn’t forget when we are talking about the right way to breathe, says Han, is all the external threats to our breathing, including air pollution, respiratory viruses and the need for flu, RSV and pneumonia vaccines. 

“Those are the kinds of things that are going to ultimately help people live longer and better lives,” says Han. “If you want to protect the lungs and if you want to breathe better, we should be talking about those things.”