On average, you take about 20,000 breaths a day. But if you’re like most modern people, you may be doing it in a way that undermines your health.
Until very recently, people breathed through their nose (”the mouth is for eating, the nose is for breathing”). Sure, if we need to we can use the mouth to breath as a back up.
But breathing through our nose provides a number of health benefits: it moistened the air before it arrives at our lungs. It makes oxygen delivery more efficient. And the hairs in the nose act as a filter.
Conversely, when we breath through our mouth, we end up breathing the gaseous by products of all the bacteria that live there.
So when you remember, shut your gob and breathe. If you’re going to do something over 20,000 times a day, you might as well make it work for you.
