Ep. #951: James Nestor on the Art and Science of Breathing

Mike: Hello there, lovely listener. I’m Mike Matthews. This is Muscle for Life. Thank you for joining me today to learn about a topic that sounds boring. Breathing. Our most basic biological function. Something we do unconsciously all day every day. But, my guest today, James Nestor, has taken that topic and turned it into a New York Times best selling book because it’s actually a lot more fascinating than most of us realize.

And how we go about breathing can have drastic effects on our health and well being. And that is what today’s interview is going to be about. James is going to share some of the interesting things that he learned in researching his book and exploring how we humans have lost the ability to breathe properly and what that is doing to our health and our well being.

Before we wade into it, your ability to gain muscle and gain strength is greatly impacted by how well your body can recover. From your training and how strong you get in your training. And that’s why it’s not enough to just hammer away at the weights every week. You have to watch your calories and watch your macros.

You have to maintain good sleep hygiene. You have to avoid over training and you can also speed up your post workout recovery and your muscle and strength gain with supplementation. And that’s why I created this video. recharge. It is a 100 percent natural post workout drink that boosts muscle growth, improves recovery, and reduces muscle soreness.

And the reason it’s so effective is simple. Every ingredient is backed by peer reviewed scientific research and is included at clinically effective levels. Those are the amounts used in studies. That’s it. that found benefits. Recharge is also 100 percent naturally sweetened and flavored. It contains no artificial food dyes, no chemical junk whatsoever.

And all that is why I have sold over 250, 000 bottles of Recharge and why it has over 2, 500 four and five star reviews on Amazon and my website. So if you want to be able to push harder in the gym, if you want to recover better from your training, if you want to gain muscle and strength faster, you want to try Recharge today, go to buylegion.

com, B U Y legion. com slash recharge and use the coupon code muscle at checkout and you will save 20 percent if it is your first order. with us. If it is not, you will get double reward points on that order. So that is 10 percent cash back. And if you don’t absolutely love recharge, just let us know and we will give you a full refund on the spot.

No forms, no return even is necessary. You really can’t lose. So go to buylegion. com slash recharge now. Place your order, use the coupon code MUSCLE and save 20 percent or get 10 percent cash back in reward points. Try Recharge risk free and see what you think. Hey, James. Good afternoon. Actually, I don’t know where, 

James: is it afternoon for you?

Just afternoon right now. You hit it by about seven minutes. So yes, we’re safe to say that. So you’re on 

Mike: the West Coast then, obviously. I am indeed. Yes. Cool. Thanks for taking the time to Do this. I really appreciate it. And I want to start by just saying that as somebody who has written a few books myself and sold a few books, it’s always fun for me to see somebody do what you’ve done with breath because you’ve taken something that sounds banal breathing.

Okay. And then you made it interesting and made it practical and made it. Made it popular, at least more popular, more mainstream than it was before you published your book. So congrats on that. Thanks a lot. Appreciate that. Yeah. And so this isn’t normally how I start these interviews, but I was curious.

I want to ask what inspired you to write the book? Like, how did you get interested enough in breathing to want to write a whole book on it? And cause I, again, I’ll ask that cause I, I’ve written a few books and I know what it takes to do that. If you’re going to do a good job. Absolutely. 

James: It wasn’t one thing in particular, it was a whole bunch of things that happened over years and years, and I kept getting told no by every single person I talked to about this book from friends to journalists to my agent, my publisher, they thought it was a pretty bad idea.

I did as well, but it was only until. Years of digging and research, having my own personal experiences that I realized that I thought that there was another story that could be told about breathing. If you go to a bookstore, there’s a lot of how to books pretty new agey feel good. Nothing wrong with that.

But they didn’t really get into the nitty gritty of why breathing is important and Specifically why human breathing by modern humans are the worst breathers in the animal kingdom. And so I thought that was a more interesting story to explore. And I spent years and years digging into it, trying to figure it out.

Why are we the worst breathers? You can just look around and see we have a face that is dramatically different than the faces of our ancestors. And when I first discovered this, I didn’t believe it until researchers told me to go look at old skulls which I did for months and months. And you notice something that all of our ancestors had straight teeth, they had very large mouths, they had these pronatic faces, these faces that grew outwards.

And if you look around today, the vast majority of us have crooked teeth because our mouths are so small. Teeth want to grow in crooked or rather they want to grow in straight, but our mouths are so small that they have to fight for position. That’s why they grow in crooked. Prettier though. 100 percent not true.

If you look at statues. You think if we had the, oh, that might be pretty. Look at Greek statues, right? It depends on what your definition of pretty is. And Lord knows there’s about 4 million different definitions for what attractive is now. And that’s great. Next time you go into a museum, look at old Greek statues, look at old Greek paintings, look at friezes on the wall, look at Egyptian statues, and then look at what happens to Paintings of people and sculptures of people starting around the 1500s and 1600s.

And look what happens to their faces and that could be more attractive for some people, but functionally it is much less efficient and much more troublesome to breathe through. A mouth that is too small. We tend to choke a lot more. We have chronic obstruction in our noses and it’s made us look dramatically different.

I suppose I was thinking more prehistoric, 

Mike: In the aesthetic. 

James: Sure but there’s a beauty in function as well. Our ancestors were. Perfectly designed to function in that environment, which is why we’re around today and which is why so many other animals aren’t. But if you look at what’s considered traditional beauty, and you look at our ancient human ancestors from 10, 000 years ago, 5, 000 years ago, 2000 years ago, 1000 years ago, they all had these pronatic, these wide jaws and these, Pronathic faces.

And if you look at models today, models and sports stars, they tend almost all the time to have these wide faces. And that’s what we view as attractive because we’re viewed to things that are functional, right? True. And so then how does that connect with breathing though? Connects with breathing, because if you have a mouth, that’s too small for your face, you have a smaller airway.

If you have a smaller airway, you’re going to have trouble breathing. And this is one of the reasons why so many of us struggle with snoring and sleep apnea, chronic sinusitis. This upper palate of our mouths here is designed to be flat and very wide for the vast majority of us nowadays, that upper palate goes up.

And then impedes the airflow in our noses. So we end up breathing through our mouths all the time, which if we do that long enough, when we’re younger, our faces will actually grow differently. They will become more recessed, which will make it harder for us to breathe when we’re adults. So add to that.

The posture that everyone’s sitting in, I’m a great example of that right now, hunched over a desk for 10 hours a day, add to that pollution, allergens, indoor pollution, outdoor pollution. And it’s just been a recipe for respiratory disaster. And that’s what we’re seeing all over the planet right now.

Mike: And so if I’m hearing you correctly, then one of the primary factors in this change in our jaw in our faces is mouth breathing. Too much mouth breathing 

James: That’s one of them. Most of it is due to the industrialized diet that we started eating about 300 years ago, depending on where you were, maybe a little earlier, maybe a little later than that food did not allow us to chew a lot.

And our ancestors were chewing for hours a day, which is one of the main reasons why they had these big teeth. Pronaptic faces, right? You also have a population that has not been breastfed for two years and three years, which makes a big difference for facial growth. And then after that, after infancy, you’ve got an environment that teaches people to sit down in front of stuff, hunched over all day, and when they’re not working in this position.

They’re like that when they’re at home, hunched over, looking at a computer, watching TV, and we’re chronically obstructed. The majority of us suffer from some sort of chronic obstruction because of, again, pollution, allergens, some immune issues. And so all of these things, not just one in particular, there’s some that have been more powerful drivers than others, but all of these things have combined.

To really make us terrible breathers. And that’s taken such a huge hit to our health because of that. 

Mike: What are some of the. Negative effects that people might not be aware of stem directly from either mostly or exclusively from just a lot of bad breathing. 

James: I think that people are aware that if you breathe improperly, it can make it harder to work out if you’re.

If you’re easing seems like that word is getting out and about, but what a lot of people don’t realize is how you breathe, especially how you breathe at night will determine your chances of having a stroke later on in life will help influence whether or not you get heart disease will help influence whether or not you get metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and more.

Who knew that all of these chronic conditions were tied to our breathing, specifically sleep disordered breathing. If you look at all of the vast majority of the chronic maladies that we’re suffering from today, these are conditions that humans have created. They are not around in a natural environment.

These are things that we’ve created. So the way that we can help ameliorate these problems and reduce them are. Get rid of them entirely is to turn back to a more natural form. If you look at animals in the wild, look at how they’re breathing, right? Look at a horse running at full sprint. How it’s bringing that cheetah running at, 50, 60 miles per hour.

How it’s bringing the spring through its nose into its belly. And it’s so rare that you, if people breathing this way, especially at night, the vast majority of us are mouth breathers at night and it’s just, it’s affecting us in innumerable ways. I named a few of them, but there are many more than that 

Mike: and speaking of breathing through your mouth at night.

So can you talk to us about it? Mouth taping, which when I first heard about it, I actually heard about it. It wasn’t from you. I heard about it from somebody else. And of course, my initial assumption was this has to be bullshit, right? And let me look at this. Then I was like, there actually seems to be something to this.

And I even did it a bit myself and didn’t notice much of a difference, probably because I don’t. Breathe too much through my mouth at night, but I thought it was interesting. 

James: Yeah, so I heard about this years and years ago. I was in the same position as you. I thought that this was just complete idiocy and it didn’t help to go on YouTube and see people using duct tape and seven different pieces of tape that they do this thing every now and I was like, this is so stupid.

And it wasn’t until months and months after that, that I started talking with researchers, clinicians at Stanford, other leaders in the field. They say, don’t tell anyone, but I prescribe this to all my patients. And I said why aren’t you more open about this? They said, because people are going to think I’m a quack, but I’ve been doing it for decades.

And it’s so effective, especially for kids who chronic mouth breathers, especially at night and for adults as well. So to be clear, mouthtaping isn’t going to cure everyone’s problems, right? But from what I’ve seen, there are only benefits to be had from this. For some people, those benefits are very small.

For other people, it’s completely transformed their health completely. People who have been chronic snorers for the whole lives for decades and decades. No longer snore when they mouth tape, same thing with sleep apnea can be greatly reduced. Am I saying that this is going to work for you if you have sleep apnea now?

No, but it will have some sort of effect on you. And that effect from what I’ve seen will be positive. Could be micro, could be major. So I, it wasn’t until I actually tried this myself. That I realized I was a mouth breather at night, as long as I’ve known, I thought it was normal to go to bed with a pint of water by your bedside and to wake up and go pee a few times a night until I started breathing through my nose and realized that I didn’t need that water.

I didn’t need to wake up and go to the restroom throughout the night and my sleep quality just went through the roof. Just by closing my mouth, because of course it did how you breathe during night is so important to your sleep cycles and your stress levels and more. How does that affect sleep cycles 

Mike: and stress levels when we’re sleeping?

James: When you’re breathing through your mouth, especially when you’re choking or you’re snoring, you’re stressing your body out, right? So you’re increasing your, you’re going to get. Spikes in blood sugar, cortisol, you’re gonna be waking yourself up. You’re going to be inhibiting yourself from entering into those very deep layers of deep sleep, which are so essential.

Those are usually the layers that we get into earlier on in the night. If you look at people with chronic sleep apnea, they never really enter into those Deep sleep stages, which means they’re never able to really filter out all the junk in their brains and start a new. And if you don’t do that for long enough, you’re going to suffer.

You’re going to suffer from mental issues. You’re going to suffer from physical issues. This is not controversial stuff, right? We’ve known this for decades and decades. So breathing through your mouth. Makes it much easier to snore or have sleep disorder breathing. What happens when you breathe a lot of air quickly?

It’s really easy to make that sound. Now breathe very softly in a rhythm through your nose and try to snore. Almost impossible. So the nose is slowing down that air and it’s controlling your respiration. So you don’t go

It’s hard to do that when you’re breathing through the nose. So this trains you into that natural sleep cycle and that natural respiration, which will allow you to have better quality sleep. If you look at other animals sleeping, look at how they’re breathing. They’re breathing through the nose. I think nature knows something.

And I’m sure humans were breathing through their noses when they were sleeping before the modern age, at least a lot more than we are now. And can 

Mike: we train ourselves to breathe better? So it becomes instinctual and we’re not Constantly having to pay attention to, okay, breathing in deeply into the stomach.

James: Yeah. The last thing any of us needs is. Another thing to feel guilty about, we’ve got enough of that with diet, reading the label of every single package of food, counting calories, counting carbs, counting protein, counting fat, we get enough of that exercising. Did I get my 7, 000 to 10, 000 steps a day?

Did I work out for two hours? Like I said, I was. Man, you haven’t even touched nutrition yet. Did I eat enough fruit today? Did I eat enough vegetables? Did I eat enough Yeah, I’ve had too much fructose. Oh no. I, I Glucose is okay, but fructose not. I think my liver is shutting down. Yeah, am I in ketosis?

Oh my god, did I just eat lectins in those, fava beans? Let me check my my constant glucose monitor. Yeah. And you know what, for a lot of people, that stuff is so important. We have the power to take our health into our own hands now, which I think is so exciting with all of these wearables and with all of this knowledge about nutrition and exercise.

It’s awesome. But I don’t think we need to feel guilty or we need orders in another category. So unfortunately though, you can eat all the right foods. You can exercise all you want, but if you aren’t breathing correctly, you’re never, ever going to be healthy. And I believe that more now than I ever have.

So you have to find a way of fixing your dysfunctional breathing. The majority of us are breathing dysfunctionally. That’s just a fact. So what I’ve found is all of these methods, sleep tape, controlling your respiration throughout the day, coherent breathing, some breath work, all of these things, Help train you to become normal.

They don’t make you superhuman. They just get you down to that normal level, which is where you should have been. And after a while, for some people, these habits can be adopted after a couple of weeks of breathing properly. Their bodies just get it, and then they never have to think about it because breathing is an unconscious act, right?

You want to set your body up for that natural rhythm, so it becomes unconscious. Other people, it’s going to take months. Maybe some people, it’s going to take years. So it depends on how dysfunctional your breathing is. Depends specifically on what that dysfunction is. Is it dysfunctional breathing at night, dysfunctional breathing while you’re exercising at rest when you’re sitting on a couch, whatever.

But these simple steps, the point is not to make you feel guilty. It’s to acclimate your body to normal breathing. So you breathe that way unconsciously the rest of your life. 

Mike: And you mentioned breath work. Is there a simple routine that Worked well for you or that you would share, I think of, for example, I run through about 10 minutes of yoga poses just for stretching.

For me, my hips tend to get tight and my shoulders tend to get tight. So I do, it’s no more than 10 minutes a day, but that’s really helped a lot in the gym. And I would say just in general, and it’s, something simple that doesn’t take much time. 

James: Everyone’s different. I make a big point in the book, not to prescribe.

The same thing to everyone to say, you just need to do this and you’re gonna be cool because people are of different sizes. They have different tolerance levels. They have different problems with their breathing. So you have to experiment with different stuff and see what works best for you. I found that more vigorous breath work.

I really respond to that. I like Kundalini, I like Kriyas, I like the real intense stuff. Wim Hof method is fantastic. The science behind that is rock solid, but some people will respond to much more mellow breathing. I try to make a point in the book also, before you want to go from like zero to a hundred with your breathing, you have to Be able to breathe normally first, this isn’t as sexy and as fun to wear sleep tape and to breathe in these very slow rhythms throughout the day than it is to show up with a whole group of people and to breathe, to hallucinate that’s quite an adventure, but it’s necessary to get that normal stasis, that, that solid breathing down before you bump up to the next level of human potential.

Mike: When you say breathing at a slower rhythm, what do you 

James: mean? Most of us breathe too much and we breathe too quickly. So if you look at what is considered normal right now, anywhere from 12 to 20 breaths a minute is what’s considered normal. About 50 years ago, It was about eight to 12. So you see how much that has shifted.

So many people are breathing so much. And once you cover yourself with sensors and sit in a lab, something I’ve done a zillion times at this point, and you notice what happens to your body. When you fill up your lungs a little more, you allow your diaphragm to descend a little more, you take fewer breaths, but each of those breaths are richer, a little deeper and calmer.

You look at what happens to your blood pressure. Your heart rate variability, other markers of stress and relaxation in your whole body enters the state of coherence where everything works at perfect efficiency, which is exactly what you want, which is why the slow breathing is referred to as resonant or coherent breathing, which is why it’s used all over the world.

By not only therapists, but for people with blood pressure issues or autoimmune issues or depression issues, everyone can benefit from running a little more 

Mike: efficiently. It sounds like that’s something that also would be great to do at night when you’re winding down, maybe even in bed when you’re trying to go to sleep.

James: Absolutely. And a lot of people have used this and found it has really been helpful for sleep. Not only the sleep tape thing, which you can do or not do, I don’t care what you do. I found it’s been a huge benefit to me. And that’s the one thing I’ve heard more from people than.

Anything else, thousands and thousands of people is how much that’s transformed their sleep and their lives, but this slow breathing whenever you’re traveling, I found is really effective and you can slow it down even more to lower your heart rate even more. This is something you shouldn’t do in the middle of the day.

Cause it’ll make you too mellow. And sometimes you don’t want to be too mellow, but if you’re on a plane and you’ve got another 10 hours to go, or if you’re agitated, need to go to sleep, you can breathe into a count of about four, hold for seven, exhale for eight. We’ll just do that once. So you breathe in two, three, four.

Hold, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Exhale, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Just like that. It’s very simple and if you put your hand over your heart, you’re gonna notice when you’re holding your breath or exhaling. Your heart rate is going to decrease because this is you controlling your biology to tapping into your nervous system and allowing your body to feel safe and to relax.

Once you’re in that state, it’s much easier to fall asleep. 

Mike: I know this is something soldiers even talk about in firefights for helping. Regulate their heart rate and just keeping their body under control so they can continue to fight back. So if it can work under those conditions, 

James: yeah, the last thing you want to do is to have a scattered brain when your life is on the line and a lot of military use box breathing, inhale to four, hold for four out for four, hold for four.

just like a box. If you think of someone like a sniper, I can’t imagine a sniper being good at his or her job going.

The very first thing you do when you learn how to shoot is to control your breath and to listen to your heartbeat and shoot between those heartbeats, right? So this is essential, not only for extremely high stress situations like that, but When you’re stressed out in your office, when you’re about to go on and perform somewhere, when you’re about to go and talk somewhere, taking the slow rhythmic breaths can change the way your brain functions and how your body functions as well.

Mike: Can you talk to us a little bit more about the mouth taping, because for people who haven’t heard of this, they’re going to be wondering, okay, so we duct tape is out, understand that what kind of tape and they might have some concerns, probably the concerns that both of us had when we first heard about it.

James: I’m in my office in my backyard here. I usually have a roll of this stuff. I’m looking for it right now. I don’t think I do. We got kicked out of the house today. So you’ve got me in my backyard shed. 

Mike: When I heard that the backyard shed, I got a little bit jealous actually, because I’m in a smaller house right now where I’m building a house, but I’m in a rental.

My kids, this house is made out of like cardboard and tile. So if my daughter drops a penny in the other room, I can hear it. And I miss the days when I could just not hear anything for. Hours at a time. 

James: That’s the exact reason I built this place. It’s about four by seven feet. So it’s about the size of a phone booth, fits a computer in a chair, and that’s it.

The unfortunate thing is sometimes the neighbors are really fastidious about their gardening. So sometimes some asshat comes out there with a leap blower, that’s life living in a city back to work here, everybody. You want to know about sleep tape mouth taping. You want to know about the best tape, what to use.

I don’t care what you use. Okay. I have no mouth taping brand. If I was smart, maybe I would have released that a couple of years ago. Didn’t happen. What I’ve found has worked best for me is micropore tape. It’s surgical tape. You can buy it Walgreens or Amazon or at your local independent pharmacy, wherever you want.

What this stuff is it’s designed to be put on skin and taken off. And so it has this very mild adhesive. What you don’t want is something like gorilla tape. Okay. Or duct tape like that’s such a bad idea. You want something that’s going to come right off because the point of the state isn’t to hermetically seal your mouth shut like some hostage situation, right?

It’s to just put it on your mouth to remind your mouth. Remind your body to keep your mouth shut at any time when you’re using it. It comes right off, which is what it’s supposed to do. So with this stuff, this micropore tape, what I do is I put my fingers on it a few times and just make sure that there’s hardly any adhesive on it.

Then I put it on my mouth and I’ve experimented with not using this at night. My sleep quality goes straight down. I record my sleep with an oar ring, whoop band, all that stuff. And whenever I put this stuff on, it goes back up to where it was. So I travel with this. I have a hard time sleeping without it.

Even when I’m camping or whatever, it’s a weird habit. But you’ll see if you’re like me and so many other people what a difference it makes. 

Mike: It’s interesting that your body hasn’t become attuned to sleeping that way and it still requires the tape, huh? 

James: Yeah, it is and it’s unfortunate to tell you the truth.

I don’t happen to possess one of those big pronathic faces with one of those big wide jaws. So a lot of people can wear the sleep tape for just a couple of weeks and they naturally will keep their mouth shut. Okay. They learn how to do this. I don’t do that because whenever I put my head down on a pillow, my mouth opens.

That’s my natural position is to have my mouth open. And so I have to wear this tape. This isn’t true. For I, I don’t know what an estimate, maybe 50 percent of the people won’t need sleep tape after a few weeks, few months, I’m not in that 50%. I’m going to need it. The rest of my life and need and want is a different thing.

I don’t need it. I’ll survive without it, but I’ll be significantly less healthy because my sleep quality will go down. 

Mike: And for people who are not sure whether they Breathe through their mouth at night. Are there some common symptoms like, people could probably deduce. All right, if you wake up very thirsty, very dry mouth, that could be one, 

James: right?

That’s really the first one. If your mouth is pasty and dry when you wake up, you are breathing through your mouth. This isn’t really clear, rigorous science, but if you tend to go pee a lot throughout the night, there Might that might suggest that you have some sleep disorder breathing. You aren’t able to go in those deep stages of sleep and release the proper hormones of vasopressin specifically to allow yourself to store water comfortably to not do that.

I noticed that once I was able to have really get into those deeper levels of sleep, I did not have to go to the restroom. So often, and so many other people have said the same thing you have to figure out for yourself. So you can also ask your partner, if you sleep with someone, if they breathe through their mouths and a lot of people are going to deny it, they’re going to say, there’s no way I’m a mouth breather, but more than 60 percent of us breathe through our mouths.

And I don’t care if you’re super fit and you’re vegan or you’re keto or whatever. The majority of us are breathing through our mouths at night. You can continue to do that. That’s fine. But you’re going to put yourself more at risk for having respiratory problems and lower sleep quality. 

Mike: Yeah. The worse we sleep, the worst, basically everything that matters in our body functions.

So if I’ll joke, sometimes I’ll tell people if you want to see what you’re really capable of, figure out getting. Eight hours of good sleep every night. 

James: And I think part of that it’s not only the amount of time that you’re sleeping, but again, the quality of sleep. There’s so many people who can sleep nine hours and say I got nine hours.

I’m good to go. They’re not sleeping well. And what I’ve found is so much of sleep quality is based on breathing quality. Not all of it, but so much of it is. And once you figure that out, there’s a good chance that your sleep will improve, and thus your health and life will improve. 

Mike: Hey there, if you are hearing this, you are still listening, which is awesome, thank you.

And if you are enjoying this podcast, or if you just like my podcast in general, and you are getting at least something out of it, would you mind sharing it with a friend, or a loved one, or a not so loved one even? Who might want to learn something new word of mouth helps really bigly in growing the show So if you think of someone who might like this episode or another one, please do tell them about it question with the mouth taping this is because I was doing it just for fun for several weeks and one was facial hair like you know right now i’m shaven, but if my facial hair was grown out a bit more it was the tape What would come off easier and then sometimes probably half of the nights cause I tend to roll over on a side.

I don’t sleep on my stomach, but I’ll tend to go over on the side. And then the map, my, my lips would be parted just a little bit and then saliva gets through and then I’d wake up. I’ve lost half of my seal. It’s almost useless at that point. Did you run into any of those issues? 

James: Yeah, I did for months and months until I figured out a system that worked for me.

And again, I want to say that everyone’s going to find their own system. They’re going to find what works for them. But as far as the tape coming off, and a lot of people think that mouth breathing at night has to be, it doesn’t have to be with a huge open mouth. Your lips just slightly parted. Okay? And so when people say, I’m not a mouth breather because I’m not, I don’t have my mouth craned open.

It’s not true. So for a lot of people, placing the tape across all of the entire lip has been very beneficial. I did that for a long time until now. All I need is a teeny little square of the center of my lips and my mouth. Stays closed. If you notice that drool is coming out of your mouth at night, then your mouth’s not closed, right?

That shouldn’t be happening. Then that isn’t a natural thing for us to sleep and have drool coming out. So I think you need to tape up a little more with this whole argument that people say, Oh, I have a beard. I can’t use sleep tape. It’s. Total garbage. What you’re taping is your lips not your beard.

So there are some sleep tapes that go all the way around the mouth. People want to use those. That’s cool. I don’t think it’s necessary at all. You’re just taping your lips with a piece of tape that has a mild adhesive. Again, I want to be clear that at any time in the night, you can just go, and it should be coming off.

If you have to struggle to get this off, you’re doing it wrong. Totally wrong. This should be able to come off very easily. 

Mike: And so again, I guess in my case I was moving around enough or whatever was happening enough to get it to at least come off partially. So it would have been a matter of just persisting.

James: Yeah. Or find a different kind of tape. I was using the micropore as well. Yeah. Okay. Maybe you need even more adhesive on it, but I would experiment with it. I want to mention one thing that’s super important. This is one of the reasons a lot of people try sleep tape and then don’t do it anymore is in the morning when it’s time to take off the tape, people tend to just rip it.

And their lips get completely chewed up. I made that mistake too. Okay. It’s a terrible thing to do. So how you do it again, I wish I was in my other studio where I had some tape. I’m looking for some, but how you do it is you never take it off with your finger ever put your hands up and you put your tongue in there.

You don’t have to put your hands up. I was just doing that to accentuate, but you only. Take it off with your tongue. Okay, just put your tongue back and forth on your lips until the tape comes off this way You’re not causing all of that irritation to your lips every time and this way your lips won’t be affected You’ll be fine Wanting to use it the next night instead of cursing me and everyone else who has told you to 

Mike: use sleep tape and I’m assuming with your lips, you’re not doing anything special.

It’s just a normal mouth closed position. You’re not like duck facing or you’re trying to suck your lips in at all. 

James: And I’m not here to judge. Someone wants to hang upside down, and develop some extremely complicated procedure to doing this, God bless him. Go for it. The only thing I use that I’ve found is effective is my lips are shut.

Just a piece of tape. You just, a windshield wiper back and forth until the tape comes off. And I’ll do that maybe five strokes of my tongue on my lips and the tape comes off and I’m good to go. So that’s what I would highly suggest people do. I know this seems like a lot of orders. It’s not. You find a piece of tape with easy adhesive, take it off with your tongue, done and done.

That’s all you need to do. 

Mike: Yeah, for what it’s worth I was using 3M micropore tape and it generally worked well. Again, I ran into a couple of issues there but I’m inspired to try it again. The thing with my sleep is this was not a case, so I’m 32. Eight now, and this was not a case 10 years ago.

10 years ago would pass out unconscious five minutes blackout for six and a half, seven hours, wake up, feel totally fine. Twenties invincible basically. But now after having two kids that probably didn’t help in the sleep department, but I don’t have trouble falling asleep. I can have trouble staying asleep.

So I will wake up several times at night and sometimes I have to pee. I’ve actually intentionally stayed away from water at least an hour or so before I’ve gone to bed. And so I’ve tried many different things and what seems to be most associated with my sleep quality, no surprise is just general stress and aggravation levels.

If I am generally dealing with a lot of annoying bullshit that is generally just aggravating me a lot, then unfortunately, when I was younger, it didn’t seem to have this effect. But now that I’ve gotten older, I see it in my sleep, even though. I wouldn’t even say that I feel very stressed per se.

I guess it’s just enough. Whereas I can think of times when I’m having fun and things are not pissing me off all the time because running businesses in particular, there’s a lot of stuff that’s just not very fun. I will immediately start sleeping better. So it’s, it might unfortunately be a matter of, in my case, having to address really the underlying cause that is.

Bringing me into this heightened again, overstressed kind of state and is not necessarily as simple as well. Just tape your mouth and you’ll be fine. Although I am inspired to try it again. 

James: No. And I would never say that, The mouth tape is, I think it’s all about removing barriers of finding those things you can improve and improving them.

When you look at the scientific literature, so many sleep issues are tired to sleep, disordered breathing. That’s just a fact. If you thought, yeah, sometimes if you’re extremely stressed out, you have trouble sleeping. It’s your mind is racing, but. You have to find the core reason of your sleep disturbance and then drill down into that.

And you are only going to benefit from breathing better when you’re sleeping, right? Is it going to cure all your problems? Of course not. But you’ve removed that barrier. And so the next one is, okay, my mind is racing. What can I do to chill myself out? I’ve found breathwork or a short meditation.

Before you go to sleep and I’ve talked to many sleep experts about this. They said, you need really good sleep hygiene about an hour before you’re going to sleep. You’re just prepping for it. It’s you’re getting ready for a big show, right? Or workout or something. You’re doing all the right things.

You’re not drinking too much water. The lights are low. You’ve got your blue blocker glasses on, you’re just chilling things out and making it very mellow and relaxed. I’ve found that some mellow breath work, even doing Wim Hof method or vigorous Kriya put me right to sleep when I’ve been stressed because it, those intense breath works, but they do is they focus all your stress.

They’re stressful to do, right? They take a lot of energy to do. And so afterwards that stress is spent and you’re on downflow of that. And so you get it right when you’re truly relaxing. And I’ve found that’s been. Really beneficial to me. And I can sympathize with your, I wish I was just sitting around writing books but you’re doing all this other crap that just drives you insane all day because this is the modern world and you’re trying to keep your head above water.

So those things have really. Worked for me, especially switching time zones all the time. What do you do if you just flew into Europe? I always do breath work and I always use sleep tape and I always try to really mellow myself out an hour before I’m going to sleep wherever I am in the world. 

Mike: Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that.

And I’ve been fairly good in that regard as well. And in my case is interesting in that I rarely ever have trouble falling asleep. My run, my mind is basically never. Racing. If it’s a bad night, I’m just going to wake up four or five times for no great reason. And I’ll fall back asleep fairly quickly.

It’s an odd situation. It’s there other people out there who certainly have the same issue, but it’s not for the common reason of, I’m just feeling so stressed and I have so many things going on. And again, it changes immediately and markedly. If I I’m just. Not dealing with all the normal bullshit that I don’t like to deal with.

James: I think you know your solution. I know. I think maybe I’m just reaching a point of where it’s time to make a change. Yeah. I’ll put on the psychologist hat here. I think you know, it’s know what’s going on. Man, sell it all and move to Puerto Rico. Sit on the beach. I think, that’s the solution.

You’ll be sleeping great. That almost certainly would work. It might not be the best best idea right now, but it probably would work. No. Don’t tell the wife. Yeah. You’re good. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. She’s into horses. I don’t think there’s a horse scene in Puerto Rico. So I think you would be surprised on that count.

I think there’s a, probably a big horse scene in. Puerto Rico, but anyway, breathing, here we are talking about breathing. Yes, 

Mike: sir. Yes, sir. That actually was all the questions that I had for you. Is there anything that we didn’t cover that you think would be worthwhile to add here at the end?

This 

James: is muscle for life, right? We have to talk about muscles and breathing, of course. I didn’t even think of that myself. I usually don’t prepare for these, but I said, damn muscle for life. I gotta deliver some goods here. But I think the one thing, if you look at performance and if you look at athletic training for so long, We haven’t focused on breathing.

We focused on every imaginable nutrient out there and optimizing those. We focused on, anaerobic versus aerobic, but we haven’t focused on the actual respiration that’s happening. While you’re working out. And I think that this has been a real blind spot for so many trainers. It’s changing now dramatically.

So many trainers are starting with breathing because when you’re working out and you’re trying to build muscle, I think it’s so important to be able to be running aerobically. You can run anaerobically for a little while, but if you do that too long, you’re going to wear down. And so aerobic. Energy is so much more efficient and is so much better for your body.

And you can only do that efficiently by breathing efficiently. And I mentioned this because it’s a gym down the street from my house. I see the people in their breathing. Like it doesn’t matter if they’re on stationary bike, if they’re lifting weights, whatever, it’s a frickin disaster. And they think that they’re working out harder because they’re going, they think their body.

They’re doing their body favors but they’re not, they’re there to be healthier, presumably, but they’re really not enabling their body to work at an efficient label where they’d be able to build more muscle and be able to come back and work out even stronger the next time. So I know this sounds a bit soap boxy, but I think if people are interested in building muscle, you have to also Become interested in how you’re feeling those muscles.

The vast majority of the energy we get is from our breath. It’s not from food or drink. So it’s definitely something you should be paying attention to. 

Mike: And just to to follow up on that. So something to consider, like if you’re doing. Serious weightlifting, particularly with, let’s say, exercises, more whole body exercises like a squat or maybe a deadlift or maybe an overhead press to stabilize your torso and stabilize your core effectively, you really need to.

Hold your breath for it doesn’t have to be for an entire set, but let’s say you’re squatting. And let’s say there’s a fair amount of weight. You’re not just goofing around with the bar or something. So you’re going to take a deep breath into your stomach. You’re going to brace your abs as if you’re about to get punched.

Right? And you can press your tongue into the roof of your mouth as well and hold your breath. And then you might hold your Get one or two reps out of that. Have to reset your breath. And so a common weight lifting mistake in particular that newer people will make is they will try to breathe continuously and quote unquote normally throughout a set.

And that can actually be dangerous if the weights start to get heavy because you inevitably lose tension in your core. Which then you can think of, putting a bunch of weight on your back and then not having a stable core that can lead to injury. 

James: Yeah, I completely agree with you. And if you think of what happens when right now, even if you’re hunched over a desk or in a car or whatever, you take a big breath.

You look at what happens to your posture, look what happens to your back, look what happens to your shoulders. We have these two huge balloons here, right? And of course, they’re going to dictate how our posture is, especially when you’re loading weight on top of that. Your posture is so important. And when you see people over breathing or breathing too much, when they’re posting large amounts of weight, this is very dangerous.

It’s this is how people can get really injured. So one of the things that. I think is so important in developing healthy breathing habits. Part of that is to breathe, learn how to breathe fewer breaths, but deeper breaths. This is going to push the diaphragm down. It’s going to make your rib cage and the intercostals more elastic so that you can have that more solid.

Posture when you’re working out and lifting weights, it’s not something you can just immediately work on when you’re in the gym, right? This takes a long time to develop that diaphragmatic motion, the incursion and excursion of that breath and of that diaphragm. So this is something that people can do.

Anytime, if you’re sitting in a car, if you’re sitting at your desk, if you’re watching Netflix, whatever, just focus on taking fewer, but slightly deeper, enriching breaths. Not only will you be able to get oxygen more easily this way, not only will you be calming yourself down, but you’ll also be building up.

That diaphragmatic motion, which can help you in the gym can especially help you and in your posture when you’re lifting loads. 

Mike: And you can also practice in between sets when you’re resting. It’s actually a good time to take those deep diaphragmatic breaths because you are going to recover. faster in between sets.

And for people who are into weightlifting, that can actually make a significant difference in the effectiveness of your workouts. Because most people who are really into it, they are keeping themselves on the clock in between sets. So maybe it’s two and a half minutes or two minutes that they get max would be three or three and a half maybe in between sets of like really heavy squats or deadlifts.

And the Amount of performance that you recover in between sets is impacted right by how you’re breathing. Of course, there are other factors, but that’s one of the factors, right? 

James: Of course, it is. And if you see people working out and again, I see this all the time. In between sets, they’re just checking their email.

Why not get your heart rate down? Why don’t you get your blood flowing? Why don’t you open up those blood vessels, right? And focus there on the moment and concentrate. And I think that’s how you’re going to get the most out of your workout. And you’re going to be able to filter out all the toxins from your body much more effectively this way, and also feed your hungry muscles, which is what you’re presumably in a gym to do.

So I think it’s been overlooked for a long time. I think people viewed it as some woo thing. But if you look at the science, it’s been there for decades and decades, and it’s solid, and The only thing you need to do is to just understand that this isn’t some placebo effect. This is just you accessing your own biology, right?

And it’s you toning and enabling yourself to perform to your utmost potential, which is what you would want 

Mike: to do. And an emphasis on the importance of breathing and its connection to life. That goes back thousands of years, right? This is nothing new. It’s just modern science confirming what was.

Known to our ancient ancestors, right? 

James: Yeah. Everything in the book. And I hope I was very clear about this. This knowledge has been around in various cultures, thousands of years, one culture would discover it 5, 000 years ago, another culture, completely independent of them would discover the exact same thing, the exact same breathing techniques and say, this is a medicine breath is a medicine.

And it was considered that way up until probably the last century, where we thought that Drugs could fix everything. They fix a lot of things, but they didn’t fix everything. And you have to have your body tuned up, especially when we’re battered by all of the damage that the modern world is doing to us from pollution to our sitting position, distress levels.

Activity levels you name it zoom problems as we had for 15 minutes before we got on here, extra stress, extra aggravation. But if you’re going to make it through that, you have to take care of your body if you want it to remain balanced. And I think that breathing is something that’s been often ignored, but is a central part, an essential pillar of our health.

Mike: Yeah, I often say we have to take care of ourselves. We can’t just take pills. Sometimes you need to take pills, but that is not the solution for health. It’s a good way to make money, but it’s not a good way to make healthy people. But this was a great interview. James, I really appreciate again, you doing it.

And why don’t we wrap up with where people can find you and your work. And if there’s anything in particular you want them to know about, if you have another project already in the works, you want people to know about. 

James: Sure. I’m trying to get better at the social media thing. So I’m on Instagram, Mr.

James Nestor. That’s Mr. James Nestor. I also have a website with about 400, 500 scientific references on it, breathing exercises people can do. Interviews with experts, all of it’s free. There’s no paywall, anything like that. That’s at mrjamesnester. com. And we’re starting to do breathing retreats, which have been a real blast.

So week long retreats where people can come and learn from the experts in the field and get around and rediscover this thing called breath. And they can learn about that at your website as well, I assume. They can learn about it at the website and yeah, I have a book out too, but you can learn about that at the website that came out a couple of years ago.

Mike: Yeah, and again that’ll be, of course, linked in the show notes and mentioned in the intro, but for anyone who hasn’t come across the title yet, it’s Breath. And I don’t have the subtitle off the top of my head, but if you put in, if you go to wherever you buy books and search for Breath Nester, or even Breath James, it’ll come up, right?

It 

James: should. Otherwise that go leave that store. If it doesn’t just, 

Mike: yeah, find it, find a better search 

James: engine. Just immediately find a better store. Damn it. Thanks again, James. This was a great interview. I appreciate it. Sure. Thanks a lot for having me. 

Mike: I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful.

And if you did subscribe to the show, because. It makes sure that you don’t miss new episodes and it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you and if you didn’t like something about this episode or about the show in general or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email Mike at muscleforlife.

com muscleforlife. com and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you’d like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I’m always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.