Just about everyone with an unobstructed nose will breathe through their nose when at rest or during casual activities, but most people will breathe through their mouth during exercise. The more intensely you exercise, the more likely that you will have to breathe through your mouth because you may not be able to get enough air through your nose to feel comfortable.
Possible Advantages of Breathing Through Your Nose
Why would you even consider trying to control whether you breathe through your mouth or your nose? Compared to mouth breathing, nasal breathing:- helps to filter out pollutants
- helps to filter germs
- adds moisture to the air you breathe
- heats the air you breathe
- may reduce asthma attacks in people who suffer from exercise-induced asthma.
Nasal Breathing Takes Practice
You can breathe far more air into your lungs through your mouth than you can breathe through your nose. You can exercise intensely when you breathe just through your nose, but you will need to practice.• How intensely you can exercise depends on how fast oxygen can pass from red blood cells into muscle cells. • The cells lining your nose and sinuses release large amounts of a gas called nitric oxide while the cells lining your mouth and throat do not. • Breathing through your nose releases far larger amounts of nitric oxide, which specifically widens the very small blood vessels next to muscles to bring the red blood cells closer to muscle cells, to increase markedly the rate that oxygen passes from red blood cells to muscle cells.
