Heart disease: The way you breathe could reduce your risk, says study

According to new research published ahead of print in the American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, breathing through your nose, rather than your mouth, can lead to several benefits for cardiovascular health.

Blood pressure and heart rate can be predictors of heart disease. Breathing patterns can affect these bodily functions due to the crosstalk that occurs between the respiratory and cardiovascular systems.

As part of the study, a group of 20 young adult volunteers took part in a crossover study consisting of rest and exercise conditions.

During the rest condition, the volunteers performed both nasal-only and mouth-only breathing activities in a randomised order.

First, they sat quietly for five minutes and then breathed for five minutes at their own pace.

Nasal breathing was performed with the lips closed, while mouth breathing was done with soft nose clips to prevent nasal airflow.

The exercise condition set out to mimic the activity of daily living by walking at a moderate pace at a slight incline.

In a randomised order the volunteers breathed at their own rate for seven minutes while using a recumbent stationary bike.

Like the rest condition, one activity involved mouth-only breathing and the other, nasal-only breathing.

The volunteers’ blood pressure, blood oxygen levels and heart rate during each condition were measured.

It was found the volunteers’ diastolic blood pressure was lower when they breathed through the nose and a lower perceived rate of exertion than when they breathed through the mouth in the rest condition, not the exercise condition.

Also, breathing through the nose shifted the nervous system into a more parasympathetic state during the rest condition.

The researchers wrote: “We interpret the collective data to suggest that nasal compared with oral breathing provides modest, but potentially clinically relevant, improvements in prognostic cardiovascular variables at rest, but not during exercise.

“This work advances our knowledge of how nasal breathing affects clinically relevant cardiovascular variables and provides foundational acute data in healthy young adults to justify future longer-term studies in other populations.”