<story><title>Proper Breathing Brings Better Health</title><url>https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/proper-breathing-brings-better-health/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brightball</author><text>I had a nasal problem that I didn’t know about until I tried breath right strips. Wearing those things was life changing for me. I felt like a different person and honestly can’t believe I spent my entire life not realizing I had a problem.&lt;p&gt;Eventually got it fixed permanently, but yea...breathing is huge.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: The problem I had was called Nasal Valve Collapse. It’s something that happens in much older people, but essentially if I inhaled hard through my nose my nostrils collapsed so I’d have to breath through my mouth. It made aerobic exercise very difficult, taking deep breaths in general too.&lt;p&gt;I discovered how big of a deal it was when I tried on of those 9 Round gyms in my early 30s. The 1st round is jump rope and it tore my throat up. I was so exhausted after 3 minutes of jump rope that the rest of the workout was basically awful. I came back the next week (my throat was really sore for a week) with a Breathe Right strip on to see if it helped. I did the whole workout, jump rope included, like it was nothing.&lt;p&gt;After I saw the difference, I tried sleeping in them and woke up more alert than I had in recent memory. Great night sleep. Then eventually, I tried just wearing one all day when I was working from home and it was significant by the end of the day.&lt;p&gt;There was a point where I just realized that I felt so much better wearing them that I was literally wearing them all the time, including in the office.&lt;p&gt;Eventually I decided to visit an E.N.T. who diagnosed me and gave me a couple of surgical options...which were both kinda scary and didn’t have great success rate. I visited another to get a 2nd opinion and he was confident that it could be fixed with a slightly modified septoplasty.&lt;p&gt;I ended up doing the surgery and I’ll go ahead and tell you, the recovery is awful...but it worked. I still see a marginal benefit from using a Breathe Right but I probably have 70% of the improvement all the time from where I was before.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>theprotocol</author><text>Thanks for posting this. I&amp;#x27;ve experienced something similar. My nasal passages have almost always been swollen since I was 11-12. Most ENTs I&amp;#x27;d seen over the last 15-20 years have completely failed to provide me with relief. Earlier in 2018 I visited an ENT who noted that my turbinates were &amp;quot;absolutely massive&amp;quot; and the rest of the nasal passage was swollen.&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the swelling would affect the rest of my airway and I&amp;#x27;d feel like I couldn&amp;#x27;t take even a moderately deep breath. I&amp;#x27;d be rushed to the ER but the doctors couldn&amp;#x27;t find anything other than an elevated heart rate (and some immediately went to their go-to diagnosis of it being stress or a panic attack). After going through that about 10 times, I got a good doctor who told me: &amp;quot;oh dear, you&amp;#x27;re actually choking.&amp;quot; But then, things like hereditary angioedema were ruled out, and the cause remained elusive. I later discovered I could control my symptoms with diet.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m now looking into having somnoplasty to reduce the size of my turbinates, but it&amp;#x27;s unclear whether doing so will simply shift the problem to another narrow point of my swollen nasal passage.&lt;p&gt;I appear to have lost some kind of cosmic lottery because I also have severe digestive issues and must follow a very strict diet (which also reduces the airway swelling). As you touched upon, it is very hard to accept that you spent most of your life not being able to be yourself. I know I spent most of mine in a subdued fight or flight mode due to the chronic strain on my basic bodily functions. It&amp;#x27;s been a cruel existence thus far and I can&amp;#x27;t wait for the day I can rid myself of this torture definitively (my plan for fixing my problems is getting closer to fruition and I&amp;#x27;ve had some success with some of the measures I&amp;#x27;ve tried).</text></comment>
<story><title>Proper Breathing Brings Better Health</title><url>https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/proper-breathing-brings-better-health/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brightball</author><text>I had a nasal problem that I didn’t know about until I tried breath right strips. Wearing those things was life changing for me. I felt like a different person and honestly can’t believe I spent my entire life not realizing I had a problem.&lt;p&gt;Eventually got it fixed permanently, but yea...breathing is huge.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: The problem I had was called Nasal Valve Collapse. It’s something that happens in much older people, but essentially if I inhaled hard through my nose my nostrils collapsed so I’d have to breath through my mouth. It made aerobic exercise very difficult, taking deep breaths in general too.&lt;p&gt;I discovered how big of a deal it was when I tried on of those 9 Round gyms in my early 30s. The 1st round is jump rope and it tore my throat up. I was so exhausted after 3 minutes of jump rope that the rest of the workout was basically awful. I came back the next week (my throat was really sore for a week) with a Breathe Right strip on to see if it helped. I did the whole workout, jump rope included, like it was nothing.&lt;p&gt;After I saw the difference, I tried sleeping in them and woke up more alert than I had in recent memory. Great night sleep. Then eventually, I tried just wearing one all day when I was working from home and it was significant by the end of the day.&lt;p&gt;There was a point where I just realized that I felt so much better wearing them that I was literally wearing them all the time, including in the office.&lt;p&gt;Eventually I decided to visit an E.N.T. who diagnosed me and gave me a couple of surgical options...which were both kinda scary and didn’t have great success rate. I visited another to get a 2nd opinion and he was confident that it could be fixed with a slightly modified septoplasty.&lt;p&gt;I ended up doing the surgery and I’ll go ahead and tell you, the recovery is awful...but it worked. I still see a marginal benefit from using a Breathe Right but I probably have 70% of the improvement all the time from where I was before.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>riku_iki</author><text>I am curious why it is so important to breath through nose during aerobic exercises? I succeeded very well in different high intensive kinds of sport like boxing and sprint running, and always breathed using mouth..</text></comment>