Focus on the breath

Inside Health

BBC

Health & Fitness, Science

4.4 • 575 Ratings

🗓️ 29 October 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Have you ever thought about how you breathe? For many of us, the 20,000+ breaths we take each day go underneath our conscious awareness. But every now and then, a short-lived spout or a chronic case of breathlessness can remind us just how vital good breathing is for our health. But can we all breathe “better”? Some wellness trends suggest so...

James Gallagher gets to grips with mouth-taping: the practice of taping the mouth shut during the night to promote exclusive ‘nasal breathing’. Many claim it has improved their sleep, their athletic performance and even given them a more chiselled jaw. Ken O’Halloran, professor of physiology at University College Cork, explains what research has been done looking into this trend and warns about when taping might do more harm than good.

James also visits The Coliseum in Covent Garden to hear how an operatic training programme has improved the quality of life for people living with Long-COVID. ENO Breathe, designed by The English National Opera and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, has seen 4000 people learn to breathe like a classical singer to help them handle breathlessness. Creative director, Suzi Zumpe, and respiratory registrar, Keir Philip, talk through the programme and its impacts.

Finally, could taking consciousness control of our breathing for a short time each day improve our health? Guy Fincham, researcher at the University of Sussex, dives into his PhD research on breathwork, including his initial studies looking at who might benefit from these practices.

Presenter: James Gallagher Producer: Julia Ravey Content Editor: Holly Squire Studio Engineer: Giles Aspen Production Coordinator: Ismael Soriano

This programme was produced in partnership with The Open University.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, you're about to listen to a BBC podcast, and I'm Ed Gamble, host of another BBC podcast,
0:05.4	The Traitors Uncloaked. But my show is available only on BBC Sounds, just like Ellis and John's
0:10.6	Saturday bonus episodes, the Pop Top Ten podcast with Scott Mills and Ryland, and comedy specials
0:16.2	from the likes of Harriet Kemsley, Susie Ruffel and Rommas Shranger Nathan. However, and maybe I'm biased, it's really all about the traitors uncloked.
0:24.3	So for a whole bunch of exclusive scoops and podcasts, listen only on BBC Sounds.
0:30.8	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:34.8	Hello there and welcome to the Inside Health podcast. I'm James Gallagher. Today we're going to focus
0:40.3	on something we do every minute of every day for the whole of our lives. And yet we rarely
0:45.8	give it a moment's thought and that's breathing. So we're heading to the opera to find out how
0:51.3	breathing techniques are helping people with long COVID, and we're
0:55.5	going to take a look at the evidence around boosting your health by consciously controlling
1:00.1	your breathing. That's known as breath work. But first, well, I've got some medical tape with
1:05.8	me here in the studio because there is a trend for taking a little square of it and putting it over the middle
1:14.5	of your lips before bed. And the idea is it encourages you to breathe through your nose at night.
1:21.6	There are elite footballers, Olympians, tennis players, all doing it saying it boosts their performance. Well, let's discuss
1:30.1	with Ken O'Halloran, who's a professor of physiology at University College Cork. He's been digging
1:35.4	into the mouth-taping trend. Ken, welcome to Inside Health. Thank you very much, James. Pleasure.
1:40.5	So first of all, I'm just wondering, why do some people take their mouths shut while they sleep?
1:46.0	Yeah, so it stems from an interest in the benefits or purported benefits of nasal breathing.
1:52.0	And when we breathe through the nose, there are certain benefits.
1:54.0	We warm the air, we humidify the air and filter the air.
1:58.0	And in fact, most of us naturally breathe through our nose. There seems to be an
	...

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