Sublime

Sperm whales are never breathing from their lungs when they make these deep dives. It’s far too dangerous.

In other words, the pure oxygen a quarterback might huff between plays, or that a jet-lagged traveler might shell out 50 dollars for at an airport “oxygen bar,” are of no benefit.14 Inhaling the gas might increase blood oxygen levels one or two percent, but that oxygen will never make it into our hungry cells. We’ll simply breathe it back out.fn1

greatest indicator of life span wasn’t genetics, diet, or the amount of daily exercise, as many had suspected. It was lung capacity.

rhinology research

I found a library’s worth of material. The problem was, the sources were hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years old.

Seven books of the Chinese Tao dating back to around 400 BCE focused entirely on breathing, how it could kill us or heal us, depending on how we used it. These manuscripts included detailed instructions on how to regulate the breath,

I looked for some kind of verification of these claims in more recent research in pulmonology, the medical discipline that deals with the lungs and the respiratory tract, but found next to nothing. According to what I did find, breathing technique wasn’t important. Many doctors, researchers, and scientists I interviewed confirmed this position.

Arctic Circle shirtless: “The Iceman—Wim Hof,” Wim Hof Method, https://www.wimhofmethod.com/iceman-wim-hof.