This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von

#641 - Breathing Expert James Nestor

February 20, 2026

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  • Dysfunctional breathing habits, particularly mouth breathing, are linked to numerous modern health issues including poor oral health (cavities) and altered facial/cranial development in children. 
  • Ancient cultures recognized breathwork as essential medicine, contrasting with modern society's neglect of this fundamental biological function. 
  • Simple, conscious breathing exercises like 5-second nasal inhales and exhales (coherent breathing) can immediately signal safety to the body, reducing stress hormones and improving physiological function. 
  • Many cases of ADHD may be misdiagnosed neurological problems when they are actually caused by sleep-disordered breathing, which can often be resolved by focusing on nasal breathing at night. 
  • Intentional, brief breathing exercises, such as performing an intentional sigh (two soft inhales followed by a calm exhale), can serve as a quick respiratory pattern reset throughout the day. 
  • Chronic mouth breathing, especially during sleep, is linked to snoring, sleep apnea, and poor sleep quality, and can be addressed by training the body to breathe through the nose, potentially using mouth tape as a reminder. 

Segments

Breathing’s Impact on Life
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(00:00:51)
  • Key Takeaway: Proper breathing can vastly improve athletic performance, sleep quality, cognitive function, and even sexual health.
  • Summary: James Nestor asserts that breathing impacts many unexpected aspects of life, moving beyond basic survival. Poor breathing habits developed in the background negatively affect daily metrics like headache frequency and energy levels. Conscious control over breathing can yield measurable improvements across various domains.
History of Breathwork Medicine
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(00:02:13)
  • Key Takeaway: Ancient Hindu and Chinese cultures celebrated specific breathing techniques as essential medicine, focusing on increasing ‘prana’ or life force.
  • Summary: Ancient Hindus developed complex breathing methods around 2,500 years ago to maximize life force intake. Simultaneously, the Chinese practice of Qigong translates directly to breath or energy work aimed at internalizing external energy for health benefits. These practices were historically considered as vital as diet and exercise.
Mouth Breathing and Childhood Health
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(00:04:38)
  • Key Takeaway: Approximately 50% of children are mouth breathers, leading to dysfunctional breathing patterns that negatively affect focus, oral health, and facial structure.
  • Summary: Mouth breathing, which should only be an emergency pathway, often becomes the default in children due to environmental factors like allergies. Prolonged mouth breathing causes the upper palate to grow upward, resulting in smaller mouths, crooked teeth (malocclusion), and reduced sinus passage space. Parents should monitor children’s breathing during sleep as an early indicator of potential issues.
Industrialized Dentistry’s Negative Effects
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(00:06:03)
  • Key Takeaway: Dentistry 100 years ago identified mouth breathing as the number one cause of cavities, a finding supported by modern airway specialists.
  • Summary: Historically, dentists believed mouth breathing, not sugar, caused most cavities, a view now resurfacing among airway experts. Modern industrialized dentistry often involves pulling teeth and using braces to crane remaining teeth inward, which shrinks the mouth further while the face grows. This process contrasts sharply with ancestral skulls, which universally exhibit wide jaws and straight teeth.
Simple Coherent Breathing Practice
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(00:18:07)
  • Key Takeaway: Coherent breathing involves slow, rhythmic nasal breathing (e.g., 5 seconds in, 5 seconds out) to induce a state of relaxation and physiological coherence.
  • Summary: Most people breathe too much and too shallowly, sending stress signals to the brain; the goal is to return to nature’s intended breathing pattern. Placing a hand below the belly button ensures the breath expands the abdomen upon inhalation and contracts upon exhalation. This practice lowers blood pressure, decreases stress hormones, and allows the body to recover and heal more quickly.
Intense Breathwork and Physiological Response
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(00:30:44)
  • Key Takeaway: Intense hyperventilation techniques can temporarily inhibit up to 40% of blood flow to the brain, causing physiological stress responses like tetany.
  • Summary: Intense breathwork is used to purposely stress the nervous system, allowing the practitioner to regain control by turning the stress response on and off. Extreme over-breathing causes blood to become highly alkaline due to excessive CO2 expulsion, which can lead to tetany—involuntary muscle spasms caused by low circulating calcium.
Breathwork vs. Wim Hof Method
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(00:46:50)
  • Key Takeaway: The primary focus of James Nestor’s work is establishing a solid foundation of normal, nasal breathing before engaging in advanced, intense practices like those popularized by Wim Hof.
  • Summary: Wim Hof is credited with bringing breathwork awareness to the masses through exciting, extreme feats involving cold exposure. Nestor emphasizes that most people suffer from underlying issues due to dysfunctional breathing, which must be corrected first. Once foundational nasal breathing is established, individuals can then progress to higher levels of potential, similar to the original intent of practices like yoga.
Historical Figures and Breath Control
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(00:51:21)
  • Key Takeaway: Documented historical figures, like Swami Rama, demonstrated seemingly impossible physiological control over heart rate and temperature through dedicated breath and meditation practice.
  • Summary: Swami Rama, trained in the Himalayas, was tested at the Menninger Clinic where he could voluntarily raise his heart rate to 300 BPM and manipulate hand temperature differences by 11 degrees. These documented feats lend credence to ancient claims about breath control being the foundation for extraordinary human capabilities. Nestor suggests he has witnessed even more extreme, unverified abilities stemming from focused breathwork.
Valor Recovery Sponsorship Plug
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(00:56:21)
  • Key Takeaway: Valor Recovery offers coaching and mentorship for men overcoming porn abuse and sexual compulsivity.
  • Summary: Men often use pornography to numb feelings of loneliness, boredom, anxiety, and depression, issues often hidden by shame and stigma. Valor Recovery, founded by Steve, provides tools and mentorship from long-term recovery members to help men develop healthier sex lives. Listeners can learn more by visiting valorrecoverycoaching.com.
Presidential Health and Solar Panels
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(00:57:28)
  • Key Takeaway: President Jimmy Carter installed 32 solar thermal panels on the White House West Wing in 1979, which were later removed by the Reagan administration.
  • Summary: The conversation briefly shifted to presidential health habits, speculating on which president might have focused on breathwork. This led to a factual detour confirming that Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the White House in 1979. These panels were later removed during roof repairs under the Reagan administration in 1996.
Celebrity Interest and Effort in Practice
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(00:58:35)
  • Key Takeaway: Achieving profound results from breathwork requires consistent, dedicated work, not just learning a ‘secret’ technique.
  • Summary: James Nestor notes that celebrities who seek private sessions are often disappointed when told the core practice is simply consistent work, not a hidden trick. He compares this to dieting, where eating one salad does not negate the effects of eating poorly the rest of the time. Since breathing is constant, improving it must be a continuous, default behavior.
Forced Breathing Resets via Sighs
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(01:00:16)
  • Key Takeaway: Unintentional sighs and yawns are the body’s mechanism to force a reset when unconscious negative breathing habits become too severe.
  • Summary: When people are unaware of their breath and stuck in negative habits, the body forces a reset through an unintentional sigh or yawn. Listeners can intentionally utilize this mechanism by setting alarms to perform a specific breathing pattern: two soft inhales, a hold, and a calm exhale. Performing this intentional sigh 10 times a day can establish better default breathing patterns.
ADHD Misdiagnosis and Sleep Breathing
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(01:04:14)
  • Key Takeaway: For many children diagnosed with ADHD, the root cause is sleep-disordered breathing, which is a ‘plumbing problem’ rather than a neurological issue.
  • Summary: Experts suggest that sleep-disordered breathing, where children struggle or choke while sleeping, prevents deep restorative sleep, negatively impacting brain development and clarity. This chronic stress at night manifests as ADHD symptoms, bedwetting, and frequent nighttime urination. Correcting nasal breathing at night often resolves these issues within weeks, according to parental anecdotes.
Snoring, Sleep Apnea, and Airway Health
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(01:09:12)
  • Key Takeaway: Snoring is not normal and indicates struggling during sleep, often due to mouth breathing or soft tissue constriction in the airway, which can be addressed through daytime breathing training.
  • Summary: Snoring prevents restorative sleep necessary for repair and health, and is often linked to mouth breathing, especially during allergy season when nasal passages are clogged. Over-breathing during the day can carry over into the night, exacerbating snoring. Techniques like myofunctional therapy or simply training to breathe lightly through the nose can stiffen airway tissues and reduce constriction.
Mouth Taping for Nasal Breathing
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(01:13:38)
  • Key Takeaway: Mouth taping, using simple micropore surgical tape, is an effective reminder for mouth breathers to convert to nasal breathing, significantly improving sleep quality for many.
  • Summary: Approximately 60-65% of people sleep with an open mouth, increasing susceptibility to snoring and mild sleep apnea. Wearing a small piece of micropore tape at night acts as a reminder to keep the mouth closed and breathe nasally, which can lead to increased energy and clarity upon waking. It is recommended to acclimate by wearing the tape for short periods during the day before attempting nighttime use.
CO2 Levels and Indoor Air Quality
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(01:21:40)
  • Key Takeaway: Indoor environments, especially modern buildings and airplanes, often have dangerously high CO2 levels (1500+ ppm) from recycled air, which demonstrably decreases cognitive function and test scores.
  • Summary: Nasal breathing is superior because it results in fewer, deeper breaths, conserving energy and preventing the offloading of carbon dioxide that causes vasoconstriction. High indoor CO2 levels, measured by exhaled breath concentration, can cause headaches, lethargy, and significantly impair cognitive performance, as shown in studies on students in poorly ventilated classrooms. Opening windows or using plants like snake plants can mitigate these effects by introducing fresh air.
Asthma and Carbon Dioxide Tolerance
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(01:33:59)
  • Key Takeaway: Asthma symptoms are strongly linked to a very low tolerance for carbon dioxide, causing asthmatics to overbreathe and trigger attacks when CO2 levels rise.
  • Summary: Asthmatics often habituate to mouth breathing and over-breathing, causing their bodies to perceive normal CO2 increases as an emergency, leading to constriction and attacks. The Buteko method, researched over 70 years ago, shows that slowing breathing down and learning to hold the breath briefly can build CO2 tolerance, keeping airways open and reducing symptoms. For general fitness, in-through-the-nose, out-through-the-nose breathing is generally more beneficial than in-through-the-nose, out-through-the-mouth.