The Exercises That Can Fix Sinus Problems (And More)

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⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Peripheral neuropathy (depending on the cause) most commonly affects people’s feet.

  • Today’s featured video has three exercises to keep it at bay and help heal damage.

• As a species, we are very good at many things, but breathing is not one of them.

  • Anatomically speaking, our airways have become all messed up. Each of these changes was “payment” for an evolutionary advantage we got from moving something around the way we did, but it does mean that—as a species—our breathing sucks.

  • This is only further exacerbated by a modern diet (containing more processed foods) that has changed:

    • how we eat, and thus

    • how we chew (or don’t), and thus

    • the bone structure of our faces, and thus

    • how we breathe, and thus

    • a lot of knock-on health problems

  • There are two important things we can do to fix this, however (see today’s main feature for details)

• Of all the cognitive activities we can do to keep our brains young, keeping our language skills polished is one of the most critical (use it or lose it!)

  • Today’s sponsor Babbel offers an easy, fun, and useful (because as a bonus, you learn another language) way to do just that

Read on to learn about these things and more…

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

Top 3 Exercises for Peripheral Neuropathy

In this short (3:33) video, Dr. John Magee of Westchase Physical Therapy offers three beneficial exercises against peripheral neuropathy of the feet:

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💀 MAIN FEATURE

Who nose what benefits you will gain today?

This is James Nestor, a science journalist and author. He’s written for many publications, including Scientific American, and written a number of books, most notably Breath: The New Science Of A Lost Art.

Today we’ll be looking at what he has to share about what has gone wrong with our breathing, what problems this causes, and how to fix it.

What has gone wrong?

When it comes to breathing, we humans are the pugs of the primate world. In a way, we have the opposite problem to the squashed-faced dogs, though. But, how and why?

When our ancestors learned first tenderize food, and later to cook it, this had two big effects:

1. We could now get much more nutrition for much less hunting/gathering

2. We now did not need to chew our food nearly so much

Getting much more nutrition for much less hunting/gathering is what allowed us to grow our brains so large—as a species, we have a singularly large brain-to-body size ratio.

Not needing to chew our food nearly so much, meanwhile, had even more effects… And these effects have become only more pronounced in recent decades with the rise of processed food making our food softer and softer.

It changed the shape of our jaw and cheekbones, just as the size of our brains taking up more space in our skull moved our breathing apparatus around. As a result, our nasal cavities are anatomically ridiculous, our sinuses are a crime against nature (not least of all because they drain backwards and get easily clogged), and our windpipes are very easily blocked and damaged due to the unique placement of our larynx; we’re the only species that has it there. It allowed us to develop speech, but at the cost of choking much more easily.

What problems does this cause?

Our (normal, to us) species-wide breathing problems have resulted in behavioral adaptations such as partial (or in some people’s cases, total or near-total) mouth-breathing. This in turn exacerbates the problems with our jaws and cheekbones, which in turn exacerbates the problems with our sinuses and nasal cavities in general.

Results include such very human-centric conditions as sleep apnea, as well as a tendency towards asthma, allergies, and autoimmune diseases. Improper breathing also brings about a rather sluggish metabolism for how many calories we consume.

How are we supposed to fix all that?!

First, close your mouth if you haven’t already, and breathe through your nose.

In and out.

Both are important, and unless you are engaging in peak exercise, both should be through your nose. If you’re not used to this, it may feel odd at first, but practice, and build up your breathing ability.

Six seconds in and six seconds out is a very good pace.

If you’re sitting doing a breathing exercise, also good is four seconds in, four seconds hold, four seconds out, four seconds hold, repeat.

But those frequent holds aren’t practical in general life, so: six seconds in, six seconds out.

Through your nose only.

This has benefits immediately, but there are other more long-term benefits from doing not just that, but also what has been called (by Nestor, amongst many others), “Mewing”, per the orthodontist, Dr. John Mew, who pioneered it.

How (and why) to “mew”:

Place your tongue against the roof of your mouth. It should be flat against the palate; you’re not touching it with the tip here; you’re creating a flat seal.

This does two things:

1. It obliges nose-breathing rather than mouth-breathing

2. It creates a change in how the muscles of your face interact with the bones of your face

In a battle between muscle and bone, muscle will always win.

Aim to keep your tongue there as much as possible; make it your new best habit. If you’re not eating, talking, or otherwise using your tongue to do something, it should be flat against the roof of your mouth.

You don’t have to exert pressure; this isn’t an exercise regime. Think of it more as a postural exercise, just, inside your mouth.

Why would we want to do that?

The result, over time, will tend to be much healthier breathing, better sinus health, freer airways, reduced or eliminated sleep apnea, and, as a bonus, what is generally considered a more attractive face in terms of bone structure. We’re talking more defined cheekbones, straighter teeth, and a better mouth position.

Want to learn more?

This is the “Mewing” technique that Nestor encourages us to try:

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❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

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Please do visit our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free

🌍 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

• Does long-term, daily low-dose aspirin treatment affect the incidence of stroke or intracerebral bleeding?

• The impact of medicinal plants on the gut microbiome in cancer

• How does the Mediterranean Diet impact the gut microbiome and cognitive performance?

• Fragrance at night boosts older adults’ memory

• Your gut microbiome is linked to your fitness and biological age

• The evolving emergence of alpha-gal syndrome in the United States

• Childhood trauma can lead to physical and cognitive impairments in old age

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

The Diabetes Code: Prevent and Reverse Type 2 Diabetes Naturally – by Dr. Jason Fung

"Cure this serious disease with diet!" is often a bold-claim that overreaches scientific rigor, but in this case, it's well-established as scientifically valid.

Caveat up-front: the only known circumstance in which this won't work is if you have comorbidities that prevent you from following the advice.

You may be wondering: is this just the Mediterranean diet again? The answer is that the Mediterreanean diet (or similar) is part of it. But there's a lot more to this book than that.

Dr. Fung explains to us a lot of the physiology of type 2 diabetes; how insulin resistance occurs, how it becomes a vicious cycle that we get locked into, and how to escape it.

• We learn about the role of fructose, and why fruit is very healthful whereas high-fructose corn syrup and similars are very much not.

• We learn about the role of the liver in glycogen metabolism, and how to un-fatty a fatty liver. Good news: the liver has famously strong self-regenerative abilities, if we give it a break to allow it to do so!

• We learn why portion control doesn't work, and why intermittent fasting does (here be science).

Dr. Fung's very readable explanations are free from needless jargon while not dumbing down. The writing style is clear and direct: "this happens this way", "do this, not that", etc.

Bottom line: if you have type 2 diabetes and would like to not have that (or if you are pre-diabetic and would like to avoid diabetes) this is a book for you. If you are in great metabolic health and would like to stay that way as you get older, then this is a book for you too.

Click here to check out The Diabetes Code, and get/keep your metabolic health in order!

Wishing you the very best of health in every way,

The 10almonds Team