James Nestor, author of ‘Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art,’ joins Derek to dive into the science of breathing
Today’s episode is about the science of breathing—from the evolution of our sinuses and palate, to the downsides of mouth breathing and the upsides of nasal breathing, to specific breath techniques that you can use to reduce stress and fall asleep fast. Our guest is James Nestor, the author of the bestselling book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art.
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In the following excerpt, Derek and James Nestor break down how changes to the human diet led to the shrinking of our mouths and, consequently, our nasal cavities.
Derek Thompson: This incredibly interesting question of how modern humans became poor breathers led you to the Morton Collection at the University of Pennsylvania. Let’s start here. What is the Morton Collection, and what did you learn there?
James Nestor: I had heard that the human face has been shrinking over the past several centuries, and I had seen pictures of it, and I had talked to people who attested to this, but I hadn’t seen it myself in real life. And I wanted to see this, for a number of reasons, journalistically and personally, because it’s such a weird fact that I had never heard in any college class, any high school class, and it seemed to be pretty significant. So I went out to the University of Pennsylvania, which is the home of the Morton Collection.
And the Morton Collection is the largest assemblage of preindustrial skulls in the world. So they have hundreds and hundreds of these things from Asia, Africa, U.S., wherever. And you go into this place and you’re amidst all of these rows of skulls, and they’re all smiling back at you with perfectly straight teeth. And it just makes you wonder what has happened. Why did 90 percent of us have some sort of deformation in our mouths, and why did all of our ancestors have perfectly straight teeth? So it proved to me what I had been hearing for months and months: that this is real and it merited further investigation.
Thompson: You write that the story of our smaller faces, our cramped mouths and cramped sinuses, is really a story about our brains and a story about the industrial revolution. I know this is a story that takes place over a very, very long period of time, but in your own relatively brisk recounting, how did our faces shrink?
Nestor: I’ll give you the elevator pitch on this one. So if you look at how they naturally shrunk through the different eras of human evolution, a lot of this happened when we learned how to cook food, specifically cook meat, and we gained a lot more calories a lot more quickly. And what happened is our brains started growing very, very quickly compared to any other time in human history. And as our brains started growing, they took away real estate from the front of our faces, including our mouths. We didn’t need such huge mouths and such huge teeth when we were eating softer, more processed foods. And what I mean by processed is foods that we had put into the fire and we had learned how to cook.
So that combination of these softer foods and those more calories allowed our brains to grow much quicker. And this is not a hypothesis. You can see this right at Homo erectus. The reason why that species was so successful is because they grew a brain so quickly, evolutionarily speaking.
Thompson: So our brains are stealing face from our sinuses and palate. You write, “When mouths don’t grow wide enough, the roof of the mouth tends to rise up instead of out, forming what’s called a V-shaped or high-arched palate. The upward growth impedes the development of the nasal cavity, shrinking it and disrupting the delicate structures in the nose. The reduced nasal space leads to obstruction and inhibits airflow. Overall, humans have the sad distinction of being the most plugged-up species on earth.”
Expand on that for a bit. Compared to our ancient ancestors and also compared to our current fellow mammals, we have much smaller palates. This affects our ability to breathe. What are the consequences of this scrunched face that we live with thanks to the invention of fire?
Nestor: So all of those evolutionary changes that I just mentioned took place over tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years. So we had an ability to adapt to them. So our ancient ancestors with those larger brains and slightly smaller mouths were breathing just fine. They were still perfect. They were functioning perfectly. What I’m talking about from the last passage you just mentioned is all of this sudden, very sudden, rapid change that occurred with industrialization, when our entire food supply changed in a single generation. And that’s when our mouths shrunk precipitously, that the rest of our bodies couldn’t keep up with them. And that’s why we all have crooked teeth.
So those are two slightly different things going on here, but nonetheless, the result is, yeah, we’re completely screwed up. And if you don’t believe me, go look in the mirror, and go ask yourself, “Did you have braces? Did you have teeth pulled? Did you have your wisdom teeth pulled? Do you have breathing problems? Do you have a plugged-up nose?” And the vast majority of people say yes to those questions.
This excerpt was edited for clarity. Listen to the rest of the episode here and follow the Plain English feed on Spotify.
Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: James Nestor
Producer: Devon Baroldi
Subscribe: Spotify