Name: The fastest way to reduce stress (in seconds)
Uploaded: 2025-07-17T08:51:37.000Z
Duration: 9 min 33 s
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Something that seems so natural and simple, and yet, apparently we're all doing it completely wrong.

You're probably breathing wrong. 95% of us are breathing wrong.

You've been breathing wrong your entire life.

OK, so people say a lot of things on the Internet, but today we're going to talk about breathing and breathwork and what the science actually says.

First, is there a proper way to breathe in everyday life that can optimize your body and brain or hurt you if you're not doing it right?

Second, can practicing breathwork make you a healthier, less anxious and happier person?

And finally, we're going to finish off this video with a really simple breathing trick that has been shown experimentally to calm down the nervous system and minimize stress within seconds to minutes.

First, let's quickly understand what's happening to your body when you breathe.

Apart from the oxygen entering into your bloodstream and being taken around your body to your cells and CO2 and other waste gas leaving your body when you breathe out, every time you breathe, you activate a lot of nerves in your body.

Breathe in and the sympathetic nervous system is activated.

Your heart rate increases and noradrenaline is released, which can perk you up.

Breathe out and the parasympathetic system gets triggered, which relaxes the body.

In fact, every time you breathe in, your diaphragm moves down and stretches the heart a little, making it bigger.

This means the blood travels a little more slowly and your brain sends a signal to speed up your heart rate.

And whenever you breathe out, the heart gets a little smaller, pushing the blood through faster and the brain tells the heart to slow down a little.

Because of this mechanism, focusing on your out-breath can actually bring down your heart rate and bump your parasympathetic activity, ultimately calming you down.

And when you focus on slowly breathing, there's evidence it can even increase the activity of the neurotransmitter GABA in your brain, which further calms down nerves.

Now, researchers found when it comes to emotional regulation, breathwork may actually be more effective than something like mindful meditation.

One study had four different breathwork groups studied.

One that breathed in and out equally using something called box breathing.

And finally, the mindful meditation group as a control, which didn't focus on their breathing.

They would spend five minutes a day doing this for a month.

And the study found that while all groups saw improvement, the breathwork groups felt more positive, less stressed and less anxious than the control.

But the group that performed best was the long exhale group.

This type of breathing is called cyclic sighing, which we'll go over later.

And in the study, this group's breathing actually ended up slowing down the most, suggesting they were the most physically relaxed.

Not just while they were doing the breathing, their average respiratory rate over the month went down.

And many studies have found similar results when it comes to overall stress, mood and anxiety levels.

But it's important to take a step back and emphasize that the effect size of this wasn't like monumental.

It's not like the subjects suddenly became Buddhas or the happiest people you know, just that there is a measurable improvement that makes you feel better, which makes the next claim a little more surprising.

Breathing exercises have actually been found to help with things like depression and PTSD.

In these cases, the subjects worked with therapists or very focused breathing workshops that they would take for a week and then continued on their own for 20 minutes a day over six weeks.

In these instances, depression scores dropped significantly.

A study on US veterans found breathwork techniques to be as effective as traditional therapy in reducing PTSD.

Though it is important to note that some of these studies included faster breathing techniques that weren't just focused on slow exhales.

Now, are you breathing through your mouth or through your nose?

In general, it's suggested that nose breathing is better.

Some studies show it provides more oxygen because the higher resistance in the nose allows you to actually inflate the lungs more.

But your nose also has a better capacity to protect against infection.

After all, you've got nose hairs and membranes to help moisturize and warm up the air before it goes to your lungs.

Mouth breathing at night can also cause issues.

You're more likely to snore, trigger sleep apnea where you stop breathing at night and get an extremely dry mouth.

Less saliva can impact your teeth health as well.

Some research even suggests that mouth breathing over long periods, especially for kids, can change your face shape.

So in general, physicians do recommend you focus on nose breathing if you can.

But of course, most people are switching back and forth between them, especially depending on your activity level at the moment.

If you're an average person without any specific breathing issues, you're probably already balancing the two pretty well, so don't hyperfixate on this and just know that nose breathing is generally considered better.

Breathing exercises can also improve your sleep.

This has even been found in studies on at-risk kids who were given mindfulness training and breathwork techniques.

In fact, this study was not even about sleeping or telling the kids how to improve their sleep, but the result from the practices had them sleeping an hour more on average, and when measuring their brain waves, saw a marked improvement in REM sleep, which is critical for brain development.

This claim gets made a lot, and I personally find the evidence a little less compelling, but it's still worth mentioning.

Research has shown examples of people retaining more information when nose breathing than mouth breathing.

And when doing breathwork that focuses on more rigorous inhalation, some studies have found that memory and reaction times improve.

So if you're studying or trying to learn, maybe make a breathwork focus on inhalation and the sympathetic nervous system as opposed to trying to calm down the system.

And while obviously false claims about curing cancer or other diseases get thrown around from time to time, there is evidence that breathwork can help with pain management.

Whether it's patients undergoing chemotherapy or those recovering from physical injuries, pain scores regularly decrease with breathwork training.

Some studies have even shown that in the moment of taking on pain, whether it's extreme cold or heat, breathing techniques can lower pain sensations.

Though it's still unclear why, some hypothesize that the cardiovascular changes in the body are somehow minimizing the pain, while others believe it's because of attentional reallocation, expectations, stress reduction, and or emotional modulation.

But perhaps the most amazing thing that I've come across when it comes to breathwork is that as little as five minutes a day can change physical health markers, particularly blood pressure, more than some exercise and even prescription drugs.

There's a specific maneuver called High Resistance Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training, or IMST, and it was developed as a way to help critically ill respiratory disease patients strengthen their diaphragm and other breathing muscles.

The difference here is that they're inhaling through a handheld device that provides resistance or suction in the other direction.

It's almost like sucking a milkshake through a straw.

After using the device for five minutes a day over six weeks, systolic blood pressure dropped nine points on average, which is more than you would typically see from adding a 30-minute walk five times per week or the effect seen from some prescribed drugs.

And this is a huge deal, given that 65% of adults over 50 have high blood pressure, and the majority do not meet the recommended exercise guidelines.

This could play a role in minimizing one of the leading killers, cardiovascular disease.

Not only is it efficient, it's effective.

But even without the use of a contraption, we can all get the benefit of breath work in minutes, and we're gonna go over the most effective technique right now.

It's called cyclic sighing, which I mentioned earlier.

Doing even one of these breaths is the fastest physiologically verified way to reduce your levels of stress and reintroduce calm in seconds, according to some scientists.

And if repeated for five minutes once a day, can greatly reduce stress in your life.

Just make sure that you're doing this somewhere safe and relaxing, because it could cause you to become a little lightheaded or dizzy temporarily.

So the idea here is that you're gonna do a quick and intense breath through your nose, hold it for a split second, and then breathe in again that little bit extra that you can.

Then you're gonna release that breath more slowly through your mouth.

You can find some guided versions of this with Andrew Huberman online if you want to do the practice that goes for minutes at a time.

The idea here is that extra little breath not only forces your alveoli to open up more and allows you to take in more oxygen, but it also allows you to offload more carbon dioxide when you breathe out.

And doing it just a few times is enough to trigger your parasympathetic nervous system and calm down your nerves, especially in a moment of high stress.

Whereas doing it for five minutes a day can boost your overall mood and bring down your stress levels in a more sustained way that's supported by research.

All of this to say that breath work can have a significant impact on your body and mental health, but it's important to remember that a lot of the claims do get exaggerated.

I think my main takeaway from all this research is that it's a lot like meditation.

It can be profoundly positive in your life, but it's become super trendy so a lot of claims get over-exaggerated.

It's just a super simple and time-efficient way to address anxiety and stress in your life, both in the immediate and in the chronic forms.

Not to mention it's free with very low risk.

And now that we're all sufficiently calm and relaxed, if you wanna hear Greg and I chat more about this, different techniques, our experiences with it, and other research, we have a podcast episode on Sidenote.

You can check it out on YouTube or where you listen to podcasts.

Appreciate all of you who leave likes and comments.