Table of Contents
By James Nestor
Science has begun measuring what the ancient Tibetans understood intuitively: lung capacity corresponds to healthy aging. In the 1980s, researchers with the Framingham Study—a seventy-year longitudinal research program focused on heart disease—attempted to find out if lung size really did correlate to longevity.
The researchers gathered two decades of data from 5,200 subjects, crunched the numbers, and discovered that one of the greatest indicators of lifespan wasn’t necessarily genetics, diet, or the amount of daily exercise, as many had suspected. Rather, it was lung capacity. Our ability to breathe full breaths, according to the researchers, appears to be “literally a measure of living capacity.”
What neither of these landmark studies addressed, however, was how a person with deteriorated lungs might heal and strengthen them. There were surgeries to remove diseased tissue, and drugs to stem infections, but no advice on how to keep lungs large and healthy throughout life.
The Lungs Capacity
The lungs generally lose about twelve percent of capacity from the age of thirty to fifty and will continue declining even faster as we get older, with women faring worse than men. If we make it to the age of eighty, we are expected to take in thirty percent less air than we did in our twenties. We’re forced to breathe faster and harder—a habit that leads to chronic conditions such as high blood pressure, immune disorders, and anxiety.
But what Tibetans have long known and what Western science is now finally discovering is that aging doesn’t have to be a one-way path of decline. The internal organs are malleable, and we can change them nearly any time.
Force Of Will
Freedivers know this better than anyone. Herbert Nitsch, a multiple world record holder, reportedly has a lung capacity of fourteen liters—more than double that of the average male. Neither Nitsch nor any of the other freedivers were naturally built like that; they made their lungs larger through practice and force of will. They taught themselves how to breathe in ways that dramatically changed the internal organs of their bodies.
Fortunately, diving down hundreds of feet is not required. Any regular practice that stretches the lungs and keeps them flexible can retain or increase lung capacity. Moderate exercise such as walking or cycling has been shown to boost lung size by up to fifteen percent.
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James Nestor is an author and journalist who has written for Scientific American, Outside, The New York Times, and more. His latest book, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, explores how the human species has lost the ability to breathe properly—and how to get it back. Breath was awarded the Best General Nonfiction Book by the American Society of Journalists and Authors and was a Finalist for Science Book of the Year by the Royal Society. Nestor has spoken at Stanford Medical School, Harvard Medical School, the United Nations, and more. He lives and breathes in San Francisco. Learn more at Mrjamesnestor.com.
Well Being Journal adapted the above excerpt from Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor published on May 26, 2020 by Riverhead, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2020 James Nestor.
