What’s the difference between breathing in through your nose and mouth? And why it’s recommended to do it through the nose?
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The nose has sticky hairs that filter out particles like dust, pollen, and some germs. And your nose warms and moistens the air
Edited typo
Your nose airways have special structures that heat up and moisturize the incoming air before it hits the lungs. The walls of the airways are also covered in mucus to which bacteria, dust etc. tend to stick, and they also have specialized cells with structures that make kinda sweeping motions to get those stuck bacteria and dust particles back out the way they came. So when breathing through your nose your lungs are overall better protected from the dangers of the outside air.
Your nose is basically an air purifier.
You have lots of little hairs that help absorb particles and block other things. Also, in the process of breathing your nose and traveling through your meat tubage, the air gets warmed up and humidified. This is easier for your lungs to process than straight colder/ dry air is.
Bonus fun fact for CPAP users (breathing machines for sleep apnea) they have water humidifiers for this very reason. Without it the dry air being forced into your nose can cause all sorts of irritation, it needs the warmer air to be more accessible and useable to your body (still not always a perfect system though).
The nose is designed to warm and moisten the air, and also limit bacteria and particles from getting down into the lungs. This is good, and keeps your lungs in peak health.
You can take air in faster through the mouth, but at the expense of directly pulling in more junk, and colder drier air (which can cause inflammation or reduce the lung’s ability to get oxygen from the air).
It’s not uncommon for martial artists and certain athletes to be taught to breath in through their nose and out through their mouth.
Answers pretty much have covered it, but I’ll add that mouth breathing during your developmental years can even result to bad craniofacial-dental growth.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7944632/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7944632/)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4295456/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4295456/)
In addition to the other reasons given, breathing through the mouth dries out your mouth and throat, which leads to the body producing mucus to compensate, which can cause choking, which can wake you up dozens of times a night.
Because of a deviated septum, my nose was 95% blocked. To get anything approaching a decent night’s sleep, I had to get a septoplasty and then retrain myself to breathe through my nose.
Breathing through your mouth is so bad for you, it literally changes the shape of your skull and especially your mouth , gives you chronic overbite and baaaad breath ! Also ruins your quality of sleep massively
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Another factor I have not seen mentioned is that breathing in through the mouth can cause muscles in the neck to tighten up. Years ago I had a massage therapist who noticed that my neck was always extremely tight, and she mentioned that I should try to consciously breathe in through my nose as much as possible. I did do this, and then gradually started doing it subconsciously, as well. On my next appointment a month later, she was amazed at how much looser my neck muscles were. She was mostly amazed and flattered that somebody had taken her advice on something.
A lot of people have given you an answer regarding purification, humidification, etc. Which is all correct and the better “ELI5” answer. But something that no one talks about is that you also REALLY miss out the benefits of your body’s natural nitric oxide production/consumption, if you choose to mouth breathe.
More about your sinuses and their NO production:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9516187/
Nitric oxide is absolutely fantastic for your entire cardiopulmonary system and promotes better ventilation across the blood barrier in the alveoli. Better oxygenation. Decreased pulmonary vascular resistance. It’s amazing stuff and your sinuses do this on their own!
In healthcare, sometimes we have patients who aren’t ventilating well — despite being intubated. So we will actually hook them up to a machine that will actually [administer extra nitric oxide](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32102645/) via the ventilator circuit. This, again, will significantly help patient’s with their pulmonary vascular resistance + significantly improve their oxygenation. While I can really crank up the dosage, it’s often surprising to see how even tiny doses can make a patient stay above a normal oxygenation level.
Breath through your nose!
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