Breath by James Nestor

I read Breath by James Nestor this week.

It really, really bothers me that the book starts (preface, xix) with the claim that diet and exercise don’t matter if you aren’t breathing correctly. I wouldn’t mind a claim that breathing’s impact on health is dramatically underappreciated or overlooked—that would pique my interest enough. Or even that the author believes breathing is more important than diet and exercise. I would be skeptical yet intrigued to read on. But to claim that what we eat and how active we are don’t matter? Come on. It makes me very skeptical and pits me against the author from the outset. While I think I did an ok job keeping an open mind to the content of the book, it took me a while to get past that. That claim seems like a classic “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like nail” situation. The author has spent years writing a book about breathing, so breath is the only thing. Maybe the editor or publisher is to blame for that claim, which is also placed on the inside cover—idk—but it really bugs me. And maybe that’s their goal, i.e. it’s provocative. It gets me thinking about the book and likely to talk about it to others. If that’s the case it seems like it worked because this book is very popular, like many other pop health/bro science books of late.

Ok so, I had to wait all the way until the epilogue (206), but he rephrased that preposterous claim in a way that I can accept. I’m still glad I read the book. It got me thinking about my breath, and I count that as a good thing.

It’s interesting how when you read Why We Sleep, sleep is obviously the most important thing, and when you read How Not To Die, everything hinges on a plant-based diet. And here, breath is most important. I’m not yet convinced that breath belongs in my mental model of the Three Pillars of Health: sleep, diet, and exercise.