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BREATHE THROUGH YOUR NOSE The day Olsson and I removed the plugs and tape, our blood pressure dropped, carbon dioxide levels rose, and heart rates normalized. Snoring decreased nine-fold from the mouthbreathing phase, from several hours a night to a few minutes. Within two days, neither of us was snoring at all. The bacterial infection in my nose quickly cleared up without treatment. Olsson and I had cured ourselves by breathing through our noses. Ann Kearney, the doctor of speech-language pathology at the Stanford Voice and Swallowing Center, was so impressed by our data and her own transformation overcoming congestion and mouthbreathing that, at this writing, she is putting together a two-year study with 500 subjects to research the effects of sleep tape on snoring and sleep apnea. The benefits of nasal breathing extended beyond the bedroom. I increased my performance on the stationary bike by about 10 percent. (Olsson had more modest gains, about 5 percent.) These results paled in comparison to the gains reported by sports training expert John Douillard, but I couldn’t imagine any athlete who wouldn’t want a 10 percent—or even a 1 percent—advantage over a competitor.
In a series of studies starting in 2012, the researchers put hardened marines, elite adventure racers, and ordinary people through the fMRI tests. Some members of the control groups panicked and had to be removed from the scanner, but the elite performers handled the scenario with ease. In fact, while the control groups got worse at the cognitive task when their breathing was restricted, the elite groups actually got better—precisely the sort of performance under stress that enables you to dig a little deeper when the stakes are highest, whether in the heat of combat or at the end of a multi-day adventure race. Before the breathing restriction starts, the athletes already have higher levels of activity in their insular cortex—consistent with the idea that they’ve become adept at monitoring their own signals. “Typically, athletes are pretty in tune with their body awareness,” Lori Haase, another of Paulus’s colleagues, told me. They’re in a state of watchful anticipation, ready to handle any discomfort that arises. Then, when the flow of air is restricted and the discomfort begins, the situation flips: insular cortex activity stays low in the athletes, but goes haywire in the controls and in people with anxiety and related problems. Paulus draws a direct link between these findings and the research of Noakes and others on the importance of perceived effort in endurance. First, heightened internal awareness allows elite endurance athletes to anticipate and prepare for unpleasantness, avoiding the all-important mismatch between expected and actual effort described by Tucker. Then, subduing the natural reaction (or overreaction) to discomfort—what Marcora calls response inhibition—allows them to push on. So how do you train your insular cortex?
This was the record and song that’d take me my farthest into the pop mainstream. I was always of two minds about big records and the chance involved in engaging a mass audience. You should be. There’s risk. Was the effort of seeking that audience worth the exposure, the discomfort of the spotlight and the amount of life that’d be handed over? What was the danger of dilution of your core message, your purpose, the reduction of your best intentions to empty symbolism or worse? On “Born in the USA,” I experienced all these things, but that audience can also let you know how powerful and durable your music might be, and its potential impact upon your fans’ lives and the culture. So you take those steps tenderly, until you reach the chasm, and then you jump, for there is no steadily inclining path to the big big time. There is always that engulfing abyss where each traveler measures his next move, questions his motives.
Born to Run
Bruce Springsteen
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