What Does the Way We Breathe Tell Us About the World We Live In?

We breathe around 20,000 times a day, yet breathing rarely enters the same conversations as diet, exercise or sleep. It is something most of us do without thinking, an unconscious function that simply keeps us alive.

But according to James Nestor, that assumption misses something fundamental.

“There are so many different ways to breathe,” says Nestor, the bestselling author of Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art. “And each of those ways will affect your body, will affect how you think, will affect your energy levels, your ability to sleep, your ability to control your nervous system, and so much more.”

It is this deceptively simple act, and its relationship with the world around us, that Nestor will explore when he joins the Goodwood Health Summit, presented by Randox Health, as keynote speaker on Thursday 1 October 2026.

This year's theme, Breathing and the Microbiome, brings together science, medicine and environmental health to examine how the way we breathe, and what we breathe, may influence human health.

A body living in a modern world

One of the questions at the heart of Nestor's work is whether the environments we have created for ourselves are compatible with the biology we evolved with.

“We've chosen to live in an industrialised world,” he says. “But that doesn't mean that our bodies have evolved or adapted to this world that we've put them in.”

Modern life has changed how we move, work and spend our time. We spend much of our lives indoors and seated, often hunched over screens. According to Nestor, this can affect breathing both physically and psychologically.

A collapsed posture can restrict the movement of the diaphragm, while stress can cause breathing to become faster and shallower. That, in turn, can contribute to a feedback loop in which shallow breathing and stress reinforce one another.

The implications extend beyond breathing itself.

If our physical environment can influence the way we breathe, then the quality of that environment, from the air inside our homes and workplaces to the pollution outside them, becomes part of the health conversation.

The microbiome beyond the gut

The microbiome is most commonly associated with the gut, but Nestor points to a broader ecosystem within the body.

“There is an oral microbiome as well. And there's a nasal microbiome as well,” he says. “All of these things need to be balanced.”

For Nestor, this is an emerging area of science that could change how we understand the relationship between breathing and health. The mouth and nose are not simply passageways for air: they are home to complex microbial communities that interact with the wider body.

He is particularly interested in the way science is beginning to connect the oral microbiome with wider health outcomes, and in how some of these ideas echo practices that have been understood in different cultures for centuries.

It also challenges our tendency to look for increasingly complex solutions to modern health problems.

“We always think there's something better in the future,” says Nestor. Yet, he argues, some of the most interesting developments in health science are rediscoveries of things understood decades, or centuries, ago.

The case for keeping health simple

Nestor is sceptical of the increasingly complicated world of health optimisation and biohacking, where supplements, devices and interventions can sometimes overshadow the fundamentals.

“What the body really wants is to be returned to the place in which it understands the world and the environment,” he says.

He describes this as a search for ‘bio harmony’: returning to simple, fundamental behaviours rather than constantly adding more interventions.

That philosophy extends to breathing.

For Nestor, one of the most important fundamentals is nasal breathing. He argues that, when we are sedentary or at rest, breathing through the nose should be our default. The nose is designed to slow, warm and filter incoming air before it reaches the lungs.

Importantly, he distinguishes this from deliberate breathing practices. Conscious breathing techniques, such as those found in Pranayama or Kundalini through to the Wim Hof Method can intentionally alter breathing patterns for particular purposes, he explains, but they are different from the unconscious breathing patterns we maintain throughout the day and night.

The distinction matters in a world where information about health can quickly become overwhelming.

Rather than another complicated protocol, Nestor's message is surprisingly straightforward: pay attention to the fundamentals.

What are we actually breathing?

Perhaps the most provocative part of the conversation is what happens when we move beyond the individual and look at the environments in which we live.

Nestor has spent recent years investigating indoor carbon dioxide levels, including taking measurements in hotels, classrooms and other enclosed spaces. He is particularly concerned about buildings where ventilation systems continually recycle indoor air and where windows cannot be opened.

His argument is that air quality should be treated as a public health issue rather than simply a matter of comfort.

Schools are one example. Nestor describes working with schools to measure indoor CO₂ levels and argues that poor indoor air quality can affect cognitive performance and learning.

It is a useful shift in perspective. We often talk about our environment in terms of what we eat, the water we drink or the chemicals we encounter. But breathing is perhaps our most constant physical exchange with the world around us.

Every breath is an interaction with our environment.

From personal health to public health

This is where the conversation around breathing becomes bigger than individual wellbeing.

The question is no longer simply “How should I breathe?” It becomes: What kind of environments are we asking human bodies to breathe in?

For Nestor, this is where the conversation needs to move beyond individuals and towards the people and organisations capable of changing the environments in which we live, work, learn and travel.

He sees the Goodwood Health Summit, presented by Randox Health as an opportunity to bring those different perspectives together; researchers, clinicians, policymakers, businesses and others whose decisions can influence health at a broader level.

“If you're going to affect things on a broader scale, you have to bring together people from the outside,” he says.

It is a fitting ambition for a Summit that deliberately places science, environment and public health alongside personal health.

Because breathing may be something we do individually, but the conditions in which we breathe are something we create collectively.

And perhaps that is the bigger question: if the environments we have created are changing the way we breathe, what responsibility do we have to change those environments in return?

Goodwood Health Summit 2026

The Goodwood Health Summit, presented by Randox Health, takes place on Thursday 1 October 2026 and explores Breathing and the Microbiome.

Hosted by Dr Chris van Tulleken, the Summit will bring together leading voices in science, medicine and environmental health to explore how breathing influences the body at a systems level, how modern environments are changing what and how we breathe, and what this could mean for the future of preventative and public health.

Join the online audience >