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Category Archives: Mind Building
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Nose Breathing During Exercise
I’ve continued practicing the exercises from The Oxygen Advantage for the past several days, and this morning I hit a nice exercise-related milestone.
I decided to take the past two days off from running. Instead I went for walks and practiced reducing my breathing while also doing some breath holds. I figured that some extra practice on the breathing side could be helpful.
This morning I went back to running, figuring I’d continue the interval approach. I decided that if I was going to do intervals anyway, I might as well see what it’s like to skip the 15-minute walking warmup. I wanted to know if that part was even making much difference. So I just walked for two minutes and then started running. That’s what I used to do before I’d read The Oxygen Advantage.
I ran a familiar route where the first half is mostly downhill, and the second half is uphill. I figured that I could probably handle a hill better if it was later in the run, so I’d be more warmed up. I’d previously figured out that nose breathing while running gets easier after about 30 minutes.
The first minute was the most difficult, like I wasn’t getting quite enough air. I felt that I might make it about 2-3 minutes before having to step it down to walking for a couple of minutes. Then I could build up to longer intervals like I did last week. But I kept going even though it felt uncomfortable to breathe this way, and my breathing soon stabilized. After 3-4 minutes, I felt like I could keep going and felt optimistic that I could do an hour of nose breathing running without having to step down to walking.
That turned out to be true. I ran for 70 minutes with nose breathing continuously – my first time ever doing a full run that way.
I ran about 10-15% slower than I used to do with mouth breathing, but I’m happy that I was able to do it. I figure I can build back up my speed as my body adapts better to nose breathing.
I didn’t think I’d be able to reach this point so quickly, so that was a nice surprise. I do think that doing more breathing practice for the past two days likely helped.
In the second half of the run, I also did about a dozen breath holds, usually for 12-13 paces. These are harder when going uphill, so sometimes I only made it 10 paces. Note that breath holds are done after exhaling, so the lungs are mostly empty.
I felt like my breathing wasn’t quite where I wanted it to be for much of the run. It seemed a bit heavier than before, even though I was still breathing through my nose the whole time. Interestingly I found that my breathing got lighter at around 55 minutes, during the uphill portion. The last 15 minutes of the run actually felt pretty nice, like I was getting a taste of what it could feel like to nose breathe while running and have it feel comfortable and natural.
I’d love it if my entire runs could eventually feel like those last 15 minutes – with relaxed breathing through my nose.
It’s an interesting challenge to coax my body into a different behavioral pattern, knowing that it’s going to feel uncomfortable for a while. My body breathes heavier as if it needs more oxygen, but it actually doesn’t. It just needs to build up more tolerance for carbon dioxide.
A key point that The Oxygen Advantage makes is that you know you’re making progress when you feel the desire to take a bigger breath. It’s the discomfort of holding back on that bigger breath that helps you progress.
It’s uncomfortable to breathe more shallowly when my body signals that it wants more air. It’s hard to sip air when my body would rather gulp it.
Running while nose breathing doesn’t feel nearly as comfortable as it felt with mouth breathing. I wonder how long it will take for running with nose breathing to feel normal and natural throughout – or even better than my old mouth breathing approach.
Making progress with personal growth often entails discomfort. Building a tolerance for discomfort in general is helpful. The more we build up this tolerance, the easier it is to step into the growth space. If you’re only willing to grow comfortably, you’ll leave a lot of growth possibilities unexplored.
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Be a Voter
Which is better? To encourage someone to vote or to encourage them to be a voter?
If you want the person to actually vote, encourage them to be a voter. It’s been found that this framing is more likely to lead to action.
If you’d like to strengthen a behavior, weave it into your identity. And if you’d like to change someone else’s behavior, encourage them towards an identity change that includes that behavior.
Use this framing with yourself too.
Don’t just get up early. Be an early riser.
Don’t just make a difference. Be a contributor.
Don’t just do personal growth experiments. Be an explorer.
Don’t just post on social media. Be a blogger, podcaster, or YouTuber.
A similar framing shift motivated me to register to vote this year (my first time voting in any political election). Being encouraged to vote never motivated me to change, perhaps because it seemed like a pointless behavior. I decided to vote this time because I want to be a participant, not a spectator. Being a nonvoter in this election doesn’t feel like a good identity to embrace. This time I feel like I have to vote against stupidity in a way that didn’t seem necessary before.
I’ve found this framing especially helpful for leaning into long-term changes, like thinking of myself as an entrepreneur when starting my first business back in 1994. Being an entrepreneur is a stronger frame than starting or running a business. A behavioral frame lets you get a job when you hit a rough patch in your business, but an identity frame makes that option harder to consider.
Consequently, you may want to use behavioral framing when you’d prefer to keep your options open and give yourself more room to pivot. Behavioral framing is more flexible. If, however, you want to feel more committed and focused, so you can really invest in a particular path, identity framing is often the better choice.
Planting parasites: Unveiling common molecular mechanisms of parasitism and grafting
Using the model Orobanchaceae parasitic plant Phtheirospermum japonicum, scientists from Nagoya University and other research institutes from Japan have discerned the molecular mechanisms underlying plant parasitism and cross-species grafting, pinpointing enzyme β-1,4-glucanase (GH9B3) as an important contributor to both phenomena. Targeting this enzyme may help control plant parasitism in crops. Also, this mechanism can be exploited for novel cross-species grafting techniques to realize the goal of sustainable agricultural technologies.
Plant parasitism is a phenomenon by which the parasite plant latches onto and absorbs water and nutrients from a second host plant, with the help of a specialized organ called the “haustorium.” Once the haustorium forms, specific enzymes then help in forming a connection between the tissues of the parasite and host plants, known as a “xylem bridge,” which facilitates the transport of water and nutrients from the host to the parasite.
A similar mechanism is involved in the process of artificial stem grafting, during which, the cell walls of the two different plant tissues at the graft junction become thinner and compressed, a phenomenon made possible by specific cell wall modifying enzymes. Cell wall modification has also been implicated to play a role in parasitism in different lineages of parasitic plants.
Therefore, the research team, led by Dr Ken-ichi Kurotani of Nagoya University, hypothesized that similar genes and enzymes should be involved in the process of parasitism and cross-species grafting. “To investigate molecular events involved in cell-cell adhesion between P. japonicum and the host plant, we analyzed the transcriptome for P. japonicum-Arabidopsis parasitism and P. japonicum-Arabidopsis grafting,” reports Dr Kurotani. When a gene in a cell is activated, it produces an RNA “transcript” that is then translated into an active protein, which is then used by the cell to perform various activities. A “transcriptome” is the complete set of RNA transcripts that the genome of an organism produces under various diverse conditions. The findings of their experiments are published in Nature’s Communications Biology.
Comparison of the parasitism and graft transcriptomes revealed that genes associated with wound healing, cell division, DNA replication, and RNA synthesis were highly upregulated during both events, indicating active cell proliferation at both the haustorium and graft interface.
“What’s more, we found an overlap between the transcriptome data from this study and that from grafting between Nicotiana and Arabidopsis, another angiosperm,” reports Dr Michitaka Notaguchi, the co-corresponding author of the study. Glycosyl hydrolases are enzymes that specifically target the breakdown of cellulose, the primary component of plant cell walls. A β-1,4-glucanase identified in P. japonicum belongs to the glycosyl hydrolase 9B3 (GH9B3) family; an enzyme from the same family was recognized to be crucial for cell-cell adhesion in Nicotiana by Dr Notaguchi’s group.
Further experiments showed that GH9B3-silenced P. japonicum could form the haustorium with Arabidopsis but could not form a functional xylem bridge, meaning that the P. japonicum β-1,4-glucanase is integral for the plant’s parasitic activity. Further, high GH9B3 RNA transcript levels were observed during artificial grafting experiments, thereby proving that the enzyme plays an integral role in both parasitism and grafting mechanisms.
The transcriptome data generated in this study can be used to unearth additional genes and enzymes involved in plant parasitism. Additionally, further research along these directions will help scientists develop specific molecular approaches to arrive at sustainable cross-species grafting alternatives.
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Materials provided by Nagoya University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
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Raising Your Baseline
In practicing the slow, shallow breathing approach from The Oxygen Advantage that I shared about during the past two days, I’m grasping that the key to this approach is to define a new baseline for my breathing and then keep synching back to that new baseline whenever I catch myself drifting from it.
The initial temptation is to sync back to my old way of breathing, which can happen automatically when I lose awareness of my breath. Then I might catch myself and practice consciously reducing my breath so I’m not over-breathing.
An aspect of this change that’s easier to catch is when I moderately exert myself for a short burst, like walking up a flight of stairs. My breathing becomes a little heavier afterwards, so I make a conscious effort to bring it back down quickly, ideally within no more than 2-3 breaths.
So it’s like I have a breathing budget, and I’m doing my best not to squander it. My budget for air this week is much lower than it was last week. And next week I’ll try to nudge it even lower.
I realized that a similar strategy also works for adjusting our emotional baselines.
Suppose you often feel depressed, frustrated, angry, anxious, or some other emotion you’d prefer not to feel so much. Pretend that you’ve suddenly been allocated a lower budget for feeling negative emotions, and you have to be careful not to squander it too quickly.
Imagine if life dramatically cut your negative emotion budget by saying: Henceforth you’re only allowed to spend half as much time in negative emotion territory.
How would you obey this mandate?
You need two pieces to succeed here:
- Frequent check-ins with yourself to see how you’re doing
- A quick recovery strategy to shift from the old behavior to the new one
Whenever you catch yourself experiencing some negative emotion, you must leave that territory and return to a positive or neutral baseline as quickly as possible. Otherwise you’ll squander your negative emotion budget too quickly.
Do you already have such a strategy? Do you know how to quickly shift yourself back to neutral or positive emotional territory? Can you do this within a few breaths?
If you don’t have such a method, then finding one ought to be a key strategic piece for raising your baseline. Being aware of negative emotions isn’t enough – you’ve also got to change them.
To practice reducing my breathing immediately when it’s too rapid, I do the opposite of the unwanted behavior. I deliberately slow down. I can’t breathe slowly and quickly at the same time, so by doing what’s incompatible with rapid breathing, I stop the rapid breathing.
It’s much the same with negative emotion. What’s incompatible with negative emotion? Positive emotion. So if you do something – anything – that makes you feel good within seconds, the negative emotion has to drop off. It can’t hang around while you’re feeling good.
Then the long-term challenge is to habitualize this recovery pattern by always practicing it at every possible opportunity.
I’m doing my best to not let myself over-breathe. Whenever I notice that I’m doing that, I immediately take conscious control of my breathing and slow it down. If I don’t do this, my baseline won’t shift, and I won’t really get to test and experience the results on the other side.
Initially you may have to consciously take control a lot – like dozens of times per day – but if you stay as consistent as you can, you’ll raise your baseline, and the new behavior pattern will become your new default.
Where else could you apply this idea? You could use it for productivity habits, eating habits, early rising, and lots of other areas of life. The key is to develop a rapid strategy for shifting your behavior in a way that’s incompatible with your old baseline. Then apply that shifting behavior every time you catch yourself running the old pattern.
To really create an effective change, the old behavioral baseline must become unacceptable for you. In order to progress to a new baseline, you must eventually regard your old baseline as out of bounds and below standard, even if it still feels normal. This is a simple approach I’ve used repeatedly times for doing personal growth experiments and also for making long-term changes. To embrace the new, there must be some willingness to say: The old behavior is dead to me.
