The Longevity Secret Nobody Talks About: It Isn't Diet or Exercise

In this episode of the Unconventional Medicine Podcast, Dr. Kate Davis dives into one of the most powerful—and most overlooked—tools for improving gut health, reducing inflammation, and building resilience to stress: your breath.

Many people focus on diet, supplements, parasite cleanses, and detox protocols when trying to heal chronic digestive issues. But what if the thing preventing your body from healing is something you're doing every minute of every day?

Dr. Kate explains the profound connection between breathing mechanics, the nervous system, gut health, immune function, and even longevity. She breaks down why chronic stress can contribute to leaky gut, digestive dysfunction, and chronic infections—and how simple breathwork exercises can help shift the body into a state where healing can finally occur.

You'll also learn how proper breathing influences the vagus nerve, heart health, brain function, oxygen delivery, and overall resilience to stress.

Chapters

00:00
Introduction to Holistic Health and Breath Work

01:23
The Connection Between Breath and Gut Health

03:59
Understanding Stress and Its Impact on Health

06:42
The Importance of Lung Capacity and Breathing Mechanics

09:51
Exhalation-Focused Breathing and Vagal Tone

12:34
Practical Breath Work Exercises for Better Health

Dr. Kate Davis D.C.

Website: https://drkatedavis.com/home 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drkatedavis/

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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DrKateDavis 

Email: kate@drkatedavis.com 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Unconventional Medicine Podcast where we talk about all things holistic health, how to get to the root cause of whatever ailment you're currently dealing with, and more natural approaches to really heal at the root cause level. I'm your host, Dr. Kate Davis. I am a licensed chiropractor and a functional medicine doctor, and I specialize primarily in gut issues like chronic constipation, bloating, IBS, food sensitivities, things of that nature. But I also like to talk about all sorts of other systems in the body because everything interacts with everything. And we're really gonna, you know, dive into that on today's episode. I'm really gonna talk about breathing and the importance of breath work in healing chronic gut issues and also influencing so many other systems in the body. This is a really, really cool topic that I've been interested in for over a decade. You know, when I I used to do a lot of neurology in my chiropractic practice, and breath work was a major focus for getting people with head injuries and, you know, chronic neck pain and other issues back on track, getting them to a point where they didn't have the same neurological issues or pain issues that they came in to see me with. And so I really wanted to do an episode on this because this is something that I teach to my gut health clients who come see me because it is so incredibly important to just understand that how you breathe truly influences your health on a huge scale. You know, when we talk about breathing, it's not just about getting oxygen into your lungs and getting oxygen throughout your blood. There are so many other systems in your body that are connected to your breath that can be dramatically influenced by proper breathing mechanics and simple exercises that you can start doing at home to get this stuff back on track right away. So, this is the first place I start with people who come to me with chronic gut issues because there is a huge, huge link between stress and your gut lining. So, leaky gut is this condition that happens where your gut becomes so inflamed, you know, from toxins, infections, stress, that it actually creates these giant holes in that intestinal lining that allows infections, toxins, waste products to slip back into the bloodstream and put a lot of stress on other organ systems in your body, especially the liver, because that's where, you know, the liver is the organ that detoxes your blood. And so we don't want to get to this place where we have leaky gut because it leads to a host of many other issues later on down the road. And so I focus primarily on getting people proper breathing mechanics, not only to heal up that leaky gut lining, because stress is one of the biggest triggers that causes that gut lining to break down, and breathe breath work is the fastest way to get you out of that stressful state or that fight or flight state, but also because stress has such a huge impact on your immune system. So if you think about stress in your immune system, think of them like a seesaw. When one goes up, the other goes down. So if you're in a chronic state of fight or flight, high stress, high cortisol, that immune system is going to tank. And now you're much more susceptible to getting these chronic infections that I talk about a lot on this podcast, on my Instagram, on my YouTube channel, because that's what I dealt with. I had a massive parasite infection and it started getting really bad after a major stressful life event. And I see this so many times with so many people, and that's why I focus so heavily on hey, we have to down-regulate your nervous system, get your brain out of that fight or flight state and into that rest and digest state because it does exactly what it sounds like. It allows your body to rest, to repair, to recover, to sleep better, and also to digest your food. You know, if you're constantly in this state of stress, it doesn't matter what diet you're on, what supplements you're on, your body cannot do its normal function of breaking down food, absorbing the nutrients into your body and utilizing them in all the other organ systems that actually need those nutrients to function at 100%. And so then you start to see a breakdown in organ function, you start to see, you know, high uh infections like parasites, mold toxicity, things of that nature. And you see huge nutrient deficiencies on testing. And so we wanna get our body into a place where it can actually heal before we start going after or while we're going after those infections and toxins and really healing up those organs that are responsible for digesting and absorbing nutrients in your body. And this is gonna help multiple systems, you guys. So if you're listening to this and you're like, Dr. Davis, I don't really have any gut issues, great. This is gonna help so many other systems in your body. And I'm gonna talk about it because it's such a fascinating topic. You know, I've heard from so many people because it sounds very woo-woo, like of like, what do you mean breathing work? Like I breathe all day, every day. My breathing doesn't stop, but it is a function that is on autopilot all the time. And if you've never really trained your breathing and your breath work to be on point and perfect and, you know, to a point where it can actually do the job that it was designed to do, you're gonna slowly see your health decline over time. And there's so many different ways that your breathing influences heart health, lung health, like your immune system, ability to get infections, especially respiratory infections, and also your gut. And your gut influences pretty much every system in your body. And I talk about this so much, you guys. Do not ever ignore gut health. It is so incredibly important for hormones, for brain health, for mental health, so many different systems in your body. And so breathing isn't just getting air into your body, it's also influencing all these other systems that we're gonna talk about, like your immune system and your gut and all these other things. So, stress is really, really huge in the healing process. The quickest way to get you out of that stressful state is through easy breathwork exercises. I just want to nail this in because so many people are looking at all these biohacks. I need to ice plunge and then sauna, and then, you know, go outside and do grounding and all those things are great at the right time. But if you just want something simple that's not gonna take a bunch of time and money to get your health back on track, just spend two to three minutes. Start with two to three minutes every single day of just simple breath work. And I'm gonna teach you guys some basic breathing exercises at the end of this episode. I just wanna kind of set the stage for why this is so incredibly important because people really do take this stuff for granted because they don't understand the research behind it. They've never actually looked into, you know, how breathing affects every system in your body. So I'm gonna break it down for you guys. So, number one, it's gonna really help down regulate the nervous system so your gut lining can heal and your immune system can come back online. You're gonna be much more likely to fight off chronic infections if you're exposed to them, which is incredibly important because I see that as probably the number one issue for all of the people who come see me for constipation, bloating, food sensitivities, IBS, loose stool, whatever their gut issues may be, acid reflux, it's almost always chronic infections and toxins because these organ systems have broken down over time due to high stress, sedentary lifestyle, you know, all the things that we see as we age. So, the fastest way to do it is breathing. And what's also really, really interesting, because a lot of people think, oh, in terms of longevity and living long and having a great life, they think, okay, diet, exercise, you know, all this stuff, genetics are super important. But there's actually been multiple studies. The most recent one in 2000 was done by the University of Buffalo. They actually ran a study to see what determines longevity, because we've argued about this for, you know, decades. And what they discovered was that the greatest indicator of lifespan wasn't genetics, wasn't diet, wasn't the amount of daily exercise you do. It was actually lung capacity. And I'm gonna teach you guys today how to increase this lung capacity because it is so, so important, not just for the things I've already talked about, but also for brain health. If you don't have good oxygenation, you're not gonna have good brain function. Really, really important. So again, I used to do this a lot with uh people who came to see me for head injuries. I did a lot of neurology in my practice. I still do that with my gut patients because of that gut brain connection, just in a different capacity. But lung capacity was the greatest indicator of lifespan, which is crazy because nobody ever thinks about that, right? We think that our body, you know, it just breathes on its own. We don't really need to teach it how to do it properly. But if you think about our lifestyle nowadays, where people are sitting for most of the day, they barely ever walk, they don't move their body, everything just gets kind of squished and compressed in that abdominal cavity where your organs live, and that can create a lot of those gut issues and issues with your liver and your lymphatic system and all those different systems. So that was really interesting. And then also, if you're wondering, okay, well, how the heck do I improve my lung capacity, besides the breath work, I'm gonna teach you guys a simple way, moderate exercise, like walking or cycling, has been shown to boost lung size by up to 15%. So if you guys want to increase your lung capacity and really get to that point where your body is functioning well, and it's crazy, when you guys do this, these breat breathing exercises I'm gonna give you, you're gonna notice a lot of people notice their vision gets better. They they start to realize they can actually breathe fully in their abdomen and they didn't realize they could actually take that much air in. Um, and they notice that they don't get as tired during workouts. And so I used to use this stuff with athletes too, who would come in to me and say they were doing an endurance sport, and they'd be like, Yeah, I get really tired around like mile six, or if they're a biker, like when I'm biking, you know, long races around like mile 15, and we would do these britt breath work and these breathing exercises, and their times would improve dramatically. They wouldn't get as tired, they'd recover faster. This stuff is so profound, you guys don't, you know, sleep on it just because you've never, you know, looked into it or read the research on it. So, anyways, um, and the diaphragm also, if you guys didn't know, it actually affects the rate and strength of your heartbeat. What's the number one thing that kills people every single year in America? Heart disease. So I see a lot of people, especially younger in their 30s, 40s, 50s, who have high blood pressure that doesn't make any sense because they're healthy, they're fit, they eat a great diet. And there's obviously a lot of things that, you know, are involved in blood pressure. But one of the biggest things is how well do you breathe? So, really, really important, it actually affects the rate and strength of your heartbeat. And a typical adult only engages as little as 10% of the range of their diaphragm when breathing. Now, the diaphragm is that little dome-shaped muscle underneath your lungs that basically when you breathe in, it goes down into your abdomen, towards the pelvic floor. And then when you breathe out, it goes up towards, you know, your chest and sternum and rib cage and it compresses those lungs. So, what most people don't realize is that the biggest thing that's gonna determine, you know, getting the full effects of breath work and actually getting the full benefit of all these health issues I've just discussed is that you have to be really, really good at exhalation. Most people think, oh, if I breathe more air in, I'm gonna get more oxygen, it's gonna get delivered. Great. It's actually the exhaling part that determines how much oxygen reaches your tissues, how much oxygen reaches your organs, like your brain. And so this exhalation-focused breathing is so incredibly important because you're actually training the diaphragm as a muscle. You're training it, it's just like any sort of exercise, right? You're training this muscle to become better at what it does so that it can improve all these other systems in your body, like your heart and your gut health and your brain health, and you know, even just the act of breathing properly, because a lot of people teach belly breathing, which is not exactly how you should be breathing. It's a good start, but your diaphragm should move down and out in all directions when you breathe in. So if you think about holding your waist like a hamburger, you know, you've got your belly on the front, the fingers, you've got your thumbs on your back, and then like the web in between your fingers and your thumbs on your sides. All of those should be expanding when you breathe in and you should think about pushing your breath towards your pelvic floor. So breathing through your pelvic floor. Um, and so that is actually the proper way that your lungs and your diaphragm should move when breathing. I know belly breathing is a good way to start, but really you want to think about okay, can I actually breathe in and feel that I'm pushing out in all those directions, not just in the belly, but also the sides, also through my low back a little bit. And that is actually how your breath should be. So if you're only using 10% of the range of your diaphragm when you're breathing, you're missing a lot of these amazing benefits that breath work does for you. And the biggest one is that it actually activates your vagus nerve. So I focus on this a lot with gut issues, obviously, because your vagus nerve is, you know, the direct connection between your brain and your internal organs, specifically your gut, it's going to tell your gut to actually have normal bowel movements. So a lot of times what I see is people who've had previous history of head injuries, they have low, what's called low vagal tone, where their vagus nerve doesn't really communicate with the gut as well as it should. And so then you get a backup of bowel movements, which leads to constipation. And so I see that a lot with people who have a history of whiplash injuries, head injuries. That was part of my story too. I had a severe head injury and then I had these gut issues pop up, you know, five years later. Um, and so some people it's kind of a delayed response, others it's more immediate. But there's a lot of, you know, obviously a lot of things that contribute to constipation, but that's one of the biggest ones I see. And so I really have to teach people how to activate the vagus nerve. Exhalation-focused breathing is one of the best ways to activate this vagus nerve. So let me just go through some really cool stuff on the effects of doing this kind of breath work on your vagus nerve because it is pretty fascinating. All right, so when I talk about exhalation-focused breathing, what that means is that we're gonna be exhaling a lot longer than we inhale. And again, I'm gonna teach you guys some basic exercises after this. But what's really cool is that again, this exhalation-focused breathing directly stimulates the vagus nerve, which gets you out of that fight or flight system and back down into that rest and digest state where not only your body can heal, but your immune system can function properly and your gut lining can actually start to fully heal. So, really important that we stay in this mode because we're always gonna have stressful life events happen. And we have to learn how to do simple things throughout these seasons that we have that are really stressful to keep our body from going into that state that's gonna lead to disease and dysfunction later on. So, really simple things you can do. But what's really cool is that, you know, exhalation-focused breathing actually has a vagal tone activation, which basically means that you're sending signals to your brain to rapidly calm the body, which is really cool. And so what happens, it also causes an anti-inflammatory response. It also increases your heart rate variability, which is super important for um, you know, your nervous system's ability to bounce back from stress is essentially what that means. And so through this type of breath work, you can actually make your body more resilient to stress, which is what we want, right? Because as life goes on, you know, things happen that are unexpected. You know, you have accidents, you know, maybe somebody in your family passes away or you lose a good friend, or you know, you have issues within your family or friendships, you know, fall apart. And we don't want our body to fall apart throughout these big life transitions. And or maybe you have kids and it's just a new type of stress, even though it's a good stress, um, it still has an effect on your body. So this is a great way that if you do this regularly, you guys, you're actually training your body to become more resilient to stress. And how cool is that? So, just some simple things to start with here that I want to go through with you guys is the easiest one I teach people. So if you're someone listening to this and you're like, I've never done any breath work in my entire life, this is what I want you to start with because it's the easiest one. The other two might be a little more complex in terms of the amount of respiratory muscle you're gonna be using to actually get the benefits from it. So you might end up being a little sore the next day. So I just want you to know that for these last two we're gonna go over, um, just be mindful of that to not overdo it. So because you are working out muscles that have probably not worked in over a decade or even a couple decades for some of y'all who have sedentary jobs. And maybe you just haven't, you know, because life got busy, you haven't been able to do much exercise and movement in a while. So, number one, box breathing. This one's super simple. Four seconds in, we're gonna do an exhalation focus. So we're gonna do twice as long on the exhale. So it's gonna be four seconds in, hold for four seconds, eight seconds breathing out, easier to breathe out through your mouth. So that way you can actually get to eight seconds. If you try to do it through your nose, you probably don't have the lung capacity for that just yet. But four seconds in, hold for four, breathe out for eight seconds, hold for four seconds, and repeat that for about three to five minutes. So if you're someone who's never done breath work, start with three minutes, start small, slowly work up. That's the way to form really good, long-lasting new habits. And that's based on research, not just my own opinion. But start small, slowly work up. Now, if you're someone who's done breath work for a while, maybe you've done Wim Hof breathing or box breathing or a lot of the stuff that I've talked about during this episode. I want you to do something that's a little bit more complex. This is actually training your diaphragm to basically increase its capacity for movement, which is what we want, right? Because, you know, on average, people only use 10% of that full range of their diaphragm when they're breathing. This is going to expand that range and allow you to take deeper breaths in, which is also hugely beneficial for your body. The fewer breaths you have per minute, the better your body actually functions. Now, obviously, there's, you know, limitations to that, but usually it's around five to six breaths per minute is kind of what you want to aim for on like a normal day when you're not thinking about it. So, anyways, this one is where you're going to, I recommend doing it laying down. It's kind of hard to do it seated, but slowly I want you to progress to this, guys, especially if you're an athlete. If you're a runner, if you're on your feet all day, like maybe you stand a lot at work. I want you to eventually get to be able to do get to a point where you can do this standing. So, but I always tell people start with the breath work laying down. Then once that gets easy, try it seated. And then once that gets easy, try it standing. Standing is incredibly hard to rehab your breathing in that position. So don't start with that. You might overdo it too and get really sore the next day. So again, don't underestimate breath work. It can, you know, activate muscles that have been dormant for years or even decades for a lot of people. And you might be real sore the next day. So this one's really cool. But again, just set a timer for two to three minutes. You don't have to do, or you can just do like five breaths if you've never done this exercise before and you don't want to be super sore the next day. You're just gonna breathe in. So you're gonna be laying down with your knees bent, breathe in, just like a full breath. Think about expanding in all directions, like I talked about earlier. And then as you exhale, you're just gonna be counting out loud one through 10. So one, two, three, you're gonna keep going one through 10, one through 10. You're gonna notice you get to a point where you can no longer actually have an audible sound come out, and you're kind of just doing one, two, three, four, and that's okay. 80% effort, you guys, 60 to 80% effort. Otherwise, you're gonna be really sore the next day. Trust me on this one. I've done all these breathing exercises and I've overdone it on some of them and you know paid for it over the next couple of days. So just trust me on this. But you're gonna be counting out however many exhalations you can do at 60 to 80% effort. Don't overdo this one, you guys. And then you're gonna breathe in and repeat that process. And just do it for either five breaths or set a timer for two to three minutes, depending on your experience or history with breath work. And then number three, the diaphragm stretch, or what a lot of my colleagues call the zombie breath, because it sounds kind of crazy when you do it, but you're gonna be laying on the ground, knees bent, arms out to your side, head is gonna be in slight extension, so you can open your airway a little bit more. And what you're doing is you're actually doing a really deep stretch of the diaphragm. So definitely do those other two exercises first before this one. Always start at 60% effort with the diaphragm stretch because otherwise you can get a really nasty spasm and it feels like when you get a stitch in your side when you run. Um, and it's not fun. So don't overdo this one, you guys. But again, you're gonna be on the ground, take a normal breath in, not a super deep, heavy one, just a normal breath. And then you're gonna open your mouth. So you're gonna be in slight extension, open your mouth wide, and you're just gonna be breathing out. And I know that sounds and looks weird if you're on YouTube right now, but that's how it should sound. That's why it's called the zombie breath, is you should eventually get to that point where it sounds like you're you're struggling to get that last bit of air out. And what we're doing is we're really stretching and bringing that diaphragm up into the rib cage. And then once you breathe in after that, you're gonna be able to expand so much that you're gonna be like, whoa, I did not know my lungs could move this much. So just know like this is a really, really great one, especially if you're into, you know, cardio and long distance stuff and you really just need more volume. If you're a free diver, if you need more volume in your lungs, this one is amazing. And it's a good place to start before you even do something like Wim Hof or box breathing or the second exercise that I taught you guys, just to get the range of motion so that when you do that breath work, you're actually getting the full expansion and full benefits of those lungs. So, um, and when you recover from that diaphragm stretch, you just take two normal breaths to reset and then do it again. I wouldn't do more than two to three of those ones. It's pretty, pretty rough. And you might notice you get a little cramping if you do too much. But again, only 60 to 80% effort. You can eventually work up to 100% effort, but just know that you're gonna have to build up to this because you are working muscles that have probably not functioned in that capacity in a really long time. So I hope this was super beneficial. Breath work is incredible. It also massages your internal organs when you push, when you breathe in deeply and you push those organs into your pelvic floor, you're not only, you know, getting all those benefits we talked about, but you're also flushing out lymphatic fluid, inflammation, and you're just constantly doing this little, you know, massage of your internal organs that can really help with bowel movements and other internal organ functions. So I hope this was incredibly beneficial. Definitely try these out, guys. Send me a message, let me know how it goes. I guarantee you you'll feel way better the next day or the next time you exercise, you'll just be like, wow, I cannot believe I didn't get as tired as fast. So um try these out. And if you're someone who's, you know, really looking to work with someone to get your gut health back on track, go ahead and check out that link in the show notes. I'm gonna have a little discount for you guys if you listen to the to the show. And if you love this episode and you got a lot of value out of it, please do me a favor, leave a five star review, uh, like or subscribe depending on which platform you're on. And I will see you on the next episode. Thanks so much for listening.