FOOD AND BREATH: two things you do every day and rarely think about

Take a breath.

You probably didn't have to think about how to do it.

Now imagine smelling freshly baked bread.

Something changes before you've eaten a single bite.

Your mouth may begin to water. Your stomach may start preparing for food. Your attention shifts towards what is coming next.

Your body has already begun responding.

This is one of the things I find fascinating about physiology: so much of what we experience as an ordinary day is actually a continuous conversation between the brain, the nervous system and the rest of the body.

Eating is part of that conversation.

So is breathing.

We tend to think of food as something that enters the digestive system and breathing as something that happens in the lungs but neither system operates in isolation.

The digestive process can begin before food reaches the stomach. Sensory cues associated with eating can trigger what is known as the cephalic phase response, preparing the body for the nutrients it expects to receive. Research has shown that these early responses can involve changes in gastrointestinal, endocrine and metabolic activity.

It is an elegant piece of biology: your body is preparing for something before it arrives.

Breathing is equally interesting.

Every breath changes pressure within the chest, influences heart rate and interacts with autonomic nervous system activity. Slow breathing in particular has been shown to influence measures of cardiovascular and autonomic regulation, including heart-rate variability.

I’m far from saying that breathing exercises are a universal treatment for digestive problems, what I mean is more that the circumstances surrounding eating are biologically relevant.

Consider two meals containing exactly the same food.

In one situation, you sit down, smell the food, eat slowly and notice when you are becoming satisfied.

In the other, you eat standing at the kitchen counter while answering messages, barely registering the meal before rushing back to work.

The nutrients may be identical, the experience registered very different so the connection between food and breath becomes interesting.

We spend an extraordinary amount of time eating, digesting and breathing without consciously noticing any of it. Yet these are precisely the repetitive behaviours through which our physiology encounters our environment.

Stress changes breathing. Stress can also change appetite and eating behaviour.

The relationship between the brain and the gut runs in both directions, with neural, hormonal and immune pathways involved in communication between them. The vagus nerve is one part of this network, but the gut–brain relationship is much larger and more complex than a single “gut feeling” pathway.

This matters when people describe symptoms like bloating, reflux, abdominal pain or altered bowel habits can have many possible causes. Persistent or unexplained symptoms deserve appropriate medical assessment rather than being attributed automatically to stress or breathing.

Once medical causes have been considered, it can be useful to notice the context in which symptoms appear.

Does eating become different when you are rushed? Does your appetite change during stressful periods? Do you eat differently when you are exhausted? Do you notice your breathing becoming shallow or rapid when you are tense?

None of these observations provides a diagnosis, they provide information often where meaningful behaviour change starts.

There is a bigger idea here too.

We tend to separate nutrition from everything else. Food becomes nutrients, calories and ingredients. Breathing becomes oxygen and carbon dioxide. Stress becomes something psychological. The body does not make those distinctions quite so neatly.

It is one interconnected system, constantly responding to what is happening.

That does not mean we can “hack” our nervous system with a particular breathing technique or turn every meal into a wellness ritual. I am much more interested in something simpler: becoming aware of the small physiological and behavioural patterns that are already happening.

They are happening anyway. If we become aware of them, we master one of the most powerful healing processes there is in our body.

The Ciao Change perspective

This is very much part of how I think about health coaching.

I am interested in the ordinary things that happen repeatedly because those are the things that eventually become habits.

What happens around a meal can matter.  No strategy needs to become another set of rules. In fact, I think we have enough rules. I’m suggesting that it’d be a useful starting point, simply noticing.

Notice how you arrive at a meal. Notice how your body feels when you are stressed. Notice whether you are eating because you are hungry or because a particular moment has triggered an old pattern. Notice what happens when you give yourself a little more time.

That kind of curiosity is not a substitute for medical care or sound nutrition advice.

It is the beginning of understanding your own behaviour and once you understand a pattern, you have something you can work with.

Food and breath are two of the most ordinary things we do.

Perhaps that is exactly why they are worth paying attention to.

Sources and further reading

Teff, K.L. (2007). Nutritional implications of the cephalic-phase reflexes: endocrine and metabolic responses. Appetite, 48(1), 31–35.

Russo, M.A., Santarelli, D.M. & O'Rourke, D. (2017). The physiological effects of slow breathing in the healthy human. Breathe, 13(4), 298–309. DOI: 10.1183/20734735.009817.

Mayer, E.A. et al. (2022). Gut/brain axis and the microbiota. Journal of Clinical Investigation.

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