Can a breath hold unblock your nose? The Nasal Clear exercise, fact-checked

How the exercise works

1. Sit quietly and take a few normal breaths.
2. Breathe out normally and gently, not especially deep.
3. Pinch your nose and wait a few seconds, about five to start. Gently nod your head while you wait.
4. Let go of your nose and keep breathing calmly through it. Not hurried, not deep.
5. Wait a minute or two and repeat a few times if it feels comfortable.

Try Nasal Clear

Four rounds with a five-second pause each

Breathe along

The exercise is described in Buteyko practice. There, however, the instruction is to hold your breath as long as possible, until you feel strong air hunger.¹ I don’t recommend that: long holds to the limit add strain for no good reason, and in nowa the pauses are a fixed five or ten seconds.

What the research says

There’s no study on the exercise itself. I couldn’t find one testing whether holding your breath while nodding clears a stuffy nose.

The suspected mechanism rests on small, old measurement studies in healthy noses. When you hold your breath, carbon dioxide in your blood rises. In a study of four people, nasal resistance dropped when they rebreathed air with more carbon dioxide, and rose after fast breathing.² In nine healthy people, more carbon dioxide made the blood vessels in the nasal lining constrict and the muscles of the nostrils tighten.³ In a 1978 measurement study, holding the breath lowered nasal resistance in most people, but only from 30 seconds on.⁴ That’s much longer than the short pauses in the exercise.

No source explains why the nodding should help. It’s possible the small movement contributes something. That hasn’t been shown.

What else has been shown to help

• Light movement. In healthy people, nasal resistance usually dropped right after exercise.^{5, 4} In everyday life, that can be a short walk around your home. How long the effect lasts isn’t well known.
• Lying on your side. When you lie on your side, the upper nostril is usually the clearer one.⁶
• Menthol and eucalyptus make your nose feel clearer, but they don’t measurably open it.⁷

Why only one nostril is often clear, and how to get used to nasal breathing in everyday life, is covered in Nasal breathing: how to switch without gadgets.

Common questions

Can holding your breath unblock your nose?

Possibly, but it hasn’t been studied. There’s no study on the exercise itself, and the mechanism rests on small, old measurement studies in healthy noses.^{2, 3, 4}

Why nod your head?

No source explains it. Movement on its own clears the nose for a while in healthy people; that is shown.⁵ Whether nodding specifically adds anything, nobody knows.

How long should I hold my breath?

Only as long as it feels comfortable, about five seconds to start. After the pause, you should be able to keep breathing calmly.

Does it help with a cold or hay fever?

That hasn’t been studied. With warning signs like a high fever or swelling around the eyes, a stuffy nose should be checked by a doctor.