Breathing is something we do more or less without thinking but it may reveal more about ourselves than we might think – from our body mass index (BMI) to our propensity to develop anxiety.
Scientists writing in Current Biology have compared our highly unique breathing patterns to “fingerprints,” finding that researchers identified participants from their breaths with almost 100 percent accuracy – or 96.8 percent, to be precise.
Not only that, but subtle differences may provide intriguing insights into an individual’s health status, not to mention their mood, cognition, and behavioral tendencies.
For this piece of research, a hundred participants were fitted with a wearable device that tracked nasal airflow as they completed their normal day-to-day activities over a 24-hour period. Of these, 42 were tracked for a second 24-hour period. Participants were monitored and required to log their daily activities, completing various questionnaires that measured traits associated with depression, ...
