Each One of Us Has a Unique Breathing Fingerprint – And This Is What It Says About Your Health

Learn why subtle differences in breathing patterns may offer intriguing insights into your mood, health, and behavior.

By Rosie McCall
Jun 16, 2025 7:00 PMJun 16, 2025 7:06 PM
Tubes beneath nose measuring airflow
Tubes beneath the nose measured airflow from each nostril, revealing each person’s unique breathing fingerprint. (Image Credit: Soroka et al., Current Biology/License CC BY-SA)

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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.

Detecting Breathing Fingerprints

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