The Oxygen Advantage: The Simple, Scientifically Proven Breathing Techniques for a Healthier, Slimmer, Faster, and Fitter You

by Patrick McKeown

It has been well documented that those who live at higher altitudes tend to live longer. The precise mechanism behind this is not known and could be a result of several factors. However, one of the leading candidates for this explanation is a reduced pressure of oxygen at higher altitudes.

The biggest obstacle to your health and fitness is a rarely identified problem: chronic overbreathing. We can breathe two to three times more air than required without knowing it. To help determine if you are overbreathing, see how many of these questions you answer “yes” to:

Do you sometimes breathe through your mouth as you go about your daily activities?

Do you breathe through your mouth during deep sleep? (If you are not sure, do you wake up with a dry mouth in the morning?)

Do you snore or hold your breath during sleep?

Can you visibly notice your breathing during rest? To find out, take a look at your breathing right now. Spend a minute observing the movements of your chest or abdomen as you take each breath. The more movement you see, the heavier you breathe.

When you observe your breathing, do you see more movements from the chest than from the abdomen?

Do you regularly sigh throughout the day? (While one sigh every now and again is not an issue, regular sighing is enough to maintain chronic overbreathing.)

Do you sometimes hear your breathing during rest?

Do you experience symptoms resulting from habitual overbreathing, such as nasal congestion, tightening of the airways, fatigue, dizziness, or light-headedness?

But, as with all conditions, to arrive at the remedy it’s crucial to first understand the ailment.

Breathing too much air every minute, every hour, every day translates into excessive breathlessness during exercise.

The seemingly innocuous tendency to breathe through the mouth during the day or night and breathe noticeably during rest means you will be more breathless during training and often limits your capacity to go faster and farther.

Overbreathing causes the narrowing of airways, limiting your body’s ability to oxygenate, and the constriction of blood vessels, leading to reduced blood flow

to the heart and other organs and muscles.

The amount of oxygen your muscles, organs, and tissues are able to use is not entirely dependent on the amount of oxygen in your blood. Our red blood cells are saturated with between 95 and 99 percent oxygen, and that’s plenty for even the most strenuous exercise.

What determines how much of this oxygen your body can use is actually the amount of carbon dioxide in your blood. You may remember from biology class that we breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, also called CO2. Most people learn that carbon dioxide is just a waste gas that we exhale from our lungs, but it is not a waste gas. It is the key variable that allows the release of oxygen from the red blood cells to be metabolized by the body. This is called the Bohr Effect. Understanding and utilizing this physiological principle will allow you to stop overbreathing.

The crux of it is this: How we breathe determines the levels of carbon dioxide present in our blood. When we breathe correctly, we have a sufficient amount of carbon dioxide, and our breathing is quiet, controlled, and rhythmic. If we are overbreathing, our breathing is heavy, more intense, and erratic, and we exhale too much carbon dioxide, leaving our body literally gasping for oxygen.

He breathed heavily and through his mouth, even while resting. He was getting oxygen into his lungs but too much, and he wasn’t self-regulating in the way that was natural—and indispensable—for a competitive athlete. Through bad habits accumulated over the years, his body was out of sync with his breath, and he had become unable to meet his own needs for CO2.

improve running economy (lowering of energy expended during running) and increase “VO2 max” (the maximum capacity of the body to transport and use oxygen).

Overbreathing distorted his self-understanding and turned him into someone who he wasn’t.

She benefited from one of the most startling aspects of my program: Substantial gains can be accomplished while literally sitting on the couch. Once you see this progress, however, the last thing you’ll want to do is keep sitting.

A desire for more water and less processed food naturally follows.

The program also provides readers with the ability to easily and accurately measure advances and ensures that exercise is done safely, reducing the risk of injury.

“Who here believes that taking a large breath into the lungs during rest will increase oxygen content of the blood?” Without hesitation, 95 percent of the runners raised their hands. They were wrong, but they aren’t alone—this belief is widespread in the world of sports and fitness. But taking a large breath into the lungs during rest will not increase oxygen content. It is exactly the wrong thing to do if you seek greater endurance.

Based on this misconception, many athletes adopt the practice of intentionally taking deep breaths during rest and training, and especially when their bodies are overtaxed. By doing so, however, they in fact limit and sometimes even diminish their performance.

When we breathe, air enters the body and flows down the windpipe (trachea), which then divides into two branches called bronchi: One branch leads to the right lung, the other to the left.

Within your lungs, the bronchi further subdivide into smaller branches called bronchioles, and eventually into a multitude of small air sacs called alveoli. To visualize

To put this immense number in context, the area of contact between your alveoli and blood capillaries is equivalent to the size of a tennis court. This large, impressively contained surface provides the potential for an extremely efficient transfer of oxygen to the blood.

It is physiologically impossible to increase the oxygen saturation of the blood in this way, because the blood is almost always already fully saturated. It would be like pouring more water into a glass that is already filled to the brim. But what is oxygen saturation exactly, and how does it relate to properly oxygenating our muscles?

Oxygen saturation (SpO2) is the percentage of oxygen-carrying red blood cells (hemoglobin molecules) containing oxygen within the blood. During periods of rest the standard breathing volume for a healthy person is between 4 and 6 liters of air per minute, which results in almost complete oxygen saturation of 95 to 99 percent.

The human body actually carries a surplus of oxygen in the blood—75 percent is exhaled during rest and as much as 25 percent is exhaled during physical exercise.

For years they have been indoctrinated with the “benefits” of taking deep breaths by well-meaning stress counselors, yoga practitioners, physiotherapists, and sports coaches, not to mention the Western media. And it’s easy to see why this belief is perpetuated: Taking a large breath can actually feel good, even if it can actually be bad for you. Just as a cat enjoys a good stretch following a midday nap, taking a big breath into the lungs stretches the upper part of the body, allowing a feeling of relaxation to follow. But this leads many to believe that with breathing, bigger is better.

There are two main aspects to the way you breathe: the rate or number of breaths you take in the space of 1 minute and the volume or amount of air drawn into your lungs with each breath. Although the two are separate, one generally influences the other.

In conventional medicine the accepted number of breaths a healthy person takes during that minute is 10 to 12, with each breath drawing in a volume of 500 milliliters of air, for a total volume

of 5 to 6 liters.

As odd as this may seem, it’s not oxygen that exerts the primary influence on your breathing efficiency, but carbon dioxide.

The rate and volume of breathing is determined by receptors in the brain that work in a way similar to a thermostat regulating the heating system in a home.

However, instead of monitoring fluctuations in temperature, these receptors monitor the concentration of carbon dioxide and oxygen in your blood, along with the acidity or pH level. When levels of carbon dioxide increase above a certain amount, these sensitive receptors stimulate breathing in order to get rid of the excess gas. In other wo...

Carbon dioxide is an end product o...

process of breaking down the fats and carbohydrates we eat. CO2 is returned from the tissues and cells to the lungs via blood vessels, and any excess is exhaled. Crucially, however, part of your body’s quotient of carbon dioxide is retained when you exhale. Correct breathing both relies on and results in the right amount of carbon dioxide being retained in your lungs. Understanding this is just as...

Think of it this way: CO2 is the doorway that lets oxygen reach our muscles. If the door is only partially open, only some of the oxygen at our disposal passes through, and we find ourselves gasping during exercise, often with our limbs cramping. If, on the other hand, the door is wide open, oxygen flows through the doorway and we can sustain physical activity longer and at a higher intensity.

Chronic hyperventilation or overbreathing simply means the habit of breathing a volume of air greater than that which your body requires. It does not necessarily manifest as dramatic symptoms, such as the panting a person might experience during a panic attack. When we breathe in excess of what we require, too much carbon dioxide is exhaled from the lungs and, hence, is removed from the blood. It forces that

door to a more closed position, making it harder for oxygen to pass through. Breathing too much for short periods of time is not a significant problem, as no permanent change in the body occurs. However, when we breathe too much over an extended period of days to weeks, a biochemical change takes place inside us that results in an increased sensitivity or lower tolerance to carbon dioxide. With this lower set point, breathing volume remains above normal as the receptors in the brain continuously stimulate breathing in order to get rid of carbon dioxide that is perceived to be in excess of the receptor’s programmed limits. The result is the habit of chronic overbreathing or chronic hyperventilation, with all its negative manifestations.

The problem is not a lack of oxygen in the blood, but that not enough oxygen is being released from the blood to

tissues and organs, including the brain, resulting in feelings of lethargy and exhaustion. This happens because too much carbon dioxide has been expelled from the body. As we shall see further on, habitual overbreathing influences the release of oxygen from red blood cells,

One’s breathing volume can be two or three times the required amount without it being overtly noticeable. Once the pattern of overbreathing is established, it is often maintained by an occasional deep breath or sigh. When such a habit becomes ingrained both mentally and physically, you will breathe in excess of what is required every minute, every hour, and every day.

many people sleep with their mouth open, and whether they realize it or not, this drags down their physical and mental energy.

concentration of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere is very low, which means that we don’t carry

it into our lungs when we breathe. Instead we produce it in tissue cells during the process of converting food and oxygen into energy. Maintaining a correct breathing volume ensures that the ideal amount of carbon dioxide remains in the lungs, blood, tissues, and cells.