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

by Patrick McKeown

resulting in the student taking a big breath of fresh air into the lungs, but often this is done through an open mouth while activating the upper chest.

A deep breath, therefore, means to breathe down into the full depth of the lungs. It also means using the main breathing muscle, the diaphragm, which separates the chest from the abdomen.

To bring air down into the depths of the lungs, it is not actually necessary to take a big breath, as even the quietest of breaths will activate the diaphragm. When you are practicing abdominal nasal breathing, you should not be able to see or hear your breath during rest. In contrast, overbreathing through the mouth, in an attempt to take a “deep” breath, will be clearly audible and cause the chest to rise and fall, but will still not manage to draw the breath deeply into the lungs.

Abdominal breathing is more efficient simply because of the shape of the lungs. Since they are narrow at the top and wider at the bottom, the amount of blood flow in the lower lobes of the lungs is greater than in the upper lobes. The fast upper-chest breathing of people who chronically hyperventilate does not take advantage of the lower parts of the lungs, limiting the amount of oxygen that can be transferred to the blood and resulting in a greater loss of CO2. Not only this, but upper-chest breathing activates the fight-or-flight response, which raises stress levels and produces even heavier breathing.

Stressed breathing is faster than normal, audible, produces visible movements, and often involves sighs.

exhibit breathing that is abdominal: slow, gentle, calm, regular, relatively unnoticeable, silent, and through the nose.

Another advantage of abdominal breathing is that it assists with lymphatic drainage.

As the lymphatic system does not have a heart to pump the waste throughout the body, it is reliant on the motions of the muscles, including the diaphragm. During abdominal breathing, lymph is sucked through the bloodstream, neutralizing and destroying dead cells, reducing fluid retention, and improving detoxification of the body.

When we breathe too much over a period of hours to days, as in the case of chronic stress, the respiratory center adjusts to a lower tolerance of carbon dioxide. Having a lower than normal tolerance to carbon dioxide results in the respiratory center increasing the rate of impulses to the respiratory muscles. The result is habitual overbreathing and excess breathlessness during physical exercise.

You are practicing this exercise correctly when you slow down and reduce your breathing sufficiently to create a tolerable need for air. The need for air signifies an accumulation of arterial carbon dioxide, the goal of which is to reset the respiratory center’s tolerance to this gas. To assist with this, it is very helpful to exert gentle pressure against your chest and abdomen with your hands. Try to maintain the need for air for the duration of 4 to 5 minutes.

to sit in front of a mirror to observe and follow your breathing movements.

Sit up straight. Allow your shoulders to relax. Imagine a piece of string gently holding you up from the top of the back of your head. At the same time, feel the space between your ribs gradually widening. • Place one hand on your chest and one hand just above your navel. • Feel your abdomen gently moving outward as you inhale and gently moving inward as you exhale.

As you breathe, exert gentle pressure with your hands against your abdomen and chest. This should create resistance to your breathing. • Breathe against your hands, concentrating on making the size of each breath smaller. • With each breath, take in less air than you would like to. Make the in-breath smaller or shorter. • Gently slow down and reduce your breathing movements until you feel a tolerable hunger for air. • Breathe out with a relaxed exhalation. Allow the natural elasticity of your lungs and diaphragm to play their role in each exhalation. Imagine a balloon slowly and gently deflating of its own accord. • When the in-breath becomes smaller and the out-breath is relaxed, visible breathing movements will be reduced. You may be able to notice this in a mirror.

By using a simple exercise like this, you can reduce your breathing movements by 20 to 30 percent. If your stomach muscles start to contract or jerk or feel tense, or if your breathing rhythm becomes disrupted or out of control, then the air shortage is too intense. In this situation, abandon the exercise for 15 seconds or so and return to it when the air shortage has disappeared.

Aim to maintain this tolerable “air hunger” for 3 to 5 minutes at a time. Practicing 2 sets of 5-minute exercises is enough to help you reset your breathing center and improve your body’s tolerance for carbon dioxide.

the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the blood will result in certain physiological changes in the body. These include: • A feeling of increased warmth resulting from the dilation of blood vessels

A rosy red color coming into the face • Increased production of watery saliva in the mouth, which is an indication that your body is going into relaxation mode and activating the parasympathetic nervous system

there is no suggestion of changing the number of breaths per minute, or to time the length of each breath. This is deliberate—using time to measure the size of a breath is a fundamental error.

For example, telling someone to inhale for 2 seconds and exhale for 3 seconds does not provide guidance on whether they should take in a very gentle breath or a huge inhalation of air.

There is only one way to change your breathing volume and rate, and that is by slowing down and diminishing the size of each breath in order to create a shortage of air.

As your BOLT increases, not only will the size of each breath decrease, but so too will the number of breaths taken per minute.

Switching to nasal breathing after spending years mouth breathing requires courage and commitment. Sometimes it is necessary to take one step back to move two forward if you want to truly improve your performance.

Tarahumara, the famed running tribe of Northern Mexico. When researchers studied the nasal-breathing Tarahumara tribe over the course of a 26-mile run, they were astounded to find that their average heart rate was a surprisingly low 130 beats per minute.

normal average heart rate of a Western marathon runner, which lies between 160 and 180 beats per minute,

nasal breathing ensures a number of benefits that are essential not only for good health but for improved sports performance, including: • Filtering, warming, and humidifying air before it is drawn into the lungs • Reducing the heart rate • Bringing nitric oxide into the lungs to open airways and blood vessels • Better oxygen delivery throughout the body • Reduced lactic acid as more oxygen is delivered to working muscles

Within 6 to 8 weeks your BOLT measurement should increase by 10 to 15 seconds, resulting in a significant improvement to your fitness.

lungs. If children or teenagers spend five or ten years with their mouths hanging open, their faces will become narrow, their jaws will not develop correctly, and their airway sizes will be reduced.

Initially he found that his nose would run constantly during exercise, requiring him to blow his nose every few hundred yards. This is a common experience for most people adjusting to nasal breathing as the airways clear and breathing volume increases, but it is a minor inconvenience that will clear up within a few weeks.

To reap the most benefit from your physical training, you need to train your body to do more with less.

During physical exercise, there are three ways to reduce air intake: 1. Relax your body and take less air into your lungs. 2. Increase exercise intensity while nasal breathing. 3. Practice breath holding during exercise.

High-intensity training helps to prevent muscle deconditioning and will require an athlete to periodically breathe through his or her mouth.

For less-than-maximum intensity training, and at all other times, nasal breathing should be employed. For example, competitive athletes may spend 70 percent of their training with the mouth closed, harnessing the benefits of nasal breathing and adding an extra load to their training to increase BOLT score.

Recreational athletes who are not taking part in competition or high-intensity exercise, however, are far better off maintaining nasal breathing at all times.

Oxygen Advantage Warm-Up • Begin walking at a pace that is comfortable for you. • During your warm-up, try to breathe regularly and calmly through your nose, using your diaphragm to maintain a gentle and relaxed breathing technique. • Feel your abdomen gently moving outward as you inhale and gently moving inward as you exhale. • As you walk, allow a feeling of relaxation to spread throughout your body. Silently encourage the area around your chest and abdomen to relax (you will find that any tension can be released by silently telling that area of the body to

relax). Feel your body relax and become soft. Body relaxation during physical exercise helps to ensure steady, calm, and regular breathing. • After 1 minute or so of walking at a fairly good pace, exhale normally through your nose and pinch your nose with your fingers to hold the breath. (If you are in a public place, you might prefer to hold the breath without holding your nose.) • While holding your breath, walk for 10 to 30 paces, or until you feel a moderate need to breathe. When you feel this hunger for air, let go of your nose and resume breathing through your nose. • Continue walking for 10 minutes, performing a breath hold every minute or so.

Not surprisingly, most

asthma attacks and breathing difficulties occur during the first 10 minutes of physical exercise.

In order to avoid exercise-induced asthma, there are three simple guidelines: 1. Attain a high BOLT score 2. ...

You can check whether you are pushing yourself too hard during physical exercise by exhaling normally and holding your breath for 5 seconds. When you resume breathing through the nose, your breathing should remain controlled.

Following physical exercise, cool down by walking for 3 to 5 minutes, performing the following small breath holds: • Exhale as normal through the nose. • Pinch your nose with your fingers to hold the breath for 2 to 5 seconds. • Breathe normally through the nose for 10 seconds. • Repeat the first 3 steps throughout your

cooldown. • Resume regular breathing.

you can also use your BOLT score to see how efficient your breathing is during physical exercise. Follow these steps to track your progress using your BOLT score: • Measure your BOLT score before training. • Perform your physical exercise. • Measure your BOLT score one hour after you finish training. • If your BOLT score is higher after exercise than before, your breathing is efficient during exercise. • If your BOLT score is lower after exercise than before, your breathing is inefficient during exercise. In this situation, it is safer to slow down and ensure your breathing remains controlled throughout exercise.

By practicing the breath-hold exercises outlined in this book, the kidneys increase production of EPO and the spleen releases red blood cells into the blood circulation.

Blood is made up of three parts: oxygen-carrying red cells, white blood cells, and plasma. Hemoglobin is a protein found within the red cells. One of the functions of hemoglobin is to carry oxygen from the lungs to the cells, tissues, and organs of the body, where it is released in order to burn nutrients for the production of energy. Once oxygen has been released, the resultant carbon dioxide is collected by hemoglobin and returned to the lungs, which exhale the excess.

Generally, most humans can hold their breath after an inhalation for a maximum of up to about 50 seconds, with elite divers achieving a static breath hold of between 8 minutes 23 seconds and 11 minutes 35 seconds.

The spleen is an organ that acts as a blood bank; when the body signals an increased demand for oxygen, the spleen releases stores of red blood cells. It therefore plays a very important role in regulating blood hematocrit (the percentage of red blood cells in the blood), as well as hemoglobin concentration.

This means that after as few as 5 breath holds, the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood can be significantly improved with the help of the spleen.

Performing a breath hold after an exhalation lowers the oxygen saturation of the blood to simulate the effects of high-altitude training. I have monitored the blood oxygen saturation of thousands of individuals as they practice breath holds, and by far the greatest change to oxygen saturation occurs after an exhalation. For most people, after four or five days of practice, a drop of oxygen saturation below 94 percent can be observed—a level comparative to the effects of living at an altitude of 2,500 to 4,000 meters.

Gently exhaling prior to holding the breath reduces air content in the lungs, allowing a quicker buildup of carbon dioxide and eliciting a stronger response. While this reduces the length of time for which you can hold your breath, increased carbon dioxide has been shown to improve hemoglobin concentration by around 10 percent compared to a breath hold with normal carbon dioxide.

Higher levels of carbon dioxide in the blood can produce an even greater contraction of the spleen, resulting in an increase in the release of red blood cells...