To determine if you are over breathing 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?
- When you observe your breathing, do you see more movement 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 over breathing)
- Do you sometimes hear your breathing during rest?
- Do you experience symptoms such as nasal congestion, tightness of the airways, fatigue, dizziness or light-headedness?
These traits are typical of what happens when the amount of air we breathe is greater than what we need.
Correct breathing has becoming extremely challenging in our modern society. Over the centuries we have altered our environment so dramatically that many of us have forgotten our innate way of breathing. The process of breathing has ben warped by chronic stress, sedentary lifestyles, unhealthy diets, overheated homes and lack of fitness. All of these contribute to poor breathing habits. These in turn lead to:
- Lethargy
- Weight gain
- Sleep problems
- Respiratory conditions
- Heart disease
Our ancestors lived on a natural diet in a far less competitive environment and physically worked hard, and thus maintained an efficient breathing pattern.
Modern day living with hours slouched at a desk, at a computer, and talking on the phone, surviving on a rushed lunch of convenience food, trying to manage a seemingly never-ending series of tasks and financial obligations. The biggest obstacle to your health and fitness is a rarely identified problem - CHRONIC OVERBREATHING!
- Nose breathing imposes approximately 50% more resistance to the air stream in normal individuals than does mouth breathing, resulting in 10 to 20% more oxygen uptake.
- Nasal breathing warms and humidifies incoming air.
- Nasal breathing removes a significant amount of germs and bacteria from the air you breathe in.
- Nasal breathing during physical exercise allows for a work intensity great enough to produce an aerobic training effect as based on heart rate and percentage of VO2 max.
- The nose is a reservoir for nitric oxide, an essential gas for the maintenance of good health.
Nitric oxide is produced inside the nasal cavity and the lining of the thousands of miles of blood vessels throughout the body. Scientific findings have shown that this extraordinary molecule is released in the nasal airways and transferred to the lower airways and lungs through nasal breathing. Mouth breathing bypasses this special gas, missing out on the important advantages that nitric oxide provides for general well-being.
Nitric oxide plays an important role in vasoregulation (the opening and closing of blood vessels), homeostasis (the way which the body maintains a state of stable physiological balance in order to stay alive), neurotransmission (the messaging system with in the brain), immune defence and respiration. It helps to prevent high blood pressure, lower cholesterol, keep the arteries young and flexible, and prevent the clogging of arteries with plaques and clots. All these benefits could reduce your risk of heart attack and stroke - two of the top three cause of premature death in the UK.
THE NOSE - A MOST IMPORTANT ORGAN
CHRONIC OVERBREATHING
We can live without food for weeks, and water for days, but air for just a few brief minutes. While we spend a great deal of time and attention on what we eat and drink, we pay practically no attention to the air we breathe.
We recognise the importance of breathing good quality air, but what about the quantity?
Improving fitness depends on enhancing the release of oxygen to your muscles, organs and tissues. Overall fitness and sports performance are usually limited by the lungs - not by the legs, the arms or even the mind. The feeling of intense breathlessness during activity dictates intensity far more than muscle fatigue.
Breathe light to breathe right
The breath of life influences literally every aspect of our health. Over breathing causes the airways to narrowing which limits the body's ability to oxygenate and constricts the blood vessels which leads 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% oxygen, and that's plenty for even the most strenuous exercise. What determines how much oxygen your body can use is actually the amount of carbon dioxide in your blood. Most people learn that carbon dioxide is just a waste gas. However it is the key variable that allows the release of oxygen from the red blood cells to be metabolised by the body - This is called The BOHR EFFECT.
Haemoglobin is a protein found in the blood, and one of it's functions is to carry oxygen from the lungs to the tissues and cells. 'Haemoglobin releases oxygen in the presence of carbon dioxide.'
The crux of it is this: how we breathe determines the levels of carbon dioxide present in the blood. When we breathe correctly we have a sufficient amount of carbon dioxide and our breathing is quiet, controlled and rhythmic. If we are over breathing, our breathing is heavy, more intense and erratic and we exhale too much carbon dioxide, leaving our body literally gasping for oxygen. When we over breathe, too much carbon dioxide is washed from the lungs, blood, tissues and cells - This is called hypocapnia - causing haemoglobin to hold on to oxygen.
As counter intuitive as it may seem, the urge to take bigger, deeper breaths when we hit the wall during exercise does not provide the muscles with more oxygen but effectively reduces oxygenation even further.
True health and inner peace occurs when breathing is quiet, effortless, soft, through the nose, abdominal, rhythmic and gently paused on the exhale. This is how human beings naturally breathed until modern life changed everything.
A true deep breath 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. As you breath in, your abdomen moves outward because the diaphragm pushes downwards, exerting gentle force on the abdomen. As you exhale, the diaphragm moves upwards, taking pressure off the abdomen and moving the abdomen inward. To bring air down into the depths of the lungs it is not necessary to take a big breath, as even the quietest of breaths will activate the diaphragm. When you are practising abdominal nasal breathing, you should not be able to see or hear your breath during rest.
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 carbon dioxide. Not only this, but upper chest breathing activates the fight-or-flight response, which raises stress levels and produces even heavier breathing.
When we are stressed we tend to over breathe and resort to breathing through the mouth. Stressed breathing is faster than normal, audible, produces visible movements and often involves sighs. Relaxed abdominal, barely noticeable, breathing will activate the body's parasympathetic nervous system which elicits the relaxation response.
BREATH OF LIFE
(Source: The Oxygen Advantage - Patrick McKeown)