INTRODUCTION to The Breathing Cure: Exercises to Develop New Breathing Habits for a Healthier, Happier, and Longer Life by Patrick McKeown Are You Breathing Comfortably?
Imagine a breathing technique that can increase oxygen uptake and delivery to the cells, improve blood circulation, and unblock the nose. Perhaps it can help open the airways of the lungs, enhance blood flow and oxygen delivery to the brain, improve sleep and bring calmness to the mind. It might even restore bodily functions disturbed by stress, build greater resilience and help you to live longer. You might think this description sounds farfetched. But it isn’t.
This book will guide you through techniques that embody the key to healthy breathing and healthy living. My goal is to enable you to take responsibility for your own health, to prevent and significantly reduce a number of common ailments, to help you realize your potential and to offer simple, scientifically-based ways to change your breathing habits. On a day-to-day basis, you will experience an increase in energy and concentration, an enhanced ability to deal with stress and a better quality of life.
Following on from my work The Oxygen Advantage, I’ll also explore new topics including how breathing techniques can support functional movement of the muscles and joints, improve debilitating conditions such as diabetes, epilepsy, lower back pain, PMS and high blood pressure, and help you to enjoy deeper sleep and better sex.
We enter the world with a breath and the process of breathing continues automatically for the rest of our lives. Although breathing is an involuntary action to which we don’t usually give much thought, the manner in which we breathe has an enormous effect on our health. Because breathing is an innate bodily function which most of us take for granted, it only gets our attention when something goes wrong. However, minute-by-minute, the breath fulfils its vital role, providing the body with oxygen, regulating physical mechanisms within the lungs, heart and blood vessels, and even moderating the stress response.
When breathing is below par, it creates problems throughout the body’s systems. Researchers have listed up to thirty common symptoms and conditions in which poor breathing patterns are a factor . However, because many sufferers breathe normally at least some of the time, it may be hard to know if your breathing patterns are unhealthy. The fundamental rule of thumb that I give to my students is this: Breathing during rest and light movement such as walking or yoga should be imperceptible, never noticeable.
Healthy breathing during rest should be through the nose, driven by the diaphragm. It should be regular, quiet, slow and almost undetectable. Unhealthy or dysfunctional breathing involves breathing through the mouth, using the upper chest, or breath that is irregular or audible during rest.
There are many forms of dysfunctional breathing, commonly referred to as breathing pattern disorders. These exist at different levels of severity. The most common is something called chronic hyperventilation, which involves breathing too fast and taking in too much air. Signs of breathing pattern disorders include the inability to take a satisfying breath, disproportionate breathlessness during rest or physical exercise, frequent yawning or sighing and the feeling of just not getting enough air. Other quantifiable dysfunctions include asthma, hay fever, snoring, sleep apnea, and associated psychological conditions like anxiety, insomnia and panic disorder. Across the board, poor breathing is implicated in poor physical and mental health.
If you were to observe and monitor the breathing of a random group of people as they sat together in a room, you’d soon start to notice differences. Some people may breathe through their nose, while others might breathe through their mouth. Some will have gentle, slow, quiet breathing, and others will be taking faster, larger, more audible breaths. Some people sigh habitually every few minutes, others breathe in a nice regular pattern. Some may use their diaphragm to breathe abdominally, and others breathe from the upper chest.
Since breathing is a natural process and so vital to life, this begs the question: Why do we all breathe so differently? The answer is that breathing habits are greatly influenced by lifestyle, environment and genetic predisposition. Everyday habits that may come from choice or necessity (things like sedentary deskwork, watching TV, eating processed foods and excessive talking) and psychological conditions such as stress and anxiety, can result in persistent faulty breathing, along with all its negative repercussions. If this doesn’t make sense to you yet, think of a person who has developed a habit of eating too much. In times of stress, this person may turn to emotional eating, using food as a crutch to help them relax. If they continue eating in this way over a period of weeks or months, their body will soon adapt to habitual over-eating and begin to demand more food than they need. In the same way, our breathing patterns can alter over time, becoming unhealthy.
Three fundamental aspects impact the functioning of the breath:
- Biochemical - The exchange and metabolism of oxygen (O2) and carbon dioxide (CO2)
- Biomechanical - The physical aspects of breathing; the function of respiratory muscles including the intercostal muscles (these run between the ribs and help form and move the chest wall) and diaphragm (the major breathing muscle, located below the lungs)
- Psychological - This may manifest as stress caused by poor breathing or poor breathing caused by stress
These factors are at the root of breathing pattern disorders, and this is what we’ll explore and address in this book. While the three causes of breathing pattern disorders are biochemical, biomechanical and psychological, the solutions fall into three slightly different categories:
- Biochemical - Addressing blood sensitivity to carbon dioxide
- Biomechanical – Breathing from the diaphragm
- Cadence – Reducing the respiratory rate to between 4.5 and 6.5 breaths per minute in order to influence the autonomic functioning of the body
The breathing method I will share forms a straightforward, unique series of exercises that you can easily apply, both during rest and physical exercise. This is no ordinary breathing technique. Welcome to the Oxygen Advantage®.
What is the Oxygen Advantage®?
The Oxygen Advantage® is a program of simple exercises designed to retrain the breath. The focus is light, slow, deep breathing (LSD) which targets the biochemistry and biomechanics of the body and taps into the autonomic nervous system (ANS). All too often, the emphasis on breathing is placed only on its biomechanics – the way it functions muscularly and mechanically. The student is encouraged to take big, full breaths, drawing air deep into the lungs. In the process, the diaphragm is engaged, but the biochemistry is neglected. The act of taking too big a breath causes blood vessels to narrow and actually reduces oxygen delivery to the cells. When teaching or practicing breathing exercises, it is vital to consider that the biomechanical and biochemical functions and respiratory rate are inextricably linked. Think of these three dimensions of the breath like a three-legged stool. If one leg is missing the stool will fall over!
Throughout this book, you will find all the information you need to understand how breathing impacts your health. You will also find all of the exercises necessary to develop new breathing habits. You will learn how to measure your BOLT score in order to assess your health and will be able to choose the program most suitable for you.
The BOLT (Body Oxygen Level Test) is a simple test designed to provide feedback on how well you breathe. The test involves exhaling normally through the nose, pinching the nose to hold the breath, and timing how long in seconds it takes to reach the first definite physical desire to breathe in. The goal is to reach a BOLT score of 40 seconds. A score of less than 25 seconds is strongly suggestive of breathing pattern disorders. The technique, which will be explained in more detail later on, is interchangeable with the three dimensions of breathing as a measure of progress. As your BOLT score improves, you are more likely to find yourself breathing at a slower rate and engaging the diaphragm. I’ll share breathing exercises that focus on:
- Using air hunger to improve biochemistry
- Using lateral expansion of the lower two ribs to improve biomechanics
- The optimal respiratory rate as explored in detail by scientists
I always tell my clients that they will continue to experience asthma, nasal congestion, fatigue, anxiety and panic attacks until their BOLT score, taken first thing in the morning, is at least 25 seconds. You can achieve a higher BOLT score by breathing only through the nose and by practicing the exercises contained in this book. If you have a low BOLT score, changing your breathing patterns can be utterly transformative.
One of the most rewarding things about working with students, even from a distance, is seeing the difference that healthy breathing can make to their lives. I’m lucky enough that I can experience this in person through coaching, and I am also able to reach people through the books, videos and podcasts that I’ve produced or been involved with.
To give an example, in May 2020, I had an email from a lady called Ariella, thanking me for writing my book, The Oxygen Advantage. Ariella had previously subscribed to my online newsletter and had seen such good results from practicing the breathing exercises she received in her inbox that she got hold of a copy of the book. She said, “Your teachings - in just a few days - have already been life-changing.”
Ariella lives with a complex set of rare and chronic conditions that challenge all of her organs. These include dysautonomia (dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system), Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Hypermobility Type (a connective tissue disorder that impacts the strength and function of connective tissue), and mast cell activation disease (an immune cell disease that causes her body to respond to anything and everything with an allergic reaction). She has struggled with breathing for most of her life, and while her doctors always agreed that she didn’t have asthma, she was never able to find out why she found breathing so difficult. This was compounded by the fact that each of her underlying conditions is known to impact on the breath.
Until Ariella found The Oxygen Advantage, she struggled tremendously on a daily basis. She was often breathless and constantly felt like she was fighting to get enough air. She had a BOLT score of just 8 seconds. This discomfort with breathing often prevented her from sleeping, and once she did get to sleep her sleep quality was poor. She frequently lost her voice in connection with her breathing challenges and often couldn’t go outside because the allergen levels were so high that her symptoms immediately became worse. Despite consulting with ENT doctors, pulmonologists, immunologists and more, none of her specialists could identify the cause of her breathing problems or help her to resolve the issue.
Ariella remembers an incident that happened about a year before she wrote to me, which illustrates just how unwell she was: “One day, after pushing myself to have a brief conversation through my lost voice and painful breathing, my heart rate spiked, my blood pressure dropped, and I felt like I truly could not get air into my lungs. This episode went on for at least twenty minutes. I texted my husband, who came home to find me crying on the floor, completely exhausted, still trying to gain my breath.”
This was Ariella’s worst day, but similar experiences had become normal for her. By the time she wrote to me, although her underlying conditions were still quite severe, she no longer struggled to breathe on a daily basis. She explained: “Learning how to efficiently and effectively breathe and learning exercises that can help to bring me back to a place of calm breathing has been life changing for me.”
Ariella still manages symptoms including fatigue, brain fog and thirst, but improving her breathing has vastly improved these symptoms. While allergens such as pollen, dust and mold have always been hugely problematic for her because of her mast cell disease, again, her symptoms have improved. She began taping her mouth at night to ensure nasal breathing during sleep and said: “I feel a noticeable difference when I wake up after sleeping with my mouth closed (the paper tape is so helpful!). When I sleep with my mouth closed, I have more energy, less fatigue, less thirst and my lips are less chapped.”
She also believes that the breathing exercises are proving beneficial in her struggle with dysautonomia, specifically in helping to stabilize her low blood pressure.
By simply integrating the breathing techniques into her daily routine, Ariella has experienced a tremendous impact, not only in terms of breathing comfort, but also to her levels of fatigue and her autonomic nervous system. She describes the breathing work as “incredibly simple, profound and fundamental to health and wellness,” and has been excited to share her discoveries with her healthcare providers and other people suffering with chronic disease.
