Welcome to the huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford school of medicine.
Today we are discussing breathing, breathing is something that we are all familiar
with because frankly, we are all doing it right now and we do it
during our waking States. And while we are asleep and most of us have probably heard that breathing is essential to
life, we here.
That we can survive without food for some period of time, maybe even up to a month or more, that we can't
survive that long without water, but we could survive a few days
without water depending on how well hydrated. We are when we go into that water, deprivation and the Heat of the environment we happen to be in,
but that we cannot survive without breathing for more than a few
minutes. That if we cease to breathe that our brain, and our bodily,
tissues will die. And in fact, that is true. However, despite everybody's knowledge that breathing is essential to life, I don't think that
People realize just how important how we breathe
is to our quality of life and that includes our
mental health, our physical
health, and what we call Performance, that is our ability to
tap into skills, either physical or cognitive in ways that we would not be able to otherwise, if
we are not breathing correctly. So,
today we are going to talk about what it is to breathe correctly. Both at
rest during sleep
in order to reduce our levels of stress in order to wake up
or to become more alert.
Liberally
and many. Many other things including how to stop hiccuping. This is one of the most searched for topics on the internet today. I will teach you the one method that is actually linked to science.
No, it does not involve drinking a glass of water backwards from the opposite, side of the cup or holding your breath in any kind of esoteric way. It actually relates to the neural mechanisms that is the brain to body connections that cause the hiccup hiccup is a spasm of that neural circuit and I'll teach you how to turn off that neural circuit in
One try and that's not a technique. I developed. It's a technique that's actually been known about for several centuries and we now know the underlying mechanism.
So today's discussion will give to you many tools that you can apply all of these tools
are, of course,
behavioral tools. They're completely zero cost. And in telling you how those tools work, you'll learn a lot
about how the breathing aka the respiratory system works and how it interfaces with the other organs and tissues of the body, in particular, the brain.
Rain. In fact, one of the most important things to understand about breathing right here at
the outset is that
breathing is unique among brain and bodily functions in that it lies at the interface between our conscious and our subconscious behavior and it represents a bridge literally in the brain between the conscious and the
subconscious. What do I mean by that?
Well, breathing does not
require that. We pay attention to our breathing or that. We are even aware that we are breathing. It will just carry on in the background either normally or abnormally. Not
You what Normal? And abnormal breathing is in the little
bit. However, breathing is unique
among brain and bodily functions in that. At any
moment, we can consciously take control of how we breathe. This is an absolutely spectacular and highly unusual feature of brain function. For instance, your digestion is carrying
on in the background right now, whether or not you've had food recently or
not, but you can't simply control your digestion by thinking about it in a particular way. In fact, most people can't even control their Thinking
by trying.
To control their thinking that actually takes some practice. It can be done topic for a future episode.
However, breathing is unique, breathing will carry on involuntarily subconsciously in the background as I said before. But if at any moment, you want to hold your breath or inhale, more deeply, more vigorously, or exhale longer than you.
Inhale, you can do that very
few. If any other neural circuits in
your brain and body allow that level of control and turns out that level of control is Not an Accident. It has
Been hypothesized that
by controlling breathing. The brain is actually attempting to control its own state of mind. Now, the way this was originally stated in a scientific research paper is a little bit different as a little bit more physiological. The statement was the brain by regulating breathing controls, its own excitability
excitability in the context of neurobiology, is
how able the brain is to take in new
information or not. How
Abel the brain is or not to turn itself off to go to
sleep, and to regulate its own levels of
anxiety, Focus, Etc. If
that seems a little bit
abstract, I'll make it simple for you
by changing your pattern of breathing. You can very quickly change, what your brain is capable of doing. In fact, little bit later. I'll tell you that. While you inhale, you are far better at learning and remembering
information than during an Excel and it is a very significant difference. Does that mean you should only
Inhale and not Excel. No, of course not. I'll
teach you how to breathe for the sake of learning and memory, as well as for physical performance, and a number of other things. So hopefully, I've been able to highlight for you, the importance of breathing, not just for life because yes, breathing is essential for life. But that the subtleties of how we breathe the duration, and intensity of our inhales and our exhales, how long we hold our breath between inhales and exhales.
Very, critically defines our state of mind and our state of body, what we
are able to do and what we are not able to do. And the great news is, we can control our breathing and in doing so control, our mental health, physical health, and performance. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at
Stanford. It is however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to Consumer information about science and
science related tools to the general public in keeping with
that theme. I'd like to thank
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If you're interested in trying, whoop, you can go to join dot whoop.com huberman today and get your first month. Free, let's talk about breathing. And, of course we breathe in order to
In oxygen into the body.
But we also breathe to remove
certain things from our body in particular carbon dioxide. So, the main players in today's discussion are going to be oxygen and carbon dioxide. Now I
common misconception is that oxygen is
good. And carbon dioxide is bad. That's simply not the case. Let's just take a step back from that statement, and
let's think about this. When we breathe in, we are largely breathing in air in order to bring
oxygen into our body.
And we can just stop right there and say,
Why do we breathe at all?
Why can't we just get oxygen from the world around us? Well, it's because oxygen can't diffuse through our skin into the deeper cells of our body, other single cell and very simple organisms can actually bring oxygen into their system without the need to breathe. But we
have to breathe in order to bring
oxygen to the cells. That reside deep in our body in particular are our brain cells, which are the most metabolically active cells in our body, require a lot of oxygen and those brain cells are sitting course in
Rain, which is encased in the cranial, Vault, the skull. And so oxygens can't
simply pass to those cells. So we need to
have a system that will deliver oxygen to those cells. We also need a system which turns out to be the breathing or respiratory system that can offload or remove, the gas that we call carbon dioxide.
Not because carbon dioxide is bad,
but because too much of it in our system is not good. In fact, much of today's discussion will also center around the
common
misconception that carbon dioxide is something.
That we want to get rid
of, you don't want to get rid of too much carbon dioxide or
else. You can't actually get oxygen to the cells and tissues of your body in an efficient way. So you need oxygen, and you
need carbon dioxide in your
body. You also need to be able to offload or remove carbon dioxide and bring in oxygen, in the correct ratios so that you can perform the kind of mental functions and physical functions that you want to. So, if we just
dial out, even further, we say, What are the
Components of breathing. What are
the elements within the body
that allow us to bring oxygen to the tissues and cells? As is required and
remove carbon dioxide from the body as is required. And yet keep enough carbon dioxide around in order to allow
oxygen to do its thing. Well, that breathing or respiratory apparatus has two major components and I'm going to just briefly describe those. And as I
do this, I really want to highlight the fact that anytime you're thinking about biology,
she and Physiology and particular, whether or not, it's about
the brain or the liver or the gut microbiome, it's useful to
categorize things either, as mechanical,
Mechanisms or chemical mechanisms. What do I mean by that? Well, let's just take the analogy of hunger. There are mechanical
mechanisms that tell us when
we should eat. For instance, you have neurons nerve cells in your gut. That signal,
how stretched or non-stretch the walls of your stomach are, right? How full or how empty your gut is,
and send that information to the brain, to make you feel, to some extent hungry or not hungry in general, when our stomach is very
full.
Especially if it's very distended, even with liquid, it suppresses our hunger. Whereas when our
stomach is devoid of that
mechanical pressure, especially for a number of hours, it tends to trigger hunger by signaling via neurons to the brain.
In addition, there are
chemical signals that go from the gut to the brain.
For instance, we have neurons in our
gut that can detect the presence of amino acids from proteins that we eat fatty acids from the foods that we eat the lipids
and sugars.
Different forms of carbohydrate the neurons in our gut are paying attention to or respond to how
much amino acid, fatty acid and carbohydrate is in our gut, and
send signals to the brain to either stimulate or suppress hunger. So those are
chemical signals that are being passed from gut to brain and they work in parallel with the mechanical signals.
And this idea of in parallel with again is a very common theme in biology.
Especially Neuroscience. The
term parallel Pathways refers to the fact that any time, there's a critical
Bodily function. It's very unlikely that just one type of information like just mechanical information is going to be used. Almost always. It's going to be mechanical and chemical information. I
could pick a number of other examples. For instance, if you want to avoid damaging your skin or other tissues of your body
which is essential to life. Well, then
you have mechanical information about for instance, whether or not something is
pinching or ready to pierce your skin. That's mechanical information.
Sent via specific neurons up to the brain to Signal a retraction. Reflex of you move your limb away from wherever that intense pressure is coming. You also have chemical sensing in your skin, the presence of things that elicits a burn or that elicit pitch. Or that elicits extreme cold. All that chemical information is being signaled up to the brain as well in parallel. So, parallel Pathways is a common theme.
So when we're thinking about the respiration, aka the breathing system, we also need to look at the mechanical.
What are the different components of the nose? The mouth, the lungs,
Etc. That allow oxygen to be brought in and carbon
dioxide to be removed from the body. But not too much. Carbon dioxide removed to allow breathing to work as
efficiently and as optimally as possible. And then we also need to look at the chemical systems of the lungs, the blood stream, and how different cells use oxygen. And carbon dioxide in order to understand that as
well, if you can understand the mechanical and chemical aspects of breathe,
And even just at a top Contour will then the various tools that I discussed
during today's episode such as
the ability to calm yourself down most quickly by doing what's called
a physiological sigh. I'll go into this in more detail in a little bit, but this is to
very deep inhales through the nose. So the first one is a long inhale. And then the second one after that is a quick sharp, inhale, to maximally inflate your lungs followed by a full. Exhale, through the mouth too
long.
Completely empty. So it's
big inhale through the nose, then short, inhale, through the nose immediately after that in order to maximally inflate the lungs and then a long, exhale, through the mouth until your lungs are empty. You will understand why that particular pattern or breathing and not simply one. Inhale, we're not simply an inhale, through the nose
and exhale through the nose, as well, is optimal for reducing your stress quickly. That double inhale through the
nose, followed by a long exhale,
Through the
mouth Works to reduce your levels of stress and lower your levels of so-called autonomic arousal
very fast in real time and it works better than any other known
approach. It's not a hack. This is actually something that your body has specific neural circuits to do and actually performs during sleep on a pretty regular basis and even throughout the day and that you can
perform voluntarily and it works so well to reduce stress very quickly, not because it brings in the maximum amount of oxygen and
Who's the maximum amount of carbon dioxide but rather because it optimally balances oxygen. And carbon dioxide if
you understand the mechanical and chemical aspects
of breathing, then you will understand exactly why that particular pattern of breathing the so-called physiological PSI is the most efficient way to rapidly reduce stress in real
time. If you can understand the mechanical and chemical aspects of breathing, you will also understand why most people are over breathing that is their breathing
too often even if they're breathing.
Being in a shallow manner there breathing, too often
and they are blowing off or removing, too much
carbon dioxide.
And if you understand that carbon dioxide is critical for the way that oxygen is
delivered from the bloodstream to the tissues of the
body including the brain. Well, then it will make very good sense as to why people who are breathing too much. Don't actually experience all the effects of elevated
oxygen, but rather, they're putting their body into what's called a hypoxic state. They're not getting enough oxygen to the tissues.
The body in particular their brain and this is true not just for people who are obese or who suffer from sleep apnea, or although that's certainly the case. But for people that have believe it or not certain personality types, we'll talk about breathing and personality type and actually how breathing has been shown to alter personality. That's right breathing can alter personality in positive ways that allow
anyone to show up to the various social and
non-social Endeavors of their life. With more calm, more focus alertness and improve their
overall health. Okay?
So let's talk about the mechanical components of breathing, it's really quite simple. You've got your
nose, obviously, and you've got your mouth
and a little bit later. We'll talk about the incredible advantages
of being a nasal breather, most of the time,
but also the incredible advantages of
using your mouth to breathe both for inhales and exhales
during particular types of
Endeavors. And we'll get back to that a little later.
But for the meantime, the only two ways to bring air into your system, are through your nose and through your mouth. We also have the larynx which is a rigid tissue or pipe, that brings the air from the nose and mouth down to the lungs. Now, that word rigid
is really important here because what we will soon
learn is that your lungs, basically
act like a pump, you sort of know this already but these are two big bags. Basically, that can fill with air.
Or that can squeeze air out what most people don't realize is that the lungs are not just
two big bags of air.
Your lungs are actually two big bags of error that inside of them, have hundreds of millions of little
sacs that are called the Avo Lee of the lungs. And
by having those hundreds of millions of little sacks, you increase the surface area of the lungs and by increasing the surface area, you allow more oxygen to pass from the air in your lungs into the blood stream,
then if you didn't have those sacks,
X. And you
allow more carbon dioxide to move from the bloodstream into those sacs of the
lungs, and then when you exhale, the carbon dioxide can be
removed. Okay? So those little sacks, we call a viola of the
lungs are an important part of the mechanical aspect of breathing. We'll get to a little bit
later. Okay, so at a first pass, the mechanical aspects of
breathing are really straightforward, right? You can breathe through your nose. You can breathe through your
mouth. Goes down through the larynx. I told you. The larynx is a rigid pipe. The lungs are not rigid. They can expand. And they can
contract like a
To bring in air or to expel air,
keep in mind that the lungs do
not have any muscles themselves.
So we need muscles. That can either squeeze the lungs or that will allow the
lungs to expand. And there are two general groups of muscles that do
that. And they are the diaphragm and the
so-called intercostal
muscles. The diaphragm is a thin muscle that sits below the
lungs and above the liver.
And when we inhale provided that we are using
It's called diaphragmatic
breathing that diaphragm contracts and when it contracts, it moves
down, which allows more space for the lungs to inflate with air. Now, the
intercostal muscles are the muscles between our ribs. Number of people don't probably don't realize this, but your ribs, of course, our bone, but in between those bones, you have muscles and the intercostal muscles. When you inhale contract and that allows your rib cage to move up
and to expand a bit. And I
think, again, people probably
Lies that your ribs are not fixed in place. They can actually get further and closer apart from one another. So, when you inhale, your ribcage actually moves up, sometimes the shoulders will move up as well. And that's because those intercostal
muscles are Contracting.
Now muscles, can't move on their own. They are controlled by
nerves.
So we've got the nose, the mouth, the larynx, and the lungs, the lungs have. All those little Avo lie in them. And as I told you, we've got the diaphragm as a muscle to move.
The
lungs and we have the intercostal muscles to move the ribs, which can allow the lungs to expand. Again, we're
just on the mechanical components of breathing but because muscles can't move themselves. You
should be asking what moves the muscles and
its really nerves that
control muscles.
So whether or not you're Contracting your biceps or you're walking and you're Contracting, your quadriceps and your hamstrings and your calf muscles.
It's neurons nerve cells that control that
there is a specialized nerve called the phrenic
nerve.
Thre ni C phrenic nerve
that comes out of the neck. And when I say, it comes out of the neck, what I mean, is that their little neurons that reside in that brain
stem in the back of your brain
and they send little wires that we call axons down and out of the neck, they go through close to the heart and a little bit behind it and they go down and they form synapses that is they form connections with
the diaphragm
and when those neurons release
Neurotransmitter which are low chemicals, the diaphragm contraction, it moves down
so we say that the phrenic nerve is a motor. Nerve is designed to move muscle.
However the phrenic nerve like a few other nerves in the body is interesting in that it has not just motor nerves in their
neurons that control the contraction of
muscles. It also can sense things there has Sensory neurons.
So it also sends connections down to the diaphragm and actually down deep into the diaphragm and close.
The liver and note that I said liver twice now already, we're going to get back to this later when we talk about physical movement and cramps of the body,
those Sensory neurons, dive deep into the diaphragm and then they go back up to the brain. And they allow you to sense where the diaphragm is. So they're giving information about where the diaphragm is in your body. Now most of the time you're not paying attention to this, but right now you can actually try this and I would encourage you to do this diaphragmatic breathing is in many ways the ideal way to
Breathe in that. It's the most efficient way to breathe. We'll talk
about what we mean. Exactly. When we say breathing efficiency
later, but the diaphragm is designed to allow the lungs to expand, or to
contract the lungs to bring air into the body or to remove carbon dioxide from the body. And if you
want to know whether or not you're using diaphragmatic breathing, it's very
simple. If you inhale, probably best to do this, through the nose, but you could do it through the mouth.
If you inhale, and your belly moves outward on the inhale.
Well then that phrenic nerve is controlling your
diaphragm properly and then when you exhale, your belly should go in just a little bit, that's diaphragmatic breathing. Now, diaphragmatic breathing
is talked about in the context of yoga. It's often talked about as a way to calm down and so on but diaphragmatic breathing is just one mode by which your brain and the phrenic nerve can
control muscle the diaphragm to control the mechanical aspects of the lungs to bring in air and expel air.
As I mentioned before, you also have these muscles
between your
Your ribs or the
intercostal muscles and there's a separate set of nerves that allow those muscles to
contract and for your rib cage, to expand in order to create more room for your lungs to get larger and fill with air, or for your rib cage to contract a bit. When those muscles relax in order to expel air,
I'd like to go on record by saying that there is no
rule that diaphragmatic breathing is better than breathing where your ribcage moves. This is a common
misconception, people say oh,
You know, if your shoulders are going up and down in your, your rib cage is moving.
While you're breathing, well, then you're not breathing, right? And if your belly goes out, and the rest of your body is still while you breathe. Well, then you're breathing correctly. I know of 0,
in fact, 0 -1 data to support that statement. You have multiple parallel mechanisms to control
the mechanics of your lungs and for breathing and when you're exerting yourself very hard,
you tend to use both the intercostal muscles and your ribcage moving as well as your diaphragm in order to bring,
In a lot of oxygen and to offload a lot of carbon dioxide.
And when you're calmer, frankly, you could use diaphragmatic breathing or you could
use rib cage type breathing in order to bring enough oxygen into your
system. There's no real data showing that
diaphragmatic breathing is somehow Better or Worse. However,
being able to mechanically control those independently or to combine them, and use them together is of tremendous power
toward regulating your mental and physical States. And we'll talk about how to do that a little bit
later for, right.
Now, please understand that you have these different mechanical components that allow you to bring oxygen into your system and to
expel air. And to, thereby off low carbon dioxide from your system
again, we haven't talked about the gas exchange of
carbon dioxide and oxygen and how that's happening. The bloodstream will talk about that
next. But the basic mechanical components are pretty simple, right? Once again, just to review its nose mouth, larynx lungs, if you only within the lungs and then those two
muscles, the diaphragm.
In the intercostal muscles of the ribs.
One thing I failed to
mention is why it's so important that that larynx be rigid, that it's a tube that is
very rigid. And the reason for that is that unlike the lungs, which you want to act, as sort of
a Bellow pump where you can, you can deflate it and inflate it in order to move air in and
out the larynx needs to be rigid. So that it doesn't collapse
while you're bringing air in and out, you can
imagine that if it was a very flimsy tuber or the walls.
The larynx were very flimsy and
thin. Well then you can imagine breathing in very vigorously and it would shut
like a tube that suddenly flattens on itself which is would not be good. So the fact that the
Clarence is rigid is actually a very crucial part of this whole system. The other important
aspect of the system as it relates to the mechanics of breathing is the
fact that your nose and your mouth have different resistances to are. You can probably notice
this right now if you were to, for instance, breathe in through your
mouth. And oh,
only through your mouth versus breathe in, through your nose. Some of you perhaps have a harder time breathing in through your nose. By the way, it's perfectly normal that one or the other nostril would be harder to breathe through or easier to breathe through. And
that, that switches across the day has to do with the flow of
mucus and cerebrospinal, fluid and intracranial. Pressure. Totally normal. Many people out there. Think they have a deviated septum who don't actually have a deviated septum, a little bit later, we'll talk about how to repair
a deviated septum without surgery, because that actually is possible in many, not all cases, and is it.
Actually beneficial to
do. But what we know is that breathing in through the nose is a little bit harder and it's supposed
to be a little bit harder. However,
because it's a little bit harder because there's more resistance, as we say, you are actually able to draw more Force into these mechanical aspects of the breathing apparatus, and actually bring more air into your lungs. You can try this right now. Try breathing in through your mouth, to
maximally inflate your
lungs, and try and do it through mostly
diaphragm.
Attic breathing, just for sake of example.
In other words try and breathe in through your mouth. And as you do that, have your belly expand and maximally
inflate your lungs. I'll do it right now with you so that we can do it in together and I can prove to everyone that I'm just as deficient in this as you are,
okay, so I can inflate my stomach doing that but now try doing it
with your nose and please do exhale before you try doing it with your nose,
with your nose. You're going to feel more resistance, but you'll notice that you can inflate it quite a bit further.
And you'll feel your entire cavity, your belly, and maybe even in your lower back, so fill with some pressure. So the increased resistance actually allows you to draw more air into the system. This turns out to be very important and it also wipes away a common misconception, which is if you're somebody who has a challenges breathing in through your nose that somehow you
should avoid breathing in through your nose actually, quite the opposite is true and we can go a step further and say that if you have challenges breathing in through your
nose, chances are, that's because the increased
Distance of breathing in through your
nose provided it's not completely. Occluded
is going to allow you to bring more oxygen
into your system.
This will turn out to be useful later when we explore different techniques. For instance, not
just a calm down quickly, but to elevate your energy quickly
to
remove a cramp
during exercise and a number of other things
that breathing can be used for that can be immensely useful for mental and physical challenges.
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So now let's talk about the chemical aspects of breathing
and the two major players in this discussion are oxygen, which all the cells and tissues of your body
need and carbon dioxide which
all the cells and tissues of your body. Need in fact carbon dioxide plays
critical roles in delivering
oxygen to your cells and without carbon dioxide, you're not going to get enough oxygen
Into the cells and tissues of your body. That said, if carbon dioxide levels are too high, that is very problematic. In fact, one of the ways that one can reliably induce panic in anybody is to have them breathe air, that contains too much carbon dioxide
so much. So that for people, that
lack a so-called amygdala, many of you have probably heard of the amygdala. This is a brain area that's associated with
fear and threat detection, even in people who completely
Lee lack amygdalas on both sides of the brain because they were removed because they had epileptic seizures there. And therefore, those people are completely unafraid
of things that they ought to be afraid of like heights, poisonous snakes
any number of different things dangerous to humans. Well, if those people breathe
an excess amount of carbon dioxide, they immediately have a panic attack.
What that tells us is that again. There are parallel mechanisms, there's redundancy in the system
to protect ourselves from having too much carbon dioxide in our
Adam. So we need
enough. Carbon
dioxide and enough oxygen in our system but not too much.
The way that's accomplished is that, of course we breathe in
air our lungs inflate. And if you
recall those little, a Veolia of the lungs, those little sacks oxygen can actually move from the air into those little sacks. And then from those little sacks into the vasculature, the vasculature are the
capillaries, the veins and the arteries of the body, because the
walls of those little AV Oli are exceedingly thin, and they have tons of little
capillaries that go into them and
Are all around them. So this is amazing, right? There's oxygen
literally passing from inside
of these little sacs in our lungs, because we inhaled the oxygen from the air into the bloodstream. And then that oxygen gets bound up by proteins in the blood in particular, hemoglobin
and hemoglobin, then
delivers oxygen to the very cells and tissues of the body.
However, oxygen can't just hop on hemoglobin.
Owen and cruise along with hemoglobin until it gets to say your brain and then hop off. It doesn't work that way.
You require carbon dioxide in order to
liberate oxygen from hemoglobin.
Carbon dioxide has this incredible property of actually being able to change the shape of hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is shaped as a sort of a cage around oxygen molecules. And when it's in that cage shape, the oxygen can't be liberated. So you've got oxygen and hemoglobin bound to one another moving through your bloodstream, but if a tissue needs oxygen, there needs to be carbon dioxide present.
Want to open up that cage, and that's what carbon dioxide does it allows that cage should change shape and then the oxygen can be liberated and then
can be delivered to the tissues whether or not that's brain tissue or muscle tissue so on and so forth.
And so those are the major chemical components of breathing. There are a few other aspects related to the chemical components of breathing. Such as the fact that carbon dioxide is strongly related to how acidic
or how basic your
body is in general.
So for instance, if carbon dioxide levels go
way down, your blood pH goes way up, that is, you become
more alkaline. Now, for many people, the word pH and the whole concept of pH immediately starts
to evoke anxiety in. And of itself pH is actually very
simple. You want the body? Basically, to be at a pH of about seven point four. There are some regions of your
body, in particular, along the gut, which, that number, is importantly, different. In order for digestion to work properly, you've all heard of the gut microbiome
Um the little
microbes that provided you have enough of them and
their diverse enough,
allow your brain and body to function optimally at the level of immune system
hormone system, brain, Etc. Well in the gut you want the pH. Sometimes be slightly more acidic because when it's more acidic, the little micro biota flourish
far more than if it were more
basic. But basically, you want the rest of the
body to be at about pH? 7.4,
if carbon dioxide levels go too low, the pH
Increases in a way that you might say, oh, well, that's bad. But that actually allows
more oxygen to be available to the tissues of your body. At least temporarily will talk about this a bit more later.
If I'm losing any of you just hang in there because we're almost done
with this whole business of the mechanics and the chemistry of breathing and then we can get into the tools and revisit some of this later to clean up any misunderstandings. It may have Arisen
but as we're talking about carbon dioxide over and over again and
how key it is to have carbon dioxide and the problems with it going too high or too low.
Whoa, you should probably be asking yourself what actually makes carbon
dioxide go too low. Right, we know that we breathe in oxygen, and then it can pass from the lungs and the alveoli into the bloodstream. And then we need carbon dioxide deliberate
oxygen from the hemoglobin
into the cells and tissues of the body. And we know that when we exhale we're actually I haven't told you this yet, but you should know that when you
exhale carbon dioxide is
actually taken from the bloodstream back into those, a viola of the lungs and then when you
exhale, it's
Through your mouth or through your nose out into the world.
So, the way I just described all
that, inhale, bring in oxygen, exhale expel carbon dioxide.
Pretty straightforward,
right? Indeed, it is and it also tells you
that were you to
Exhale a lot more or a lot more vigorously, you would expel more carbon dioxide. And in fact, that's exactly the way it works. When you hyperventilate, of course, you are inhaling more than usual but you are also exhaling more than usual. So you are of course, bringing in more air and oxygen to your body. But you're also removing more carbon dioxide from your body than normal
cars.
Carbon dioxide because of the ways that it regulates brain state. In fact, the
way in which it regulates the excitability, literally the ability of your neurons to engage electrically or not,
it can create states of panic and anxiety, which is why, when you
hyperventilate, you feel an increase in anxiety,
or when you feel an increase in
anxiety, you hyperventilate. It's a reciprocal relationship fact, I don't want anyone who has anxiety or who has panic attacks.
Acts to try this now. But for most people, it's probably safe as long as you're not driving or doing something
mechanical or operating Machinery. That is probably safe to do
25 or 30 deep inhales and exhales. And you'll notice that by about breath 10, you'll start to feel tingly and you'll probably feel a little bit more alert. And again, if you have anxiety or panic attack Tendencies, please don't do this, but you will feel an
increase in so-called autonomic arousal and increasing the activity of your overall sympathetic nervous system.
It has nothing to do with sympathy, has everything to do with alertness, you'll actually deploy
adrenaline from your adrenals, so I'll just do this. Now, you can try this. Now, again provided, you're in a safe place
and you don't have anxiety or panic attack Tendencies. You will just breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Remember, we're
breathing in more and more vigorously, and we're exhaling more, and more vigorously than we normally would. It goes something like this. Now, by breath eight or nine or ten, you'll
notice that your body starts to heat up.
That's due to a couple of things, mainly, the release of adrenaline from your adrenals.
I'm already feeling a little bit
lightheaded. The lightheadedness is
actually because you're vasculature the capillaries and veins, and to some extent, even the arteries of your body, in particular, in your brain, are actually starting to constrict. So you're cutting off blood flow to the brain. Why? Well, because carbon
dioxide actually is a vasodilator, normally it exists in your body to keep
capillaries veins and arteries dilated to a
Blood to pass through them, when you hyperventilate. Sure. You're bringing in a lot of oxygen which you think would make you more alert and indeed it does, but you are also expelling a lot more carbon dioxide than you normally would and that's causing some vasoconstriction and you're going to start
feeling tingly in the periphery, in your fingers and toes perhaps or your legs.
You will also notice that you're feeling more alert in the
brain but that you might start to
feel a bit of anxiety.
So hyperventilation yes, brings in more oxygen also removes more carbon
dioxide the removal of excess carbon dioxide.
Puts you into a state that's called hypo cap, Nick. All right, hypoxia hypoxia is reduced levels of oxygen
relative to normal. Hypocapnia is reduced levels of carbon
dioxide relative to normal. And is those reduced levels
of carbon dioxide that are largely responsible for that elevation and energy. And at the same time, a feeling of a bit of anxiety, the
constriction of the micro vasculature in the brain and body, and therefore, the feelings of being kind of tingly and having kind of an urgency to move.
Okay. So by now, it should be clear that we need both oxygen and carbon dioxide
and across the course of this episode, I will explain how to adjust those ratios of oxygen to carbon dioxide depending on what your immediate needs are
and what you plan to
do next whether or not that sleep or exercise, or some mental work, etc. Before
going any further, however, there is something I want to touch on because even though not everyone will experience this. I think enough people experience it that it is of Interest.
Stand, now's the
right time to touch
into what happens when you
go up to a very high altitude, meaning why it's hard to breathe when you get up to high altitudes. So if you're close to sea level,
you are getting out of the optimal balance of
oxygen in the air you breathe,
as you ascend in altitude. So, let's say, you go to
6,000 feet or 10,000, or maybe an
11,000 feet above sea level, or maybe you're one of those rare individuals, that climbs, Denali, or you climb.
Mount Everest and you get up there and you notice that most
people are going to wear an oxygen mask. Why is it
that you need an oxygen
mask at those very high altitudes. Or when people do these very high altitude skydives that they need oxygen way up high.
Well, a lot of people say, oh, there's not much oxygen up
there, you know, the air is
thinner. Okay, well, perhaps a better way to think about it is that remember when we were talking about the mechanical
aspects of breathing and the fact that the
lungs don't really move
themselves
elves that they have the muscles, the diaphragm and intercostal muscles to move them.
Well, a lot of the reason why your
lungs can fill. So readily with
air is that when you don't have much air in your lungs, there's very low air pressure in your lungs
relative to outside you. Okay? So what we
mean then is, if you were to open up your mouth, or your
nose, and breathe in, that is breathe in through your nose or mouth.
What's going to happen is air is going to move from high pressure.
To low pressure. So it's very easy to fill your lungs, even though you need those muscles to move.
The various things around, that allow your
lungs to fill. The air is going to go from high
pressure to low pressure. So for those of you listening, I just took a bit in big inhale through my nose.
And then when you exhale, right, you're basically taking the lungs from a state in which the pressure is really high in the lungs. You know, high pressure like a balloon
that's full and the
pressure on your lungs, when your lungs are full is higher than the air outside. So it's pretty easy
to expel that are
Oh, through the nose or
mouth. When you're at high
altitudes, the air pressure is lower.
And so what happens is when the air pressure is lower
outside your body and your lungs are not full of error, you
don't have that really steep,
gradient of high pressure outside the body to low pressure inside your lungs. And
so, you actually have to put a lot more
effort into breathing air into your lungs. You have to really exert a lot of force. You have to get the diaphragm those intercostal muscles working really hard. You might even find that your
there's are lifting with each breath because you really have to generate a lot of force to get enough air and oxygen into your lungs.
Now, an important principle to understand is that in humans and in some other species, but really what we're talking about now is humans, when you inhale, that's an active process, you really need to use those
muscles of the intercostals and the diaphragm in order to inflate the lungs,
but the whole process is made easier. When air pressure outside your
body is higher than it is in your lungs because then they're going to fill up really readily.
Exhaling. At least for humans
is a passive
thing. You just have to relax the diaphragm and relax the intercostals and let the ribcage have fall back to its original position. So
inhaling is active and exhaling is passive and so what happens is if you're at a high altitude
and the air pressure is very low. Then you have to put a lot
of energy into breathing air into your
lungs, to get an equivalent amount of oxygen into your lungs and then into the bloodstream.
So that's why when you arrive at a
high altitude location
the first few days you're going to feel light-headed. Maybe a headache. You're also going to have more buildup of carbon
dioxide in your system. And so the whole balance of
oxygen and carbon
dioxide is going to be disrupted. I mention all that because yes, indeed there are some changes in the
atmospheric gases at high altitudes and that can impact how much oxygen you can bring into your system into your tissues.
But you know, I've heard many explanations of why it's hard to breathe or why you feel lousy at
altitude. Well, you
just discovered one reason, which
is that you don't have that steep high pressure to low pressure,
A gradient from the outside of the body into the inside of the body.
The converse is also true. If you've been at altitude for a few days and you've had the opportunity to
adjust a lot of athletes. For instance will go train at altitude. It's hard for them in the first days or weeks and then they get really good at training at
altitude. There are a number of different adaptations that occur in terms of
the amount of oxygen that can be carried in the blood by hemoglobin and the interactions between carbon dioxide and hemoglobin and
oxygen, that allow more oxygen to be delivered to the
tissues, such that
At altitude, you can function just normally, but if you then
move very quickly
from altitude. So you've been training at 8,000 feet or 10,000 feet. You've been hiking up at the high level and you've adapted and you come down to sea level. Well, for about
two to five days, you're going to feel like an absolute Beast. You're going to be able to essentially deliver far more oxygen to your muscles per breath in
part. That is because of the
way that the hemoglobin and
the oxygen that it's carrying has been altered when you were at
high altitude. But it's also
Because when you are at the High Altitude those intercostal muscles in the diaphragms, got trained up quite a bit and allowed you to generate more air volume for every breath. In other words, those muscles got stronger and you got more efficient at driving. The phrenic nerve consciously to
really breathe in a lot of oxygen. So you don't feel light-headed headache
Etc. Okay. So that's a little bit of an aside but it's an important aside I believe because a it answers a question, a lot of people ask and a lot of people wonder about and be because it incorporates both the
Cool aspects of breathing, and the chemical aspects of breathing. I realize it's a little bit of a unusual circumstance but now if anyone asks
you why it's hard to breathe it altitude, you know, it has to do with this, lack of a high pressure to low pressure, gradient across the body, and with the atmosphere outside you, it's
also an opportunity for me to say that. If you do find
yourself at altitude, you have a headache or you're feeling like you just can't catch your
breath spending some time. Really consciously trying to draw in larger breaths of
air. As much as that might
seem fatiguing and you'll be short of breath, it will allow you to
adapt more quickly in a little bit later in.
The
episode will touch on a few methods, including deliberate hyperventilation
combined with some breath holds that can allow you to deliver more oxygen to the cells immediately upon arriving at altitude. So you don't get quite as much headache disorientation and so
on, so leaving breathing at altitude aside, let's all come back down to the same conceptual level.
We can ask ourselves for instance, what is healthy
breathing? And what is unhealthy breathing? And the first place, we want to tackle, this is within the context of
sleep. So when we go to sleep at night, we continue to breathe. That's no
surprise. If we didn't, we would die during sleep.
However, there is a large fraction of the population
that under breathe during sleep. They're not taking deep enough or frequent enough breaths,
and, therefore, they are experiencing what's
called sleep apnea? They are becoming hypoxic.
Asik hypo oxic there's less oxygen being brought into their system. Than is necessary people that are carrying excess weight. Either
fat weight or muscle weight or
both are more
prone to nighttime, sleep apnea. However, there are a lot of people who are not overweight who also experienced sleep apnea. How do you know if you're experiencing sleep apnea? Well, first of all, excessive daytime sleepiness
and excessive daytime anxiety combined with daytime. Sleepiness is one sign that you might be suffering from sleep apnea.
Thing is, if you happen to snore, it's very likely that you are experiencing
sleep apnea. And I should mention that sleep apnea is a very serious
health concern. It greatly
increases the probability of a
cardiovascular event heart attack
stroke. It is a precursor or sometimes the direct cause of
sexual dysfunction in males and females
cognitive dysfunction during the daytime. It can exacerbate the effects
of dementia whether or not age related, dementia of the
normal sword or else.
Timers type dementia, which is an acceleration of age-related cognitive decline. If you're somebody who's had a traumatic brain injury,
if you're experiencing a lot of stress sleep apnea is going to greatly disrupt. The amount of
oxygen brought into your brain and body during sleep and is going to lead to a number of nighttime and daytime issues. So it's something that really needs to be addressed and we'll
get into this a bit more later but since I raised it as a problem, I do want to raise the solution, one of the major treatments for
sleep apnea is that people get a CPAP device, which is
this
Face mask and a machine that they'll sleep with. And while those can be very effective, not everyone needs a CPAP one of the more common methods. Nowadays that's being
used to treat sleep apnea, which is purely behavioral and intervention and is essentially zero cost is that people are starting to
shift deliberately to nasal breathing during
sleep because of the
additional resistance of nasal breathing
and because of the fact that there's far less
tendency if anything if any scuse me to snore when nasal breathing taping the mouth shut using medical tape
Prior to sleep, excuse me, putting medical tape
on the mouth prior to going to sleep and then sleeping all night with medical tape on the mouth is one way that people can learn to nasal breathe during sleep and can greatly offset, a lot of sleep apnea snoring and sleep related
issues. Number of people don't want to or don't feel safe putting medical tape on their mouth prior to sleep for some reason they think they're going to suffocate but
of course you would wake up if you start to run out of air at any moment. So that's not so much a concern.
But what they'll do is
They will start to use pure nasal breathing during
any type of exercise or even just for some period of time walking during the day, or while
working, and again, later, we'll get into the enormous benefits of Shifting to Pure nasal breathing, when
not exercising hard, meaning at a rate that you could normally hold a conversation. Although, if your nasal breathing, you won't be holding that conversation
or when simply doing work, or any number of things that are of low intensity, you can train your system.
To become a better nasal breather. During the daytime through these deliberate
actions of taping, the mouth shutter, just being conscious of keeping your mouth shut. And
that in addition to having a number of positive
health and aesthetic effects during the daytime
is known to also transfer to nighttime breathing patterns, and allow
people to become nasal breathers as opposed to mouth-breathers during sleep and to snore lesson to have less sleep apnea. Again, if you have severe sleep apnea, you probably do need to check out a sleep
CPAP, you should talk to your physician. But for people who have minor sleep,
Or sleep apnea that's starting to
take hold these other methods of Shifting to becoming a nasal. Breather are going to be far more beneficial in far more cost-effective than going all the way to the
CPAP. Which by the way, doesn't really
teach you how to breathe properly. As much as it does, adjust the air flow going into your system.
That's an important point that when you
shift from mouth and nasal breathing during sleep, you're actually
learning and training your
system to breathe properly.
And when I say learning and training your system to breathe
properly,
What do I mean? Let's put some scientific and mechanistic meat on
that. We already talked about the phrenic nerve. This nerve that innervates the
diaphragm and that allows for the lungs to fill up because of the movement of the diaphragm. What we didn't talk about however where the brain centers that actually control the phrenic nerve and control
breathing knowing about these two brain areas and what they do is extremely important, not just for understanding the content of this episode, but for
understanding all of the tools that will discuss and indeed your General Health as it relates to respiration. So there are basically
Two areas of the brain that control breathing. The first is called the pre but singer complex. You don't have to worry about the name so much just know that it was named after a bottle of wine in that, it was discovered by the great Jack Feldman. Who's a professor of neuroscience at the University of California Los Angeles. This is one of the most fundamental
discoveries in all of Neuroscience and last 100 years or more because this
brain area that Jack and his colleagues discovered controls, all aspects of breathing that are rhythmic. That is when inhales follow exhales, follow inhales
Follow exhales, that's all controlled by a small set of neurons in this brain stem area. So in the round, the region of the neck
called the pre but singer complex and we really owe a debt of gratitude to Jack and his colleagues for discovering that area because it's
involved in everything from breathing when we're asleep to breathing, when we're not thinking about our breathing, it may have a
role in that is when its
function is
disrupted. It may cause things like sudden infant death syndrome, believe it or not, it can
Explain in large part, many of the deaths related to the opioid crisis because exoticness
opioids, like Fentanyl and other sorts of drugs
which are opioids.
Obviously bind to opioid receptors on that structure and shut it down. Now, keep in mind, these neurons are designed to be incredibly robust and are designed to fire. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, no matter if we're awake or aware unaware, or
sleep, to Keep Us Alive.
Exogenous opioids, like Fentanyl and drugs that are similar to that can shut down that structure because it's rich with these opioid receptors. So it binds to
that and it shuts off the pre but singer complex, which is the major cause of death of people who died from opioid overdoses. And a lot of people don't realize that they think, oh, the opioids my shut off the brain or shut down the heart. No, he shuts down breathing, so Jack's Discovery, and no doubt will lead to some important things, as it relates to addiction. And hopefully, I think we frankly can expect that
Also, going to eventually lead to ways to prevent death in people using, opioids or other types of drugs, Maybe by blocking opioid receptors. In pre-bought, singer complex, using things like Naltrexone etcetera
in any event Prix. But Center complex is controlling inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale to patterns of breathing the other brain Center, controlling breathing again, through the phrenic nerve,
right? It all converges and goes out through the phrenic nerve of these intercostal muscles
is the so-called para facial, nucleus. And the para facial, nucleus is involved in patterns of breathing,
Where there is not an inhale, followed by exhale, inhale, followed by exhale, that is, it's not rhythmic, one than the other, but rather, where there is a doubling up of inhales or a doubling up of
exhales or a deliberate pause in breathing. So, inhale pause exhale, pause, inhale, pause, exhale, pause, this sort of thing a little bit later. We'll
talk about a pattern of breathing called box breathing, which has a very specific and useful applications
in particular for adjusting anxiety.
And in that case,
Case it involves going from rhythmic breathing of inhale. Inhale, inhale, exhale.
That is relying on the pre but
singer complex neurons
to Reliance on the pair of facial nucleus neurons and box breathing, just to give away what's probably already obvious as you inhale hold exhale, hold and repeat and that pattern of
breathing even though it's rhythmic and nature because
inhales proceed exhales
precede inhales and so on there's a deliberate breath-hold inserted there. So any time we're taking conscious control of our breathing the
Facial nucleus is getting
involved. Now, you
don't have to assume that the pair of facial. Nucleus is the only
way in which we take conscious control of our breathing. We can also take control of the pre brought singer complex. You can do that right now. So for instance, you are breathing in some specific pattern. Now that unless you're speaking
or eating, no doubt is going to
involve inhales followed by exhales.
But you could for instance decide that yes inhales are active and exhales are passive, but now you're going to make the
exhales active as well. So rather than just inhale and then
Let your lungs deflate you could inhale and then Force the air out.
That's going to represent a conscious
taking over of control of the pre but singer complex.
Okay. So the reason I'm giving this mechanistic detail is a it's
super important. If you want to understand all the tools related to breathing be, it's
actually a pretty simple system. Even though the areas have fancy names, like
pre boxing or pair of facial, it's pretty straightforward, right? You have one area that controls rhythmic breathing and he'll follows exhales
and the other area which gets involved in breathing anytime you start.
Up on inhales or exhales. In
fact, the pair of facial nucleus is the one that you're relying on while you
speak in order to make sure that you still get enough oxygen. It's also the one that you will use if you incorporate the physiological PSI or box breathing,
and frankly, most of the time you're using both of these circuits, or
these brain systems para, facial and pre-bought singer
in parallel. Again, biology loves parallel systems, especially for things that are so critical,
that if we didn't do them, we would die, like breathing. And so it makes sense that we have two different brain structures.
Has that control this.
So now you have an understanding of the mechanical control of breathing.
That is the different parts within the parts list that are involved in breathing. Everything from nose to mouth to a viola, the lungs
Etc in the muscles involved. In moving the lungs. You understand. I like to think a bit about bringing oxygen in and removing carbon dioxide but not so much. Carbon
dioxide that you can't actually use the oxygen that you
have. And, you know about to brain centers, one
controlling rhythmic breathing and one that controls.
On rhythmic breathing.
I want to repeat something that I said a little bit earlier as
well, which is that breathing is incredible because it represents the interface between conscious and subconscious control over your not just body, not just your
lungs, but that how you breathe influences your brain state? So by using your brain consciously to control your breathing, you are using your brain to control your brain. The best way I've ever heard. This described was from a
beautiful. I should say. Now classic paper in the Journal of physiology.
Published in, 1988 from ballast Reno and some didn't wear
the final line of their summary intro States. The brain by regulating breathing controls, its
own excitability. And just
to remind those of you that, don't remember what excitability is, excitability is the Threshold at, which, a given neuron nerve cell can be active or not. So, when we breathe a certain way, the neurons of our brain, are more likely to get engaged, they're more likely to be active. And when we breathe,
In other ways, our brain becomes harder to
activate. Its excitability is reduced. Now, you might think
excitability is a great thing, you always want your brain to be excitable but that's actually not the case. And in fact that very statement, the ballast Renown. So imagine made led to a number of other investigations that were really important in defining. How if people over breathe that is, if they hyperventilate at rest, they expel that
is, they
Exhale too much
carbon dioxide. What that classic paper by ballast Reno and some Gin led to was a number of different investigations in humans. Looking at how different patterns of breathing impact, the overall state of the brain and the ability of the brain to
respond to certain, what are called sensory stimuli,
keep in mind that your brain is always
active. The neurons are firing at low level, low level low
level. But when you see something or hear something, or you want to focus on something or you want to
Or size or really listen to something or learn certain circuits in your brain need to be more active than everything else that is. There needs to be really high what's called signal-to-noise, there's always a lot of noise and chatter in the background just like the chatter at a cocktail party or
to Stadium event
in order to really pay attention, focus. Learn all the incredible things that the brain can do you need that signal to get above the
noise?
There's a beautiful paper that asks, how does the pattern of
Breathing in particular, how does
overbreathing
change the patterns of activity in the
brain? This
is a paper entitled effects of voluntary hyperventilation on cortical sensory
responses and I will provide a link to the study in the show. No captions.
It's a somewhat complicated paper. If you look at all the detailed analyses, however the takeaway from this paper is exquisitely,
simple and I also believe incredibly important
basically. What it showed is that when people hyperventilate, they
expel that is
They exhale more carbon dioxide than they would normally. So they become, what's called hypo cap, Nick? Okay, carbon dioxide levels are low in the blood
and over a short period of time. They become low in the tissues of the body. When that carbon dioxide
level drops low, you would say, okay, well, you're still bringing in a lot of oxygen because they're these people are hyperventilating so they should feel really
alert and indeed that's what happened. It's the people feel very alert.
However, because they're not bringing enough
carbon dioxide in or rather the
proper way to say it would be, because they're over breathing exhaling too much. They are not retaining or keeping in enough carbon dioxide. Well, then that lack of carbon dioxide means that the oxygen that they are breathing in. Can't be liberated from the hemoglobin, can't get to the brain and what they observe is about a 30 to 40 percent reduction in the amount of
Of
oxygen. That's being delivered to the brain
and the reduction in carbon dioxide also prevent some of the normal patterns of vasodilation that the dilating, the opening up at the capillaries, so again, less blood flow. But most importantly, as it shown in this paper, the brain overall becomes hyper excitable. It's as if it's being starved of oxygen and blood flow and all the neurons in a very nonspecific Way. Start.
Increasing their firing level. So the background activity is getting louder and louder. It's like the rumble or the noise of a crowd at a stadium. And as a consequence,
the sensory input from a sound or from a touch, or
from some other event in the world doesn't get above the noise. What this means is that when we hyperventilate because we aren't retaining enough carbon dioxide, we are not getting enough
oxygen to the tissues that need oxygen.
And as a consequence of that,
Rain becomes hyper excitable. We actually know that. There's an increase in anxiety
and we become less good less efficient at detecting things in our environment. So we're not processing information as well at
all. The noise goes up and the signal goes down
again incredibly important set of findings. I should also mention that hyperventilation is one way that in the
laboratory anyway or in neurosurgery
units for some time.
Physicians. Would evoke seizure in seizure prone, patients?
The reason that works is exactly the
explanation. I just gave you seizure is a hyperexcitability of the brain, not enough inhibition or suppression of the overall circuitry. So you get these waves are these storms of electrical activity,
low levels of carbon dioxide in the brain
because of low levels of carbon dioxide in. The blood
are one of the major triggers for seizures. Now, I realize that most people listening to this are not epileptic. But nonetheless, this brings us all back to this question of what is normal healthy breathing, as I mentioned before,
Normal healthy breathing is breathing about 6
liters of air per minute. But of course,
most of us don't think in terms of leaders
of are, we're not going to go measure our lung capacity, at least most of us aren't going to do that.
Basically, if you are taking relatively shallow breaths and you're just sitting there working or maybe
even walking slowly, getting not talking or engaging in any kind of speech or eating,
chances are six liters of air per minute is about 12, shallow, ish breaths. And when I say shallow, I don't mean you.
No you know breathing like a little bunny rabbit or something like that. I just mean you know casually breathing in out in out
the studies that have explored the breathing patterns in a large
populations of individuals
who are not suffering necessarily from any one, specific ailment have shown that most people
breathe far too much per minute that they're
engaging in anywhere from 15 to 20 or even 30,
shallow breaths per minute. So they are.
Lee overbreathing relative to how they should be breathing. Now of course, if you breathe more deeply, so you take a vigorous inhale
and then you expel that error. Well, then for it to get six liters of air into your system per minute. You're probably only going to need somewhere between four and
six breaths in order to get that six liters per minute. Now,
the total time that it
takes to do that, inhale, and exhale. Isn't that much longer than a
And of shallow breath provided, you're not deliberately breathing quickly during those shallow
breaths. So then you say well how is it that normal healthy
breathing that delivers, the
appropriate amount of carbon
dioxide into the system. And doesn't expel doesn't Excel too much carbon dioxide. How are we supposed to do that normal breathing, right? Are you supposed to breathe four times? Then hold your breath until the minute passes.
Know what you find? Is that the correct pattern of breathing is going to involve two things? First of all, nasal breathing, because of the resistance,
it provides through the nose that we talked about.
Is going to deliver more oxygen into your system. You're going to be able to generate more air pressure to fill your lungs that
greater air pressure
is going to take longer to Exhale. So already, we're increasing the amount of time that each breath is going to take. And also what you find is that people that are breathing in the proper healthy manner. That is that are balancing oxygen and carbon dioxide in the proper ways are also taking pauses between breaths. This is
extremely important because even though we have a brain Center, the pre-bought singer complex that
Can
control or I should say does control. Inhale, exhale rhythmic
breathing. Those pauses between
breaths are not always present. In fact, often are not present from people's Baseline breathing patterns as a consequence. They over breathe and as I told you before, when
people over breathe, their brain becomes hyper
excitable at the level of the background noise. And yet they are
less efficient at detecting and learning information will get into the
specific studies, that really illustrate the learning aspect of it later, but they
Less
efficient at detecting and learning information at focusing and so on as a consequence of
this over breathing in the hyperexcitability that causes. Now
of course, that's also just emphasizing the
effects of over breathing and lack of carbon dioxide on the brain. There are hundreds, if not thousands of studies showing that when we don't have enough, carbon dioxide in the tissues of our body, that's also problematic for all the tissues, the liver, the lungs themselves, the stomach, Etc,
That
relate largely to shifts
in PH because of the fact that carbon dioxide strongly regulates the acidity or alkalinity of the blood and the tissues that that blood supplies nutrients to
including carbon dioxide. So the basic takeaway here is you want to breathe in a healthy
manner at rest and the best way to do that
is to spend some time and it doesn't
take much maybe a minute or so. Each day
paying attention to how quickly you are breathing per
minute.
You are simply at rest, when you're making
coffee in the morning, when you're sitting down to read, when you're on social media,
chronically holding your breath isn't good, but neither is over breathing. And again, every study that is examined that typical patterns of breathing and patterns of
breathing that show up as
Normal. And abnormal has found that more often than not. During the night time, people are under
breathing, and in the daytime they are over breathing their hyperventilating. I'd like to just take a brief moment and thank
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breathing, from an unhealthy to an unhealthy state, but
the first thing we have to do of course, is determine whether or not. You're already breathing in an
unhealthy or
A healthy way. And again
when I say healthy or unhealthy I mean are you over breathing? Are you under breathing? Are you delivering the appropriate,
ratios of oxygen and carbon dioxide to the tissues of your brain and
body. In order to do this, we're going to do a simple test again, please don't do this while driving or operating heavy machinery or near water of any kind. But assuming that you're not doing any of those things, I encourage you to sit down, certainly not lie down but just sit down. I suppose you also could do it standing and
we are going to do what's called the carbon dioxide tolerance test. The carbon dioxide tolerance test is a sort of back of the envelope measure of how. Well, you are managing carbon dioxide. That is how well you can control your breathing. At both the mechanical and the chemical level. It's a very simple test where you're going to do is for the next 10 seconds or so, while I'm speaking, you're just going to breathe normally. Now again and again, throughout this episode, I'm going to encourage you
to be a nasal breather whenever possible.
Bubble. But of course, there are instances in which you want to engage mouth-breathing,
but for the time being, as I continue to blab on for the next few seconds, just inhale through your nose, exhale through your nose. You don't
have to deliberately slow your breathing or increase the Cadence of your breathing.
However, in that time, you're also going to want to find some sort of time measuring device. Like
could be your phone or could be a stopwatch.
What I'm going to ask you to do in a few minutes is I'm going to ask you to inhale.
Well through your nose as deeply as you possibly can, that is you're going to fill your lungs as much as you can
through your nose and then start a timer and measure how long it takes for you to deliberately
control that exhale until your lungs are empty. Okay? So this is going to be a controlled exhale through the nose after a big deep breath but for the time being keep breathing it, a kind of calm regular
Cadence. Okay so you can find that time measuring device now or you can come back to it later if you like
When I say inhale, you're going to inhale as deeply as you can, through your nose, remembering that the diaphragm can really help you here to get a deep inhale, by having your belly, move out while you inhale and then when I say start, you're going to measure the time that it
takes to do a complete lungs empty excel. In fact, I'll
measure it for you. This will be one of the rare instances in this podcast,
where there's going to be a long period of silence as I measure something. So I've got a stopwatch here,
so
Please prepare to do the big inhale and start inhaling now. So, inhale as deeply as you can through your nose, fill your lungs as
much as you can.
Okay. Now start meaning slowly control the exhale through your nose. You're trying to let that air out as slowly as possible. And I'm just going to call out every 10 or 15 seconds or so. And you want to note when your lungs are empty. I know you can hold your breath with your lungs. Empty. That is not an accurate measure, 15 seconds.
It is important that you note when your lungs are empty and that you're trying to control the exhale as much as possible so that you don't arrive at that lungs. Empty time to quickly. I'll explain what too quickly means. 30 seconds,
Okay, for those of you that have already reached lungs, empty, please go back to breathing normally.
For those of you that haven't can hang in here a little longer. If you're still discarding, that are 45
seconds.
And we're rounding toward a minute, not quite there. Some of you are
probably still letting out that are. I want to point out. None of this has to do with
cardiovascular, fitness level at least not in any kind of direct way and 60
seconds. And I realize there will be a small subset of you out there that are still
expanding. Your are in a slow lungs. Slow, exhale manner through the
nose. Okay? So what we just did is a back-of-the-envelope carbon dioxide
discard rate, okay? If
you need to
Pause this and go back and try it again. You just want to time how long it takes you to go from lungs? Full to lungs. Empty. Again with the full understanding. I know that you
can all sit there like beasts and hold your breath, your lungs empty. But please don't do that because that's not going to be informative for what I'm telling you. Now,
what I'm going to tell you now is that if it took you 20 seconds or less to
expel, all your air that
is, you couldn't extend that
XL longer than 20 seconds.
In a kind of back of the envelope way you we can say that you have a relatively brief or low carbon dioxide
tolerance. Okay.
If it took you somewhere between 25 and 40, maybe 45 seconds to expel all your air that is you could control that Excel
for about 45 seconds or 30 seconds.
Then you have a moderate
level of carbon dioxide tolerance.
And if for instance, you were able to go 50 seconds or
longer for that.
Card until you hit lungs. Empty. You have a fairly High degree of carbon dioxide. Tolerance now, here's the deal. If
you had low, carbon
dioxide tolerance that? Is your 20 seconds or less? You're going to write down the number three, okay. If
you had moderate levels
of carbon dioxide tolerance, you're going to write down the number five, or you could even put five to six
and then if you are in that bracket of people that was able to discard your are over a period of 50 seconds or more
You're going to write down the number
8 to 10.
Okay. Now, what are these numbers?
What are we talking about? And
before we get into, what to do with these numbers, I want to emphasize again, this does not have to do with
Fitness level per se. I know
some world-class triathletes that have very fast carbon
dioxide blow off times. That is their discard rates or 20 seconds or less? I should also point out that if you're very stressed, that number is going to be very small if you're very relaxed, like you just woke up after a long night of sleep and
I feel great that number is going to be
extended, okay? So this is a back-of-the-envelope measure that you're going to use each time you decide to do the exercise. I'm
going to tell you about in a moment
and the exercise, I'm going to tell you about in a moment can be done every day if you like, but what the most interesting studies, at least, to me indicate is that you could do the exercise, I'll tell you about even just once or twice a week and greatly improve your efficiency of breathing and shift yourself away from over breathing when at rest, even if you're not thinking
about how you're breathing it rest.
Okay, so what is this exercise? Well, you just got your number and other
low medium or high bracket. Number four carbon dioxide discard
rate. Remember if you're in the low category, your number is 3. If you're medium, it's 5:55. And if you are in the
long carbon dioxide discard rate long-duration, carbon dioxide discard rate that is 8 to 10 is your number. Now, you're
going to do two minutes of what most people would
call box. Breathing. What is box breathing box? Breathing
are equal duration inhale.
Hold
exhale, hold repeat. So inhale hold exhale, hold. It sounds
very easy, right? How long
do you inhale and then hold Excel and then hold.
Well, you now know if you were in the low group of carbon dioxide discard rate, your
inhale is going to be 3 seconds. Your hold will be 3 seconds. Your exhale will be 3 seconds and then you repeat three seconds. So each sides of the box, if you will is going to be 3 seconds. Long, if you were in the moderate, carbon dioxide discard rate,
Then you're going to inhale
for five to six seconds. Hold for five to six. Exhale, for five to six
hole. For five to six, repeat for about two minutes, you could do
three minutes if you want, but I think it's important to have protocols that are feasible for most people, and that's going to mean, doing things for,
about two to five minutes, when it comes to these breath Rehabilitation exercises, for restoring normal breathing. And then, of course, if you were in
the long category of carbon dioxide discard
rate, you should be able to do an 8 to 10 second. Inhale,
Eight to ten second, hold eight to ten second. Exhale eight to ten second, hold and
repeat. Okay, so you could do that exercise. Now if you like or you could do it
at some point offline, you can pause this podcast. If you want and go try
it. That's an exercise that you can do for about two to three minutes once or twice per week. What's happening when you do that exercise? Well, first of all, you are greatly increasing your neuro mechanical control over the
diaphragm this
Very important. Most people are not aware of this phrenic nerve pathway in the diaphragm and you are greatly in increasing your mechanical
control. Over this pathway through the process we call neuroplasticity,
when you deliberately focus on a aspect of your nervous system control and particular nervous
system control over musculature, that
normally is subconscious and you're not paying attention to. When you actively take control of that, it requires that your brain adjust and rewire the
relationship between the different components of that circuit.
And the
Wonderful thing is that has been shown to lead to changes in your resting pattern,
of breathing. Now,
why did we go through the whole business of doing the carbon dioxide tolerance test? Well, for people who don't tolerate carbon dioxide very well, they don't have very good phrenic, that
is neuro mechanical control of the diaphragm for whatever
reason. Again, doesn't mean you're not fit, it just means you don't have
or you have not yet developed nor mechanical control the diaphragm. It's
would be near
impossible for you to do box breathing for two or three minutes with a
S in eight seconds, hold 8 s XL. 8 second hold.
So that's why we do a
test to see what you're capable of doing. You
don't want the Box breathing to be too strained. Where you're where you're really challenged to get around the whole box. You want it to be relatively easy. Because remember, you're trying to translate this pattern to your normal pattern of
breathing, that is your pattern of breathing. When you're not consciously thinking, about breathing
and what are we really translating? When
we do this box, breathing type exercise? What you're
translating is the
Ability to pause between breaths and yet. Take full mechanically driven,
breaths that involve the phrenic nerve and diaphragm. So again you're encouraging especially if you use nasal breathing, when you do the Box breathing,
you're encouraging, phrenic control over the diaphragm and you're getting that 6 liters of air per minute or
so using fewer and fewer breaths over
time. So this is a again zero
cost although it does cost a little bit of time
zero cost approach to adjusting your
Normal pattern of breathing at rest, which has a huge
number of positive outcomes in terms of your ability to stay relatively calm to not get the hyperexcitability of the brain.
It is actually been shown in various
studies. Will talk about one in particular
later to greatly improve, not
just levels of calm and reduce bouts of stress. But also improved nighttime.
Sleep, there are huge number of benefits that
can come from doing this box breathing exercise, but you got to get the duration of the sides of the box, right? And that's why you do
the carbon dioxide tolerance test.
One thing that many people notice after doing the carbon dioxide tolerance test even just once and then doing this box breathing exercise once or twice a week, is that after two or three weeks? The Box breathing itself, becomes very easy. And in that case, I recommend taking the carbon dioxide tolerance test over again and almost always what you'll find is that you have been able to extend
your carbon dioxide discard rate and therefore you now fall into a different
Category, not just the lower medium, but the
long carbon dioxide discard rate category, and you are able to extend the duration of those
inhale hold exhale holds during the Box breathing. And
of course, the ultimate benefit of all this is that it translates to deeper and yet less frequent breathing when at
rest and what not consciously paying attention to how you're breathing during the daytime again, if at all
possible, do all of this breathing through the nose,
Those of you that have a severely, occluded knows the recommendation, always is to breathe through your nose more. But I do realize
that for some people, it's really uncomfortable to breathe through the nose because they have such an included nasal pathway and for you
folks doing some of this breathing
through the mouth can probably suffice. But if at all possible, do the breathing through the nose and please also let me know how your progress evolves over time with the carbon dioxide discard rate and the Box breathing and of course the positive shifts that occur in.
Unconscious daytime breathing, translate
to all the opposite. Things that we talked about when you are over breathing during the daytime. So what I just
described in terms of the carbon dioxide tolerance test
and the exercise using box breathing to restore normal patterns of breathing and not over breathe. And therefore, not eliminate too much. Carbon dioxide is exactly.
The two tests that were incorporated into a study. That my laboratory did in collaboration with
our associate chair of Psychiatry at.
Ford School of Medicine, dr. David Spiegel who's also been a guest on this podcast previously
and that study explored box breathing, but it also explored other forms of breathing and actually compare those forms of deliberate breathing to meditation as a means to explore. What are going to be the minimal effective Doses? And most effective ways to chronically, reduce stress around the clock,
and improve mood and improve sleep. So,
the study, I'm referring to was
This recently it's entitled brief structured respiration
practices, enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal. We will also provide a link to this paper in the show. No captions
what this study really focused on was a simple question, which is what is the shortest and most effective practice that people can use in order to reduce their levels of stress. Not just
during that breathwork practice or meditation practice.
But Around the Clock 24 hours a day, including improvements in sleep,
Beep. And we were excited to do this study because many studies had explored how meditation or in some cases fewer studies at explored how breathwork can
impact different brain States, our bodily States
but very few studies had explored how those breath worker meditation practices influenced body brain states around
the clock. When people were not performing, the particular meditation or breathwork practice,
the reason we were able to do this study was really fortunate the folks over at whoop or generous and
To donate a bunch of loop straps, which allowed us to measure, heart rate, variability, a number of other different physiological parameters.
We also got subjective reports about people's mood and feelings of well-being. We got data about their
sleep pinged to us, from remote locations of these people, rather than
being brought to the laboratory and being in a very
artificial
Circumstance. The laboratory as much as we like to think our laboratory is realistic, we have virtual reality and things like that. There's nothing as realistic as
the real world and so we were able to have
Have more than 100 subjects out in the real world living, their real lives. Pinging back to us data all the time,
24 hours a day, so that we
could measure how they're different interventions that we
asked them to do breath. Work practices or meditation practices were impacting physiological parameters, and they were also informing us regularly about their subjective mood Etc.
We got a lot of data as you can imagine and the basic takeaway from this study was twofold. First of all, we discovered that deliberate breath work practices, done for about five minutes per day
across the course of about a
month. Led to Greater reductions in
stress. Then did a five minute a day meditation practice. Now, that is not to say that meditation is not useful. In fact, there are dozens, if not hundreds of papers including one,
Or
I should say, particularly beautiful study from Wendy Suzuki's Lab at New York
University showing that a daily 10 to 13 minute, mindfulness meditation, practice, can greatly improve, focus memory, and a number of
other things related to cognition and learning.
However, the research on meditation has shown us that meditation at least short meditations mainly lead to improvements in focus and memory. Not so much reductions in
stress although they do lead to reductions in
stress. Well we found
was that any number of different breath work
practices and we explored three done, 45 minutes a day out
performed meditation, in terms of the ability
of breath, work to reduce stress Around the Clock. Compared to
meditation. The three types of breath work that we explored also showed different
effects. I should mention the three types of breath work that we compared were box. Breathing of the sort that you just learned
about. We compare that to something called cyclic sign.
It involves two inhales through the nose to get maximally inflated lungs, followed by a long
exhale. I'll return to that in a moment that was repeated for five minutes at a time for each
session and a third breathwork practice, which was cyclic hyperventilation, which as the name suggests, involves people inhaling deeply through the nose. Then exhaling passively through the mouth and then repeating inhale through the nose, exhale through the mouth repeating that for 25 Cycles. One cycle,
being an inhale and an exhale, so that
equals one cycle repeating that.
R-25 Cycles. Then exhaling. All there are and holding their breath with lungs.
Empty for about 15 to 30 seconds and then repeating inhale Excel cyclic hyperventilation for the duration of five minutes. Okay, so people were divided into these
different groups, either mindfulness meditation, where they sat they were not told to control their
breathing. In any specific way. They close their eyes, their focus their attention on region, just
behind their forehead. One group did that, the other group did cyclic sighing, another group did box breathing another group did.
Cyclic hyperventilation
as any sort of clinical trial, like this ought to, we then swap people into
different groups, so they served as their own control, so we could evaluate any between and within
individual variability.
Again, there's a lot of data in this paper, but the takeaway was that for the
sake of stress reduction around the clock, and for the sake of improving, sleep and
mood, the most effective practice of the four
practices, that we examine was the cyclic sign
again, cyclic sighing is perform the following way, you inhale, through the nose as deeply as you can. Then you do a second inhale, immediately afterwards to try and maximally inflate the lungs. In fact, that's what happens. We know that during that second inhale, even if it's just a very
Sharp short, inhale, the extra physical Vigor. That's required to generate that second, inhale,
Causes those a Veolia of the lungs, which may have collapsed
and indeed in
between breaths and
often even just through the course of the day and especially if we get stressed, those Avo lie of the lungs, start to collapse
and because they're damp on the inside there, they have a
little bit of fluid there, like a
balloon with a little bit of fluid in, in the middle, it takes a little bit of physical Force to put to pop those open. Now you're not literally exploding them pop, but your
re-inflating them with air
and then you perform the
long exhale. Through the mouth until lungs are empty. So it looks exactly like this.
Now we know that one single
physiological sigh of the sort that I just described
performed at any time of day under any conditions
whether or not you're about to walk on stage to give a talk or you're in a meeting and you're feeling stressed or you're in a conversation that's very
stressful where you can feel stress mounting because you're in traffic or any number of psychological or physical stressors. That may be
approaching you or you feel are
oppressing, you doing one
physiological. Sigh of the sort that I
Just described is
the fastest physiologically verified way that we are aware of to reduce your levels of stress and to reintroduce. Calm. That is to shift your autonomic nervous system from a state of heightened levels of autonomic
arousal that is sympathetic nervous system as it's called, is at a
higher activation level than the so-called parasympathetic nervous system. Again, sympathetic nervous system having nothing to a sympathy as everything to do with so-called
fight or flight, although it controls other.
You including positive arousal and the parasympathetic nervous
system often referred to as the rest and digest system. Although it does other things too
is associated with calming, those two things are always in kind of push pull with one another, like a seesaw
or push-pull, however, you want to think about it.
One physiological side, meaning that big deep inhale short. Second inhale also through the nose and then long exhale to completely lungs. Empty is known to restore the level of balance in the sympathetic, parasympathetic, neural circuit
Ruiz, and
Is the fastest way to reintroduce. Calm,
that's one physiological PSI in this study. What we asked was that people perform that repeatedly. So called cyclic,
sighing for the duration of five minutes and the people who did that
cyclic sighing 45 minutes a day regardless, of the time of day that they did it experience the greatest
reductions in stress, not just during the practice, but around the 24-hour cycle and it translated again, to all sorts of positive subjective changes improvements in sleep
lower,
Heart rate at all times of day. So this is important. Again,
this study was not
just exploring what happens. During meditation or breathwork cyclic, sighing, Etc. It was
exploring how the changes that occur during that practice translate to changes in
breathing and heart rate mood etcetera throughout the 24 hour
cycle. So the takeaway here is twofold. First of all, if you're somebody who wants to improve your mood and reduce
your overall levels of stress
and you only have five minutes a day to invest in that,
hopefully, you're
All the other things, like trying to get proper sleep and exercise, Social connection nutrition Etc, sunlight in the morning, of course, can't leave that out.
But if you were going to devote five minutes a day to a stress reduction practice, that is Now supported by data to translate to reductions in stress Around the
Clock. The data say that you would want to invest that in cyclic sighing. That is double inhale, through the nose extended exhale, through the mouth until your lungs are empty, then repeat for five minutes a day. You, of course if you like could
To meditation. It still had positive effects. Meaning it reduce stress, although not as much as cyclic sighing, you could do box breathing if you want for the purpose of reducing stress. All the
practices we explored did reduce stress, but cyclic sawing, perform,
45 minutes a day, had the most robust and pervasive effect in reducing stress improving mood and improving
sleep. That's the first message of the study. The second takeaway is that one
physiological. Sigh. That's right. Just one physiological
PSI where you inhale deeply through the nose. Another inhale.
Through the nose, to maximally inflate, the eoeo, LIE, the lungs and then you exhale to completely lungs, empty. And then go back to normal breathing is the fastest way to introduce a level of calm and, to reduce your overall levels of
stress in real time. And this is
very important. I think that out there these days, we hear a lot about stress, reduction techniques, and
most all of those stress reduction techniques that have been explored everything from massage to meditation to breath, work
to a hot shower to a foot. Rub will
You down. The question is, do they calm you down just during that practice? Great, if it does. But does it also
translate to reduce levels of stress at other times in the 24-hour cycle and other positive effects as
well? So, one physiological size of very efficient way
to
adjust that ratio of
sympathetic to parasympathetic activation and immediately bring about calm. So, it's excellent for real-time control of stress.
The other thing about physiological sizes, that it's not a hack. It's not the
application of a breathing practice.
Something that it wasn't intended for. In fact, physiological sighs were not discovered by me at
all. They were discovered by physiologists in the 1930s who found that when people under breathe, they have a buildup of carbon
dioxide in their system. And
even though carbon dioxide is essential for life,
you don't want too much of it in your system
and that people whether or not they were asleep or awake would engage a physiological size spontaneously subconsciously. They would do this
double inhale, through the nose and extended exhale.
Through the mouth and that did not just eliminate
excess of carbon dioxide from the system. It also rebalance the oxygen carbon dioxide ratio in the proper ways. In fact, it's
observed in animals, you might see this in animals that are tired. When animals or humans get tired. They tend to start under breathing a little bit
and that can often disrupt the balance of carbon dioxide. And oxygen,
and right before a dog will go down for a
nap. For instance, you'll notice that it'll do this double, inhale, exhale, people when they are sleeping, if they hold their breath for a
period of time, which
Really all of us do periodically throughout
sleep? They will engage spontaneous physiological.
Sigh, during the
daytime, we are often holding our breath,
especially nowadays. And there's a study on this, that we'll
talk about a little bit later where when people text message or they're emailing, although
nowadays people are mainly on social media and text messaging, they often are holding their
breath and they will follow a breath hold by a physiological side. Because during that breath-hold, they're building up the level of carbon dioxide in their system. Now, mind you, I spent, you know, close to a half an hour
telling you that most people are over breathing
Rest, and that's also true. But people often
will shift from over breathing to under breathing, which is a
terrible pattern.
So physiological, size, done either, as a
one-off one physiological, side to clamp stress or reduce stress in real time will repeatedly over
five minutes as a
practice that you do each day
is going to be not just the most effective way to approach reducing
stress around the clock and in real
time but also the one that's highly
compatible with the way that the neural
Circuits that control breathing were designed. The
physiological side has some other very useful applications. One of the more I would say, useful ones. At least to those of you that exercise is going to be the use of physiological PSI in order to remove the so-called side stitch. So if you've ever been running or swimming or exercising, you
felt a cramp on your right side. Chances are despite what your High School PE coach, told you
that raising your arms above your head or drinking less water before you exercise is not going to
You get rid of that cramp and here's why
it's not a cramp at all, if you recall, the cervical, three, four and five nerves, that give rise to the phrenic nerve and go down and innervate your diaphragm. Well, as I mentioned before, a certain number of those nerve fibers actually, course, into the diaphragm and go up underneath. And it, if you recall earlier, I also said that the diaphragm sits right on top of the liver. In other words, you actually have sensory innervation of the diaphragm, the
Deep diaphragm and the liver and there's something called referenced pain, which is what people generally experience when they have that side
stitch on their right hand
side. So if you're ever exercising and you feel a cramp on your right hand
side, it's possible that it's a genuine. Cramp. But
more likely is the fact that that phrenic nerve sensory? Innervation is now being carried up to your brain and you are detecting some local or referenced pain in the liver.
And in the diaphragm. Now that doesn't necessarily mean you're doing anything wrong. Although you might
not be breathing properly for running at that moment and that's what gave rise to. It could be some
spasming of the phrenic nerve or some inefficient breathing during running. We had an entire series on Fitness with dr. Andy
Galpin. One of those episodes include a lot of information on breathing. It was the episode on endurance, although breathing was a topic that was thread through multiple episodes in that series, you can find that series that huberman lab.com talks. A lot about how to breathe,
Ring running how to breathe during weight lifting
etcetera. But the point for now is that if ever you're experiencing that right side side stitch, I encourage you to perform the physiological PSI. And the good news is you can
perform it while still running or while still swimming. Although, I suppose with swimming, you might have to make some adjustments. Because, of course, you don't want to inhale water
or while cycling or any type of activity. If you perform that physiological sigh generally two or three.
Times what will occur is that? Because of changes in the firing of the phrenic nerve and in particular because of changes in the sensory feedback from the sensory component of the phrenic nerve back to the brain, you will experience an alleviation of the pain from that. Right side side stitch. In other words you can get rid of side
cramps doing physiological size during activities in particular during running activities. Now, I should also mention that if you're experiencing a side stitch on the left side,
chances are that has to do with
Excessive air or fluid in your stomach and there are reasons for that. That also have to do with the way that the phrenic
nerve is its bilateral and branches to both
sides and is catching sensory input on the left side from some of the
local organs and sensory innervation of those organs,
okay but if you have right side side
stitch the physiological side done two or three times while still running on to relieve that side stitch. Now as
long as we're talking about breathing and the phrenic nerve and the relationship between the phrenic nerve and your liver and your stomach and
The other organs in that neighborhood, we should talk about the relationship between breathing and heart rate. This is an incredibly important topic so much so that I perhaps should have brought it up at the beginning of the episode. But nonetheless, you now know what your diaphragm does, right? When you inhale your diaphragm moves down, that's right. When you contract, your diaphragm, it moves
down, it creates space for your lungs to inhale. And when you exhale, your diaphragm moves up,
well, when you inhale and your diaphragm moves down,
What happens is, there's more space created in the thoracic cavity. In particular if you're also breathing deeply and you're using those intercostal muscles to expand your ribs. As a consequence, the heart actually gets a little bit bigger. It's a
temporary enlargement in the
heart but it's a real enlargement. And as a consequence, whatever blood is in the heart is now in a larger volume because the heart got bigger and as a consequence, that blood is moving more slowly through that larger volume for a short period of time. But it nonetheless
Moving more slowly,
your nervous system detects that and sends a neural signal to the heart to speed the heart rate up. In other words, inhales increase heart
rate. The opposite is true when you exhale. When you exhale, your diaphragm moves up
your rib cage. Tends to move inward a bit
and you compact the heart, you reduce the volume of the heart, overall,
When you reduce the volume of the heart, overall
blood flow through the heart accelerates
because it's a smaller volume. So given, you know, blood is going to be more quickly through that small
volume, your nervous system detects that and sends a signal to slow the heart down. So just as inhale, speed the heart up exhales, slow your heart
rate down. Now, of course, even
though you can double up on inhales or even triple up on inhales sooner or later, if you inhale, you're going to have
to Exhale, all right? And the
Verse is also true, of course.
So what does this mean in terms of controlling your heart rate? Well, let's say you are going in
for a blood draw or you're
going out on stage in your stress. Well, I would encourage you to do
a physiological side maybe to physiological size to bring your level of calm up in your level of stress
down. Nonetheless, if you have any reason
why you want to quickly reduce your heart rate, or accelerate, your heart rate for sake of
Physical work output or
to calm yourself down. Additionally, not just use the physiological sigh
well, then you can take advantage of this
relationship between inhales and exhales controlling heart rate. If you want to increase your heart rate, you can simply inhale, longer and more vigorously relative to your exhales. And if you want to
decrease your heart rate, well, then you're going to make your exhales longer and, or more
vigorous than your inhales. In
fact, this process which is called respiratory. Sinus arrhythmia is the
Basis of what we
call heart rate, variability, heart rate
variability, involves the vagus nerve the tenth cranial nerve which is a
parasympathetic nerve that is associated with a calming aspect of the autonomic nervous system. Slowing your heart rate down by extending your exhales,
and it really forms the basis
of most all breathing practices. If you
look at any breathing practices, whether or not swim Huff, breathing to mow breathing Kundalini, breathing pranayama, breathing physiological, sighing cyclic, sighing, and on, and on, and on, if you were to measure the ratio of
Inhales to exhales. And the Vigor of inhales exhales, what you would find is that
each one would create a net increase or a net
decrease in heart rate,
that could be very accurately predicted by whether or not that breathing practice emphasized, inhales
emphasized exhales
or had those two
features inhale and exhale be of equal duration and intensity. In fact, if you wanted to
equilibrate your heart rate,
what you would do is you would do box breathing because inhale hold exhale.
Hold is by definition,
creating equal, duration,
inhales and exhales of essentially equivalent Vigor. When you
do a physiological sigh, you're doing two big inhales which is going to speed your heart rate up just a little bit, but then a long extended exhale, the excel in the end is much longer than the
two inhales even when combined. And so you get a net, decrease in heart rate, the calming effect and then practices such as to
mow breathing or Wim Hof, breathing or cyclic hyperventilation, deep inhales and exhales are the in
Those are more vigorous compared to. The more passive exhales are going to lead
to increases in heart
rate, okay? So the relationship between breathing and heart rate is an absolutely
lockstep one where your
heart rate follows your breathing, your heart rate, and your breathing are in an intimate
discussion with one another, but we're
always and forever, your inhales increase your heart rate,
your exhales, decrease it.
Now this feature which
Physicians call respiratory sinus arrhythmia, or we sometimes hear,
About more often nowadays as heart rate.
Variability is something that people in sport have known about for a very long time. It's why? For instance, that Marksman will, exhale, just prior to taking a shot, that's particularly true for people that compete in the biathlon where they Cross Country Skis with their heart
rate is up up up up, then they'll
get to the point where they actually have to shoot at a Target and they'll exhale and then they'll shoot the target. This is also why. For instance, if you want to bring your heart rate down very quickly between rounds of martial arts, there are number of different ways to do that.
But an extended exhale of any kind of frankly, any breathing practice that emphasizes exhales is going to
bring your heart rate down. This has
been Incorporated a number of different contexts including sport military. It's also now being Incorporated in the clinical
context for people who feel a panic attack coming on.
I'm very gratified to learn that. The physiological PSI is now being explored as a tool to prevent panic attacks and anxiety attacks. This is
prior to the panic attack. People bringing their heart rate down again through those extended exhales.
So learning to extend your exhale is really a terrific skill to master and it's very easy skill
to master frankly. Why do I say a skill?
Well, remember what I said earlier which is that humans
inhale actively and
most typically will passively exhale. Just
let the air ho drop out of them at whatever rate. Depending on how much are they inhaled?
Actively exhaling that is actively
relaxing the diaphragm and actively relaxing those intercostal muscles of
The chest. Those ones are, I should say between the ribs
is a skill that you can very quickly acquire and will allow you to use that relationship between the phrenic nerve the diaphragm and the size of the heart, the heart volume, and all that stuff to really take control of heart rate quickly. So that if you feel like your heart is racing too much and
frankly, a lot of people have a lot of what's called
interoceptive
awareness especially anxious people. They can really sense what's going on in their body other people less. So
like only on my heart's beating is I'm ready to jump out of my chest and I don't like that. I don't like that.
Big long. Exhale, doesn't matter if you do it through the nose or the mouth, big long,
exhales, going to allow you to slow your heart rate down.
Let's talk about hiccups, everybody experiences hiccups from time to time. I think
most people would agree that one hiccup sort of funny to hiccups in a row is really funny and three
hiccups in a row, is where it starts to be
concerning in part
because hiccups can be kind of painful
experience pain in your gut, tell your lower abdomen, and sometimes in your chest as
well. And it feels
Kind of intrusive. It
gets in the way of having conversation or just sitting there and
relaxing. Fortunately, there's a simple way to get rid of hiccups and you can arrive at that. Simple technique. If you understand a little bit about
what, gives rise to hiccups,
the reason we get hiccups at all is because we experience a spasm of the phrenic nerve the phrenic nerve, as you recall, is a nerve that emanates from the cervical
region to be specific. See, three four
and five those spinal nerves, go down. Of course, behind the heart and innervate the diaphragm, which is the muscle.
When it contracts, it moves down allows the lungs to fill. And then when you relax the diaphragm, then the diaphragm moves up and the lungs. Shrinker, they expel are so-called
exhalation. Now the phrenic nerve also has that
sensory Branch. So it's not just involved in controlling the diaphragm at the motor
level. It's also sensing things deep
within the diaphragm and in the liver as well, because the liver sits right below the diaphragm. So a hiccup has that painful Sensation from time to time because there's a
Rapid sensory feedback,
or a signal rather of a Sharp kind of sensation of contraction within the diaphragm. And that's relayed back to the brain and you consciously perceive that as a little bit of pain. And then, of course, the hiccup is up the hiccup, which is the spasming of the phrenic nerve. The Experience more or less in your throat, but all this really is happening along the phrenic nerve and toward the
diaphragm. What this all means is that if you can stop the phrenic nerve
from spasming, you can stop
hiccups. There are a lot of approaches that people have tried to take to eliminate spasming of the phrenic nerve.
You'll hear that, you know breathing into a
bag which is one way to you
know re ingest or re inhale carbon dioxide that otherwise would be expelled out into the environment, can
help. That's a very indirect method, it rarely Works frankly because it's really has to do more with adjusting your
breathing to try and adjust the activity of the phrenic nerve. It's a really round about way of trying to alleviate
hiccups. Some people will experience relief from drinking from a glass of water from the opposite side of the glasses
or have to tilt over at the waist. It's a kind of messy.
Ouch again, it doesn't tend to work a lot of the time for some people, it works everytime but for most people, it doesn't work at
all. However, there is a technique that can reliably eliminate hiccups
and it's a technique that takes advantage of
hyper Contracting. The phrenic nerve over a short period of
time so that it then subsequently relaxes or alleviates the spasming of the phrenic nerve. And
that simple method is to inhale three
times in a row. This is a very unusual pattern of breathing
NG, but what it involves is
taking a big deep inhale, through your nose. Then before you exhale, any are take a
second, inhale through the nose. However, brief that, inhale might be and then,
a third even micro or Ms, long, inhale through your nose to get that third, inhale, and then hold your breath for about
15 to 20 seconds, and then slowly exhale. So even though I'm not experiencing any hiccups right now, I will demonstrate the method for eliminating hiccups so that you're all clear on how to do it. Okay, here I go.
Okay. So it's 3 inhales all through the nose and it is true that that second and third inhale, take some physical effort to really get
additional air into the lungs without exhaling. First, it feels like a only way I can describe it really is as a sharp second and third, inhale, because you really have to engage the musculature of those intercostal muscles and the diaphragm in order to do it
and then that long Excel can be through the nose or the mouth, but I find it particularly relaxing or even Pleasant to do it through the nose.
Has this method of three, inhale through the nose, followed by a long exhale. Through the nose or mouth will eliminate hiccups right away because what it does is it hyper excites the phrenic nerve three times in a row, a very
unnatural pattern for the phrenic nerve to Fire
and then it undergoes a
hyperpolarization as we call it in
which the phrenic nerve actually stands a much lower probability of getting activated again for some period of time afterwards. So it is important that you try and return to normal
Cadence of breathing after
Doing this three inhales followed by the long exhale,
if you need to perform at a second time in order to eliminate hiccups because they're simply not going away, that's fine. You can do that. But as far as we know, this is the most efficient and science supported way to eliminate hiccups. Now, up until now, I've been talking about breathing techniques and I've mainly focus on breathing
techniques, that emphasize the exhale, whether or not the carbon dioxide tolerance test whether or not it's sick like
sighing or the physiological side that use in real time to reduce stress.
One thing that we haven't talked about so much is
cyclic hyperventilation
cyclic hyperventilation, as you recall is about of 25 or so breaths. Inhaling deeply through the nose and then passively exhaling or sometimes actively exhaling typically through the mouth. So it might look like this. That's a very active, inhale, through the nose and exhale through the mouth. It can also be done, active, inhale, through the nose passive, exhale, through the mouth. Like,
so,
In any event that pattern of breathing repeated for ten to twenty five breaths greatly
increases levels of autonomic arousal. In fact, it's known to deploy adrenaline from the adrenals
and in our study we had people then expel all there are so breathe out, hold their breath for 15 to 30 seconds and then repeat for a period of five minutes that did lead to some very interesting and positive physiological changes in terms of stress mitigation, although not as significant as was observed with cyclic sighing, as I talked about earlier,
Now there is a lot of interest in cyclic hyperventilation for sake of for instance extending breath holds. This has become popular in part
because of the so-called Wim Hof method which is a method that
combines breathing
cyclic hyperventilation, followed by lungs, full or lungs, empty breath, holds depending on which variant of the Wim Hof method. One is
using separately and I really want to emphasize separately. The Wim Hof method also involves deliberate cold exposure, which has
all of, you know, I'm a big fan of and we've done episodes this podcast on and we have
toolkits on deliberate cold exposure for an increasing dopamine levels epinephrine levels, immune system function
Etc. When Hof method also incorporates that and it has a mindfulness component. I do want to caution people that anytime you're doing a cyclic hyperventilation, you want to be very cautious about not doing it in or near water because it does greatly increase the risk of
shallow water blackout. And
that's because when you do cyclic, hyperventilation, you are expelling, you're exhaling more carbon dioxide than usual. And what I haven't told you yet is that the
Bigger to
breathe is actually an increase in carbon dioxide. When I mean by that is you have a
small set of neurons in your brain stem that can detect, when carbon dioxide levels in your
blood stream, reach a certain level, and when they reach that level,
they trigger the gasp reflex and or the hunger for breathing. In other words, we don't breathe because we crave oxygen, although we do
need oxygen of course in order to survive and if our brain to function in our bodily organs to function, but
our brain is wired such
That it has a threat sensor, which is carbon dioxide levels are getting too high and that's what triggers,
the motor? Reflex to breathe. And in some cases gasp for air depending on how starved for are we
are? So if you do cyclic hyperventilation, whether or not to Wim Hof method, or whether or not, it's to mow method, again, these things are similar. They're not exactly the same. There are other breathing methods
that incorporate cyclic
hyperventilation, what you're doing is you're getting rid of a lot of carbon dioxide. And therefore, you're removing the impulse or lowering the amount.
Pause to breathe. So that when you enter that
breath-hold phase after the hyperventilation, it's a much longer period of time before you
feel the anxiety and the hunger and the impulse to breathe. That's one of the real benefits of any technique that incorporates cyclic hyperventilation
is that rather than reduce your
stress level in real time. It actually does the opposite. It increases your stress level increases your level of autonomic
arousal, but you're doing it deliberately. And then during those breath holds, what's happening, is you
have a lot of adrenaline circulating in your
Item. Because of the way that hyperventilation triggers, the release of adrenaline from your adrenal glands, it also triggers the release of epinephrine, which is the same as adrenaline, from a little brain area called Locus coeruleus, which makes you feel more alert
and then during those breath holds and in the subsequent rounds, so cyclic hyperventilation people experience, what it is to have a lot of adrenaline in their system but they are controlling the release of that adrenaline which is Far and Away different than when life events are triggering that adrenaline. So what it really is, is a
Form of self induced stress inoculation and I do think there are benefits to practicing cyclic hyperventilation because it does allow you to learn how to self deploy adrenaline and epinephrine from
Locus coeruleus and from the adrenals, or I got that backwards
adrenaline from your adrenals and epinephrine from Locus coeruleus and it allows you to explore what it is to maintain calm state of mind and body. When you have a lot of
adrenaline in your system, which
certain studies are starting to show can allow people to be able to,
To lean into
the stressful aspects of life and let's be honest. Life is stressful in any event? Now we're all going to experience stress at some point or another
and when we do we want to make sure that we're not overtaken by the release of adrenaline from the
adrenals that sudden
surge of epinephrine from Locus coeruleus. So doing synthetic hyperventilation, maybe one or two times per week. Again, twenty five breaths active, inhale, passive or active exhale, do expect to feel tingly
because of that reduction in carbon dioxide from exhaling. So much do it.
To feel a little bit agitated, be
very careful doing this, if you're somebody who has anxiety attacks or somebody who has panic attacks or disorders of any kind, but
if you don't, and you want to explore this, you'll notice you start to feel really ramped up and then during the breath holds, which again can be done
by exhaling and stopping for some period of time. 15, maybe even 60 seconds
is a time in which you can explore, how to
remain mentally. Calm. Some people even choose to do math problems or think of things in a kind of structured
way while they have a
lot of
These
hormones neurotransmitters circulating at
high levels in their system. In other words, as a way to learn to manage your mind and body under conditions of stress.
Now if you are somebody who's using deliberate cold exposure, either cold showers or ice baths or cold immersion. I often get asked how
best to breathe during those different types of activities, really? There's no best way to breathe.
Although if you wanted to turn those activities into their own form of
stress inoculation
Please don't use cyclic hyperventilation it's dangerous. I don't recommend it whatsoever, but you can try to actively slow your breathing. That is to make sure that you're engaging in rhythmic breathing. Now up until now I've said, that rhythmic breathing is the default pre-bought singer, nucleus, controlling rhythmic.
Breathing is the default and that doubling up on inhales and exhales is
something that happens when you deliberately take over the action of pre. But senior
complex, now that's
true 99% of the time.
Time. However, there are certain conditions such as conditions of heightened, state of emotional arousal. And if you think about someone who's been crying often times, they'll do the double inhale Excel that says, or triple inhales or somebody's very, very afraid. It's all inhales. Okay. So it does sometimes happen, spontaneously. Actually, when we get into very cold water, there's a very robust decrease in the activation of the prefrontal cortex, which is the area of brain, real estate right behind the forehead that controls structure thinking, your ability to,
Reason and make sense of what's going on. If you get into really cold water, you should not expect that brain region to work or at least not work very well
at all for the first 20 or 30 seconds that you're in the cold water
from the time you get into cold water because here, we're talking about deliberate cold exposure. I encourage you to try and control your breathing and make it rhythmic. That is
inhales follow exhales. Follow inhales fall exhales, even if they have to be fast, inhale, exhale! Inhale, exhale! Why? Because the default,
when we get into a stressful circumstances,
Um, stance emotionally or physically stressful circumstances, is that rhythmic breathing stops and that para facial, nucleus takes over and it's, and it's that kind of panicky mode and by simply controlling our breath. Again, even if it's fast from inhale to Exhale and making sure that we're alternating inhales and exhales rhythmically. And what you'll find is that you'll be able to navigate that what would otherwise be a very
stressful circumstance and make it less stressful or maybe even Pleasant and that
That skill definitely translates to other aspects of life in which no, your hit Square in the face.
With something stressful. You'll notice your breathing and your pattern of breathing switching to multiple
inhales or you know a breath-holding essentially departing from rhythmic breathing and by quickly
returning to rhythmic breathing and maybe
even trying to slow the breathing and extend those exhales. You'll find that you can very quickly calm
down next. I'd like to discuss what I find to be an absolutely fascinating
topic. It's also one that's highly
useful in the world which is
Is how your specific patterns of breathing relate to, your ability, to learn? And to remember information, how we can modulate fear and a number of other aspects of how your brain functions, this is a literature that's been reviewed recently and a lot of Exquisite detail in a beautiful review by Jack Feldman,
who I mentioned earlier, one of
the pioneers of the Neuroscience of breathing, the title of the review is breathing Rhythm and pattern and their influence on emotion. Again, will provide a link to this
review and the show notes.
Shins
this review, includes discussion of several studies one in particular that I'll
get into in a bit of detail
that describes the following right now. I just want you to
breathe regularly, meaning rhythmically, you can
inhale and exhale through your
mouth or through your nose. I'd prefer that you do it through your nose because nasal breathing, unless you need to breathe through your mouth because of Hard Exercise or eating or talking
is always going to be the better way to go nasal, breathing improves.
It's the aesthetic of your face. That's been shown. We'll talk about that. Just briefly in a few minutes
nasal, breathing,
improves the amount of oxygen. You can bring into your system, etc. Etc.
Okay, so just breathe, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale and know that during your exhales your pupil that is the pupil of your eye is getting bigger.
And as you exhale, it's getting smaller. In addition, when you inhale, your reaction time to anything that happens around you a car swerving in front of you, something that you might detect in the periphery of your vision or here off in the distance
increases significantly compared to. When you're exhaling,
in addition, when you are inhaling, your ability to remember things, especially things that take a bit of effort to remember and your ability to learn new information is,
Nificantly greater than it is when you're
exhaling. Now, as you hear all that you're probably thinking. Okay. How do I just inhale? Of course, that's not going to be the best approach. You need to Exhale, as well for all the reasons you now are well aware of.
But what these findings really illustrate, and I should mention these findings, are all
carried out in humans, right? So, these are relate to some stuff in animal studies. But what I just described has been shown in human studies consistently
when we inhale, and in particular, when we inhale through our nose, our
our brain is not functioning in the same way as when we exhale. Now, that doesn't mean that our brain is
functioning in a deficient way. When we exhale,
it just doesn't function as well as it relates to memory retrieval memory
formation, and some other aspects of cognition. Now, you might be asking why in the world would this be? Well, I wasn't consulted at the design phase and anyone that tells you that they were, you should back away from quickly
but one reasonable explanation. For why our brain.
Better at least in the context of what I just talked about when we
inhale, is because
the olfactory system
is actually the most ancient sensory system
of all the sensory systems we have.
So, before Vision before audition before touch before, all of that, the olfactory system is the most ancient system and the olfactory system, of course, is designed to detect
chemicals in the environment. And so if you
imagine an early organism that perhaps we have all from or perhaps we did,
don't but nonetheless that we
share some features of at least in terms of olfactory function,
In order to get that chemical information into the brain, we need to inhale, need to bring that information in. Now, for
aquatic animals, they could take it in through water, but
for animals that are terrestrial live on land, they would have to get it through the air. So, inhalation, we know activate certain regions of the so-called piriform cortex, these are areas of the neocortex, that are more ancient as well as increasing the activity of brain
areas such as the hippocampus, which is a brain area involved in learning and memory.
At one of the studies that illustrates this most beautifully, is a study that was published in the Journal of Neuroscience, in 2016,
by the way, Journal Neuroscience is a very fine
journal and the title of this paper is nasal respiration in transhuman, limbic oscillations, and modulates cognitive function. This is a paper that followed up on an earlier paper that showed that when people breathe in through their nose their recognition and their discrimination of different. Odors was far greater than when they breathe in through there.
A mouth. Now that result was interesting but it was also sort of a dub because you smell things
with your nose, not your mouth, you taste things with your mouth and you speak with your mouth and a bunch of other things you can do with your mouth.
But nonetheless, that study pointed to the idea that the brain is different during nasal inhalations versus nasal exhalations versus
mouth inhalations versus
exhalations. What it basically showed is that the brain ramps up its levels of activity and that signal to noise that we
About earlier, if you recall that ability for the brain to detect things in the environment is increased during
inhalations.
But because that earlier study focused on smell on olfaction. It was there was a bit of a con found. There was hard to separate out the
variables. So this paper
the one I just mentioned nasal respiration and transhuman Limerick oscillations and modulate is cognitive function. Did not look at detection of odors rather it looked at things like
reaction time or
fear and basically what it found is that
Reaction time is greatly reduced, when people are inhaling. So they had people look at fearful stimuli. They looked at their reaction time to fearful stimuli. In other words, their ability to detect certain kinds of stimuli and they were given a lot of different kinds of stimuli so they had to be able to discriminate between one sort of it. Oops, excuse me 1,
by the way, folks for those listen I just bumped the microphone getting rather animated hear
what the subjects had to do was detect one type of stimulus, versus another stimulus that they were being exposed to and what they found.
As if people were inhaling as that, fear-inducing stimulus was presented the reaction time to
know, is it was much much faster and they related that to
patterns of brain activity and they were able to do that because they were actually
recording from the brain directly from beneath the skull and they were able to do that because they had some patients that had intracranial electrodes embedded in their brain, for sake of trying to detect epileptic seizures.
So, if there's a lot to this study and a lot that we could discuss, but the basic takeaway is that when people
All are inhaling. That is when they're drawing air, in through their nose in particular, their ability to detect what's going on in the world around them is greatly enhanced and not just for fear, but also, for surprise of All Sorts. So, when people are inhaling their ability to detect novel, stimuli things that are unexpected or that are unusual
in their environment is significantly, increased
again, will put a link to this study as well. I find it to be one of the more interesting.
This realm. Although there are now many additional studies that support this statement that I made earlier which is that during
inhalation also called inspiration,
there are a number of very fast physiological changes such as changes in pupil diameter changes in the activity of the hippocampus this memory encoding and retrieval area of the brain and other areas of the brain. So what's the tool, take away from this? If you are sitting down to read or research or study or you really want to learn some information, maybe you're listening to
A podcast
or some other sorts of information that you want to retain.
It actually makes sense to increase the duration or the intensity of your
inhales as you do that the
more that you're inhaling relative to exhaling in terms of duration, the more that your brain
is in this focused mode and this mode of being able to access and retrieve information better. Now
there's one caveat to this that I think is important because I know a number of
people listen to this podcast
for sake of gleaning tools, not just for
Enhancement. But for physical enhancement, it
turns out that when you are inhaling are you're actually less
able or I should say less efficient at
generating voluntary movements. Now, that might come as a surprise you, you know, until now we basically been talking about inhalation is great. Almost to the point where you wonder
like is exhalation good for anything, right? You don't want to over breathe and kick out too much carbon dioxide. Well, of course, exhalation is great for things. In fact, if you're somebody that's played baseball, or
softball, well, what do you
told?
That you should exhale on the swing to generate the maximum amount of power.
If you're somebody who has done martial arts of any kind was traditional, Western boxing. As you strike, that's
where people typically do the the hi-yah - or classic karate, type thing. That's more of a movie thing. I don't know whether or not people actually use the hi-yah but in boxing often times, people will do that, you
know, they'll do a rapid exhalation of forceful X exhalation keeping in mind again that inhales typically are
active, the Engage The
Diaphragmatic muscle, they engage those intercostal muscles, whereas, exhales tend to be passive unless we take active control of the exhale and
indeed our ability to generate fast directed so-called volitional voluntary, movements is greatly enhanced. If we do them during the
exhale, not the inhale.
Now with all of that said I haven't yet
really talked about mouth versus nasal breathing and it really can be a fairly short discussion because
what
London data now show and has been beautifully described in the book called Jaws a hidden epidemic. This is a book that was written by Paul Ehrlich and Sandra con. My colleagues at Stanford School of Medicine, it has
an introduction and a forward from Jared diamond and from the great Robert sapolsky. So it's real Heavy Hitters on this book. What that book really describes is that whenever possible meaning, unless you're speaking or eating or you're exercising or other activities, require
some change in your pattern of breathing, we should really all be striving to breathe through our
Those not through our mouths.
And that relates to the increased resistance to breathing through the nose. We talked about earlier again, I'll say it a third time that increase resistance
through the nose, allows you to inflate your lungs more, not
less. The other thing that breathing through your nose allows you to do is both warms and moisturizes the air that you bring into your lungs which is more favorable for
long Health than breathing. Through the mouth hard breathing through the mouth or simply mouth breathing at all is actually quite
damaging or can be. I should say quite damaging
to some of the respiratory.
We functions of your lungs
that of course does not mean that you
shouldn't Breathe hard through your mouth when you're running or sprinting or exercising hard but you don't want mouth-breathing to be The Chronic default pattern that you follow nasal. Breathing is the best pattern of breathing to follow as a default
State. Another aspect of nasal
breathing, that's really beneficial is that the gas nitric oxide is actually
created in the
nasal passages. It's a gas that can cause
relaxation of the smooth muscle that relate to the vascular.
Sure. Not just of your nose, but of your brain and for all the tissues of your body, this is why nasal breathing and not mouth. Breathing is great for when you want to relieve congestion. So, a lot of these things seem
counterintuitive, right, your nose is stuff. So
that mainly makes people breathe through their mouth, but it turns out that breathing through your nose will allow some dilation of the vasculature, more blood flow dilation of the nasal passages and delivery of nitric oxide to all the tissues of your body and that dilation of the
small cap.
Oh Larry's, that innervate essentially, every organ of your body, allow the delivery of more nutrients, and the removal of carbon dioxide and other waste
products from those tissues more readily than if you're not getting enough. Excuse me, nitric oxide into your system. So a lot of reasons to be a nasal breather. If you want to check out that book, Jaws hidden epidemics that terrific read and it also shows some absolutely striking, pictures, twin studies, and so forth. And some before and afters of people, and the aesthetic changes that they experience.
They shifted from being a mouth breather to a nose breather.
These are striking
examples that have been observed over and over again, when people mouth breathe, there's an elongation of
the jaw droopiness of
the of the eyelids and the entire jaw structure really
changes in ways that are not aesthetically
favorable. Fortunately, when people switch to becoming nasal breathers and of course, that takes some encouragement either by mouth taping or doing their cardiovascular
exercise with mouth closed or by doing the sorts of
exercises that we
Talked about
earlier, when they switch to becoming nasal breathers by default, the aesthetic changes that occur are very dramatic and
very favorable including so elevation
of the eyebrows. Not
not in an artificial sense or an it kind of outrageous way, but elevation of the
cheekbones, sharpening of the jaw and most notably improvements of the teeth and the entire jaw structure. In fact, one simple test of whether or not you can be an efficient nasal breather and whether or not you been nasal breathing efficiently, or
most of
The time in the past or whether or not you've been relying more on mouth-breathing
that was described in the book. Jaws is, you should be able to close your mouth and breathe. Only through your nose.
Again, this is at rest, not during exercise necessarily leave might do it during exercise
but close your mouth. Put your tongue on the roof of your mouth and it should fit behind your teeth.
You should be able to nose breathe in that
position. Now, many people won't be able to do that,
but fortunately, as I mentioned earlier, if you nasal
breathe, that is you deliberately nasal breathing when it rest for some period of time, you
will experience an increased ability
to nasal breathe, and you should
also experience some addition of space within the
palate of your mouth, to allow your tongue to sit more completely on the roof of your mouth. This is especially true for children. That perform this technique. Again,
I refer you to the book.
Jaws a hidden epidemic. It's an absolutely spectacular book. You can also just look online before and after Jaws hidden epidemic and look at some of the changes in facial structure that occur when people move from mouth to nasal breathing and it's really quite striking.
So, during today's episode per always, we covered a lot of information. First we
talked about the mechanical aspects of breathing the
lungs, the diaphragm, the
trachea and so forth. We
also talked about the chemical
aspects of breathing that really
breathing is a way that we bring oxygen to
And that we get the correct levels or I should say, we maintain the correct levels
of carbon dioxide in
our system. Neither too much, nor too little in order to allow oxygen to do its magic. And, to allow carbon dioxide to do its magic. Because, as you learned during today's episode carbon dioxide is not just a waste by-product. It has a very critical physiological functions you need to have enough of it around and therefore, you don't want to over breathe, especially at rest. We talked about a tool to measure how well, you manage carbon.
Oxide. The so-called carbon dioxide tolerance test and
various exercises that you can use simply by breathing
to decrease your stress in real-time. Decrease your stress chronically Around the Clock. Obviously that's a good thing improve sleep.
Improve mood how to increase
breath-hold times and why you might want to do that. Also how to eliminate hiccups. We talked about how to breathe in order to eliminate
the side stitch or side crap that you might experience during exercise and how to breathe in order to improve learning and memory.
Reaction, time and various other
aspects of cognitive and physical function.
I do realize it's a lot of information, but as always, I try and give you information. That is clear, hopefully, interesting as well and actionable toward a number of different endpoints. So if you're somebody that's just now, starting to think about the application of breathwork, I would encourage you to please. Yes do that's carbon dioxide tolerance test. That will give you some window
into how well or how poorly or managing breathing.
And then here's the great news. The great news is
Is that breathwork? That is deliberate respiration. Practices are very effective at creating change very quickly in some cases such as the use of the physiological PSI or cyclic hyperventilation. Those changes can be experienced the first time in every time because again these are not hacks, these are aspects of your
breathing apparatus. I including the mechanical
stuff in the neural stuff and the gas exchange stuff. All of which you were born with and that are available to you at any moment. So all you really have to do is
Explore them and deploy them as you feel necessary.
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