METHOD II: OXYGEN ADVANTAGE

Buteyko

The Ukrainian doctor Konstantin Buteyko discovered in 1952 the special effect on health of breathing exercises. He had to diagnose a patient who was breathing heavily and sometimes gasping for air with his mouth open. Buteyko thought he was dealing with a stuffy asthma patient, but to his surprise it was a patient with high blood pressure, without a trace of asthma.  He himself had similar complaints and noticed that his blood pressure went down when he started breathing more calmly. Through this experience, he began trying to get blood pressure normal through breathing exercises, without the use of medication.  His subsequent studies showed that deep and rapid breathing can lead to various complaints: high blood pressure, asthma, allergy, panic attacks, emphysema, hay fever, sleep problems and headaches.

Chronic overbreathing

Oxygen Advantage by Patrick McKeown is based on the Buteyko method. McKeown's exercises go further and give you the opportunity to not only become healthier and fitter, but also to improve your sports performance. The essence of the exercises is to absorb less air so that the oxygen is better delivered to the muscles, organs and tissues.  This is especially true for all those who show a tendency to overhale: you use more air than you need and that has negative consequences for your health, your fitness and your sports performance. Overhaling causes narrowing of the airways and blood vessels, which worsens your body's oxygen supply and blood flow to your heart, other organs and muscles.  If you breathe over, you exhale too much carbon dioxide and the level in your blood becomes too low for a good oxygen supply of your muscles and organs.  You close the gate further and further, as it were, so that oxygen can pass more difficult.  Over a longer period of time, this  can  lead to a greater sensitivity or lower tolerance to carbon dioxide, causing the body to become accustomed to a constantly smaller amount of carbon dioxide in the blood. The receptors in the brain are now more likely to give the signal to breathe, because a correct amount of carbon dioxide is already perceived as too high a level. In the long run, this can lead to tension and anxiety, asthma, fatigue, insomnia, heart problems and obesity. The symptoms of overhaling are: breathing through your mouth (especially at night), snoring, (too much) movement of your chest and belly while breathing, sighing regularly, hearing your own breathing. In addition to simple exercises, awareness and changing your breathinghabits is the main goal of Oxygen Advantage to get the body used to breathing less.

The oxygen paradox

The paradox is: your muscles, organs and tissues have to absorb a certain amount of oxygen in order to function, but too much oxygen damages muscles, organs and tissues. In addition, carbon dioxide plays a crucial role in the delivery of oxygen by the red blood cells to the muscles and organs. When we breathe less, the carbon dioxide level in our blood increases, allowing us to deliver more oxygen to the muscles and organs, including the heart and brain.  Important here is hemoglobin, a protein in the red blood cells, which has the function of transporting oxygen from the lungs to the cells. However, hemoglobin only releases oxygen in the presence of carbon dioxide. This is called the Bohr effect, after Christian Bohr who discovered it in 1904.  When we breathe over, we blow off too much carbon dioxide, a situation called hypocapnia. As a result, the hemoglobin retains the oxygen carried instead of releasing it to the cells. Energy can then be produced less efficiently in the cells and this leads to less fitness and poorer performance. A higher content of carbon dioxide in the blood will improve oxygen delivery to the cells.  We increase our physical capacities and therefore also our sports performance.

Nosebreathing

The nose is to breathe, the mouth to eat. Everyone breathes through the nose at birth and it has been our main way of breathing for hundreds of thousands of years. Virtually all animals breathe exclusively through the nose, even the cheetah, the fastest land mammal on earth. Only the dog occasionally breathes through the mouth, but that is only to cool down. It does not matter whether they are predators or prey animals. Horses and deer also breathe through the nose, so that they can eat and breathe at the same time.

Nasal breathing gives about 50% more resistance to the incoming airflow than mouth breathing, so that the lungs unfold better and at the same time less air is used. This results in 10 – 20% more oxygen uptake. The nose also ensures heatingand, humidifyingand filtering the incoming air. Exhalation through the nose also retains moisture and heat better.

The nose is also an important source of nitric oxide, something few people outside the medical-scientific world are aware of. The nitric oxide produced in the nasal cavity is transported through the nose to the lower airways and lungs via inhalation. The gas dilates the blood vessels and air passages in the lungs. We know the effect of nitric oxide mainly from the pill under the tongue in angina pectoris and high blood pressure. That pill consists of nitroglycerin, which is converted into nitric oxide in the body. Less known is that nitric oxide also helps open the blood vessels in the penis. That discovery led to the production of Viagra. Research shows that when men start breathing through the nose again, their erection problems are greatly reduced.

For athletes who want to improve their performance, it is especially important to know that nitric oxide contributes to dilating the smooth muscle layer in the respiratory tract. This allows for a better supply of oxygen to the lungs during exercise. The better this oxygen supply, the less we have to breathe to make a certain effort. Our ancestors breathed through the nose during physical exertion and the members of the Tarahumara tribe in Mexico still do. They are known for their stunningly low heart rate during running. While a Western marathon runner can easily reach between 160 and 180 beats per minute, members of the tribe remain below 130 strokes.

Breath hold training and oxygen gain

People are naturally capable of holding their breath for a long time. Man is the only one among primates who has the diving reflex andtraditionally man hasused it to look for food in deeper water. Untrained, a person is on average able to hold his breath for about 50 seconds, but trained divers, such as members of the Bajau in the Philippines, do come to rest above 10 minutes.  On the other hand, we know the positive effect of altitude training for those who live and live at height. In both cases, there is a question of consciously exposing the body for a shorter or longer period of a situation of reduced oxygen, in which the body is forced to adapt. This adjustment increases the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood, which in turn benefits the overall oxygen supply in the body. In addition, the spleen acts as a blood bank. If the body indicates that more oxygen needs to be transported to the cells, the spleen taps into its supply of red blood cells and makes them available for circulation.

However, we do not have to stay under water or at high altitudes for a long time  to improve the oxygen supply in the body.  This can be done much easier, namely with breathing space training exercises from Oxygen Advantage. The body (the spleen) is stimulated by breathing space training to put more red blood cells into circulation, so that the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood increases and more oxygen can be transported to the muscles. With sufficient carbon dioxide, this leads to better performance. Just 3 to 5 maximum breathing pauses can increase the hemoglobin level of the blood by 2 to 4%.

Oxygen Advantage exercises

The benefits of breathing space training are in the performance: The breath is paused after an exhalation, not after an inhalation. Pausing the breath for a longer period of time lowers the oxygen saturation of the blood, simulating the effect of altitude training. After the exhalation, you can achieve the greatest reduction in oxygensaturation, because there is little oxygen-rich air in the lungs. By exhaling before taking a breather, a faster build-up of carbon dioxide in the blood also occurs. This of course reduces the time you  can pause your breath, but the higher carbon dioxide level causes a stronger contraction of the spleen and this leads to more red blood cells. In addition, the increased carbon dioxide ensures that the oxygen is more easily delivered to the cells, which further reduces oxygen saturation and strengthens the effect of the exercise. Finally, the breathing pause after the exhalation ensures that you make optimal use of the nitric oxide that collects in the nasal cavity, because you start with an inhalation after the break. You then transport the collected nitric oxide directly to the lungs.

Both during physical exertion and during breathing pauses, a lack of air is created. A lack of air can be described as a felt need to breathe, ranging from mild, medium to strong. How strong the lack of air is depends on the exercise and situation. With sedentary exercises you evoke a mild lack of air, while with breathing exercises that you do during intensive training you will feel a strong lack of air. As with the WimHof Method, the Oxygen Advantage exercises are not suitable for experimenting with on your own. Even though the exercises themselves seem simple, good guidance by a certified Oxygen Advantage instructor (oxygenadvantage.com)  is also indispensable here.