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

by Patrick McKeown

  And women can benefit from nitric oxide in this way too, as the gas plays a similar role in the female genitalia, helping to increase libido. Could it be that nose breathers have more desire and better sex lives than mouth breathers?

  In addition to improving your sex life, this unique gas also acts as a defense mechanism against microorganisms through its antiviral and antimicrobial activity, potentially reducing the risk of illness and improving overall health.

  Most important for athletes wishing to optimize their sports performance, nitric oxide plays a central role in dilating the smooth muscle layer embedded in the airways. Open airways allow for a better transfer of oxygen to and from the lungs during exercise, while tight airways create an uncomfortable and inefficient experience that ultimately affects performance.

  The production of nitric oxide in the nasal sinuses can be increased by simply humming. In an article published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Doctors Weitzberg and Lundberg described how humming increased nitric oxide up to fifteenfold in comparison with quiet exhalation. They concluded that humming causes a dramatic increase in sinus ventilation and nasal nitric oxide release.

  With this knowledge, it comes as no surprise that humming is also practiced during certain meditation techniques. The breathwork technique called Brahmari involves slow, deep breaths through the nose, humming on each exhalation to generate a sound similar to a bee buzzing, and while the exact science may have been a mystery to the creators of this meditation method, the associated feeling of calmness of the mind is a clear indication of its benefit.

  Nose Unblocking Exercise

  Breathing through the mouth causes blood vessels in the nose to become inflamed and enlarged. This, along with an increased secretion of mucus, creates the uncomfortable feeling of nasal stuffiness. When the nose becomes blocked it is much more difficult to breathe through it, thus perpetuating the habit of breathing through the mouth. Continued mouth breathing results in a more permanent state of nasal congestion, thus completing the vicious circle.

  Nasal obstruction is one of the main symptoms of rhinitis and affects many people throughout the Western world on a daily basis. The most common treatments include the avoidance of triggers (such as pollen) and the use of decongestants, nasal steroid sprays, antihistimines, or allergy shots, but while these offer symptomatic benefits, they are effective only as long as treatment continues.

  A number of years ago, ear, nose, and throat specialist Professor John Fenton from the University of Limerick took an interest in my work after his patients reported a significant reduction in their nasal symptoms following attendance of my course. At his behest, a study was commissioned to further investigate the effects of reduced breathing. The results were an amazing 70 percent reduction of symptoms such as nasal stuffiness, poor sense of smell, snoring, trouble breathing through the nose, trouble sleeping, and having to breathe through the mouth.

  On the following page is one of the exercises that I taught to participants in the study. (Please do not practice this exercise if your BOLT score is less than 10 seconds, or if you have high blood pressure or other cardiovascular issues, diabetes, or pregnancy, or have any other serious health concerns.) Like all breathing exercises, the Nose Unblocking Exercise should not be practiced right after eating.

  Nose Unblocking Exercise

  • Take a small, silent breath in through your nose and a small, silent breath out through your nose.

  • Pinch your nose with your fingers to hold your breath.

  • Walk as many paces as possible with your breath held. Try to build up a medium to strong air shortage, without overdoing it.

  • When you resume breathing, do so only through your nose. Try to calm your breathing immediately.

  • After resuming your breathing, your first breath will probably be bigger than normal. Make sure that you calm your breathing as soon as possible by suppressing your second and third breaths.

  • You should be able to recover normal breathing within 2 or 3 breaths. If your breathing is erratic or heavier than usual, you have held your breath for too long.

  • Wait 1 or 2 minutes before repeating the breath hold.

  • In order to prepare yourself for the longer breath holds, go easy for the first few repetitions, increasing your paces each time.

  • Repeat for a total of 6 breath holds, creating a fairly strong need for air.

  Generally, this exercise will unblock the nose, even if you have a head cold. However, as soon as the effects of the breath hold wear off, the nose will likely feel blocked again. By gradually increasing the number of steps you can take with your breath held, you will find the results continue to improve. When you are able to walk a total of 80 paces with the breath held, your nose will remain decongested. Eighty paces is actually a very achievable goal, and you can expect to progress by an additional ten paces per week.

  Each week I teach this exercise to groups of five- to ten-year-old children, many of whom have pretty serious breathing difficulties. Within 2 or 3 weeks, most children are able to walk 60 paces with their breath held, with some children quickly achieving up to 80 paces. Try it yourself, and see how you do.

  If you regularly suffer from nasal congestion, you should soon find it much easier to breathe through your nose by practicing this exercise. No longer will you require over-the-counter nasal decongestants, antihistamines, or nasal steroids!

  By holding your breath, you sharply increase the concentration of nitric oxide in your nasal cavity, resulting in dilation of the nasal passages and smooth, easy nasal breathing once more.

  As you move on to the breathing exercises in the next chapter, your ability to hold your breath will improve, resulting in even greater nasal freedom.

  Nasal Breathing at Night

  The ideal amount of sleep required each night varies from person to person. The late British prime minister Margaret Thatcher was said to get by on just four hours sleep, but most of us need seven or eight hours of good-quality sleep to set us right for the day. If we struggle to get to sleep, or if sleep is interrupted by snoring or sleep apnea, it can be particularly hard to get up the following morning, and a lack of sleep can severely affect concentration, mood, and even the most basic of activities. Even if we seem to sleep soundly the whole night through, the quality of sleep can be reduced by mouth breathing and heavy breathing, meaning we still wake up with a dry mouth and a feeling of lethargy.

  Fifty-year-old Annette described to me how she rarely slept eight hours continuously. Since her children were very young, her usual sleep pattern had involved lying awake for several hours in an effort to try to fall asleep, followed by a few hours of light sleep, waking again around 3 A.M. The next two hours were usually spent trying to fall asleep again, resulting in frustration and exhaustion when she finally had to get up for her day’s work.

  Just like Annette, for many years I too woke up tired and lethargic, suffering from poor concentration throughout the day. The key to improving the quality of my sleep was incredibly simple: All I had to do was to learn to keep my mouth closed during sleep. Because we are unaware of how we breathe at night, the only sure way to ensure nasal breathing is to wear light paper tape across the lips to prevent the mouth from falling open. And this is exactly what I instructed Annette to do. If you feel uncomfortable about using the paper tape at night, a stop snoring strap is a good alternative and helps to keep the lower jaw from dropping during sleep. Stop snoring straps are commonly used by people with obstructive sleep apnea and can be purchased from OxygenAdvantage.com.

  Taping the mouth at night ensures the benefits of good breathing during sleep, allowing you to fall asleep more quickly, stay asleep longer, and wake feeling energized. The tape that I have found most suitable, as it is simple to use, hypoallergenic, and light, is 3M Micropore tape, which can be bought from most drugstores. To help make the tape easier to remove in the morning, gently press the tape against the back of your hand a couple of
times to remove some of the glue before applying the tape to your face. All you need to do is tear off about 4 inches/10 cm of tape, fold a tab over at both ends to make removal easier in the morning, dry your lips, close your mouth, and gently place the tape horizontally over the lips.

  At first, Annette was slightly nervous about using the tape, though she was keen to try anything that might help her sleep and increase her energy levels. Initially, she found taping her mouth to be uncomfortable, and noticed that her breathing increased due to anxiety when she used it. However, over the next few days she practiced wearing the tape for short periods of 20 minutes while she went about her normal activities at home. This helped to acclimatize her to breathing through her nose and to overcome any fears about wearing the tape at night.

  Once she was used to the feeling of taping her mouth closed, Annette was determined to use the technique to improve her sleep quality. She went to bed at her usual time and was surprised to find the tape to be a comfort. As soon as she placed the tape on her mouth, it was almost like a signal to fall asleep—which she did. That night, Annette slept more deeply than usual, and even though she woke up without the tape on the first two days, she felt more rested. On her third day, she went to bed wearing the tape at 10 P.M. and slept like a baby until 9:53 A.M. Annette excitedly told me that it was the first time in years that she’d had a proper night’s sleep, and she was amazed to feel so alert and energized when she woke up.

  Over the years, I have introduced this taping method to thousands of people with incredible results. Unless you breathe calmly through your nose at night, you have no idea what it feels like to have a great night’s sleep. Taping the mouth at night is a simple but very effective technique, and while it may sound a little strange, it is well worth getting used to.

  Continue to wear the tape until you have managed to change to breathing through your nose at night. How long this takes will vary from person to person, but in general wearing the tape for a period of around three months is sufficient to restore nasal breathing during sleep. Breathing through your nose will result in a naturally moist mouth when you wake up. If your mouth is dry upon waking, you know that your mouth was open during sleep. When a child has one eye with weaker vision, the treatment often recommended is to temporarily cover the good eye with a patch to train the brain to strengthen the weaker eye and restore normal vision. In the same way, wearing tape across the lips during sleep or when alone in your house during the day gradually trains the body to adapt to nasal breathing both day and night. Spending a guaranteed eight hours breathing through your nose while you sleep is an opportune way to reeducate your respiratory center to adjust to a more normal breathing volume.

  CHAPTER 4

  Breathe Light to Breathe Right

  For thousands of years, masters of the ancient arts of yoga, tai chi, and qigong have espoused the importance of quiet, gentle, and light breathing. I recently had the pleasure of meeting tai chi Master Jennifer Lee in London. Master Lee has reached the rank of Seventh Dan and was awarded gold in ten categories during the international 2009 Wushu Championships held in Hong Kong and Hainan, China. As the two of us talked, Master Lee described the similarities between her work and mine. She explained that during tai chi tournaments, judges pay particular attention to whether they can notice the breathing of competitors, with points being deducted when breathing is evident.

  Without knowing why, other than the fact that it has been passed down from generation to generation, Master Lee practices a breathing exercise that is very similar to the reduced breathing exercise we will explore further on. It is no coincidence that Master Lee’s breathing was textbook perfect. It was abdominal, effortless, and almost invisible to the eye. I have watched many people breathe—thousands, in fact—and without doubt, Master Lee displayed the most perfect breathing I have ever seen.

  Well-known qigong and tai chi Master Chris Pei explains how breathing is at the very core of the Chinese concept of chi (qi): “Generally speaking, there are three levels of breathing. The first one is to breathe softly, so that a person standing next to you does not hear you breathing. The second level is to breathe softly so that you do not hear yourself breathing. And the third level is to breathe softly so that you do not feel yourself breathing.”

  This philosophy of effortless breathing is echoed by authentic teachers of Indian yoga and traditional Chinese medicine. I use the word authentic in order to differentiate practitioners who have a deep knowledge of breathing and how it affects physiology from those who don’t. Unlike many modern Western teachers of yoga, who instruct students to breathe hard in order to remove toxins from the body, authentic teachers know that when it comes to breathing, less is more. The traditional Chinese philosophy of Taoism succinctly describes ideal breathing as “so smooth that the fine hairs within the nostrils remain motionless.” True health and inner peace occurs when breathing is quiet, effortless, soft, through the nose, abdominal, rhythmic, and gently paused on the exhale. This is how human beings naturally breathed until modern life changed everything.

  The comedian Lavell Crawford—who is, admittedly, quite a large man—got a laugh from his audience while telling the story of a young boy who stopped him in the street to ask: “You are so big—how many stomachs do you have?” This inquiry was quickly followed by, “Why are you breathing so hard, you got asthma or something?” While the kid’s manners left something to be desired—a fact that Crawford observed in his act—he got it right when he recognized the problematic nature of noticeable breathing.

  The commonly used practice of taking big breaths is based on the misconception that taking in more air will increase the oxygen levels of the blood. However, since arterial blood is already almost fully saturated with oxygen (between 95 percent and 99 percent) during normal, healthy breathing, “big” breathing is rendered totally unnecessary.

  Authentic teachers are not adding anything new. Instead, they are helping to counteract the negative effects imposed on breathing by processed foods, stress, excessive talking, stuffy air, and the false belief of the benefits of taking big breaths. Authentic professional yoga practitioners will have developed a high tolerance to carbon dioxide through their practice—sometimes to the point of being able to sustain one calm breath per minute for a whole hour! This impressive breathing efficiency implies quiet, gentle breathing and a high BOLT score. This is exactly the goal of the Oxygen Advantage program: to bring your breathing back to basics and to incorporate the wisdom and time-tested principles of ancient man that are enshrined by authentic teachers.

  What Is a Deep Breath? Unveiling the Myth

  Sometimes the same word can conjure up different meanings for different people. Take the word deep as an example: “deep” can be defined as a measurement that “extends far from the top,” but this explanation is not always clear-cut. The bottom of the deep end of a swimming pool is obviously farther from the surface of the water than the bottom of the shallow end, but when the word deep is used in the context of taking a deep breath, it can be open to many different interpretations. Such an instruction is commonly given by stress counselors, yoga practitioners, and sports coaches, resulting in the student taking a big breath of fresh air into the lungs, but often this is done through an open mouth while activating the upper chest. Such breathing is both big and shallow, but not deep. This type of breathing is entirely the wrong thing to do if your objective is to deliver more oxygen throughout the body.

  If we use the definition of “extending far from the top” in the context of deep breathing, the “top” will refer to the top of the lungs or the upper chest. A deep breath, therefore, means to breathe down into the full depth of the lungs. It also means using the main breathing muscle, the diaphragm, which separates the chest from the abdomen. During rest, healthy animals and babies naturally take deep, silent breaths. With each inhalation and exhalation the abdomen gently expands and contracts. There is no effort involved; the breath is silent, regular, and, more important, through
the nose. If you want to learn what constitutes good breathing, observe the breathing of a baby or a healthy pet, whose breathing has not been altered by the effects of modern lifestyles.

  Bell jar experiment showing “how we breathe”

  The bell jar diagram above illustrates the relationship between the movement of the diaphragm and movement of the abdomen. As you breathe, your abdomen moves in the opposite direction. The reason why the abdomen moves outward with the in-breath is because the diaphragm pushes downward, exerting gentle force on the abdomen. As you exhale, the diaphragm moves upward, taking pressure off the abdomen and moving the abdomen inward.

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

  The Diaphragm

  The diaphragm is a dome-shaped sheet of muscle that separates the thorax (which houses the heart and lungs) from the abdomen (which houses the intestines, stomach, liver, and kidneys). The diaphragm serves as our main breathing muscle and, if used correctly, it provides deep and efficient breathing. Poor breathing habits do not take full advantage of the diaphragm and instead encourage inefficient overbreathing from the upper chest. To determine where your diaphragm is located, place your hands just at the base of your rib cage and follow your ribs from the front of your body to the sides. A good rule of thumb is that the diaphragm is located about four buttons down on your shirt.