Why Does It Work?
We are going to start with some explanations of why these exercises work. It is always good to do something with a clear understanding of what you do and why you do it. These expanations might seem a bit long, but you are advised to read through them. When you finish, you will understand why this method is so effective.
Why do we breathe?
So, lets take a look at breathing. When you ask somebody: Why do people breathe? they will probably say: Because we need oxygen. Is that correct? Of course. Without oxygen we couldnt live on this planet. How long can we live without food? Several weeks, if the fasting is done correctly. How long can we live without water? A few days. The same goes for sleep. But how about air? How long can we live without taking a breath? The answer is maximum a few minutes. This information shows the paramount importance of breathing.
Next question: is it important to eat right? Everyone will say yes. Can some foods damage your health? The answer is once again affirmative. But if breathing is more critical for our life than eating, then maybe incorrect breathing carries heavier damage to our health than incorrect nutrition. Seems logical, right?
Try to answer the following question: What is the physiological purpose of breathing? Most people will say: The purpose of breathing is to supply the organism with oxygen. Some will add: And to take out carbon dioxide, which is a by-product of breathing. Is this correct? Well, lets look back in time. In the end of the 18th century, there lived a scientist in France named Lavoisier. He conducted experiments trying to find out the composition of air. He put a burning candle under a sealed glass container, and a mouse under another. After some time the candle went out, and the mouse died. Under both containers Lavoisier found the same colorless gas heavier than air. This gas didnt support either breathing or burning, and was called carbon dioxide, because it was formed in the process of oxydation of carbon, and a molecule of this gas contained one atom of carbon and two atoms of oxygen (chemical formula CO2).
Science can be wrong sometimes
What conclusions did science draw from Lavoisiers experiments? Number one: breathing and burning are essentially the same process, because they produce the same gas. Number two: this gas is very dangerous because it killed the mouse. Therefore, scientists said, we should breathe as deeply as possible to get this poison out of our bodies.
If you think of it, this logic is very bizarre. Its like saying: Starvation can kill people. Therefore, we should eat as much as possible! Lets consume 4,000 calories a day! No, 5,000! Or, better yet, 6,000! 8,000! 10,000! Thats absurd, you will say. But thats what we are told since childhood. Deep breathing is good for you! Breathe deeply to get more oxygen! It is good for the brain!
Do you know how oxygen gets to cells and tissues in our bodies? When blood circulates though your lungs, it contacts the oxygen which has been inhaled. Molecules of oxygen bind to hemoglobin and are carried by the blood to all internal organs. There hemoglobin releases oxygen, and so our cells can use it. But guess what is necessary for oxygen to be released from hemoglobin? Carbon dioxide! If theres not enough carbon dioxide in your blood, no matter how much oxygen your blood might contain, it will not be released to your cells and tissues. It will remain bound with hemoglobin and never be utilised. In other words, your blood may be 100% saturated with oxygen, and yet you might suffocate. (This is called the Verigo-Bohr effect, after the Russian scientist Verigo and the Danish scientist Bohr who discovered this in the end of the 19th century.)
The importance of carbon dioxide
Do you understand now what kind of breathing can be called incorrect? It is the kind of breathing that washes carbon dioxide out of your body, so oxygen remains in your blood and doesnt get to your internal organs. Without noticing it, you start to suffocate from within. Theres very little carbon dioxide in the air that we breathe. Our bodies need about 6.5% carbon dioxide in the blood to function correctly. But the air contains only 0.03% carbon dioxide. Where do we get the remainder? It is produced in the body as a by-product of metabolism. Now you understand that by-product doesnt mean waste product. CO2 is very important because it regulates almost every process in the body. And the most prominent among them is, of course, breathing.
Have you ever thought why you feel the need to take a breath once every few seconds? Because the content of oxygen in your blood drops? No. Your blood is almost always 96-98% saturated with oxygen. It is very difficult to create a real oxygen deficit in the blood. Why then? Because the content of carbon dioxide goes up, thats why. Our breathing is regulated, first and foremost, by the content of CO2, not oxygen. Why do you need to breathe deeper when you are running, for example? When your muscles work, they burn glucose. This process, as you already know, produces carbon dioxide. It gets into the blood stream and an excess of it has to be removed from the body. How? Through the lungs, of course. Thats why you have to breathe deeply when you work out because theres more carbon dioxide to remove, not only because theres more oxygen to be taken in.
Now you understand what happens in your body if you breathe more deeply than you need. Carbon dioxide gets washed out of your blood, and oxygen remains more firmly bound to hemoglobin. As a result, your internal organs dont get enough oxygen, so they experience oxygen starvation. You feel this as lack of air and breathe even more deeply, which removes even more carbon dioxide from the blood, and so the vicious circle is formed. Of course, this doesnt happen overnight, but the slow destructive work is being done. And no matter what medications you take, youll never get better until you break the vicious circle and deal with the real cause of your disease. The system of exercises that we teach, breaks the vicious circle of incorrect breathing and returns your breathing to norm. How does it do it? By reconditioning the bodys response to carbon dioxide in the blood.
What regulates your breathing
Remember what we said a few lines earlier? The content of CO2 in your blood regulates your breathing. If it goes up, you start breathing more deeply to bring it back down. Your body has been conditioned to live with a certain level of carbon dioxide. Actually, you are probably used to too low a level of carbon dioxide. You need to re-train your body to tolerate higher levels of carbon dioxide, which are beneficial for your health. What happens when the level of CO2 in your blood rises? You feel something that we usually call lack of air. And the more CO2 in your blood, the more intense your subjective feeling of lack of air. You feel as though your body is screaming to you: Oxygen! I need more oxygen! But you already know that its not true. What your body is really saying is: This is too much carbon dioxide! Im not used to it! You should think of it as any other exercise. For example, its very difficult to run the first time, but, as time passes, your body gets used to it, and you can run longer without feeling tired. When you first go to a weight room, you feel very weak, but with further training, your muscles grow stronger and you can now lift much more than in the beginning. The same goes for breathing. When you start out, the level of carbon dioxide in your blood is too low. That is the level that your body is used to, the level that you have spent your life with. But as you train through the exercises, you will teach your body to tolerate higher CO2 levels. Thus it will not panic at those higher CO2 levels. A higher concentration of carbon dioxide will mean better release of oxygen by hemoglobin, which will reduce oxygen starvation of your internal organs. You will fell better because you will now be addressing the real cause of your disease. Remember: high levels of carbon dioxide are good for you. All healthy people have a lot of CO2 in their blood. All chronically ill people have low levels of CO2.
Why medications dont cure
When asthmatics feel that its hard to breathe, what do they do? They take a puff of ventolin or some other bronchodilator. But why does an asthma attack begin? Most people will say: It is triggered by allergens. I agree that allergens do play some role in it. But why do other people not have an attack in the presence of the same allergens? Conventional medicine shrugs and says, Were studying it. They will be studying it forever, and more and more people will suffer and die in the meantime. But in fact, when you are experiencing an attack, its your bodys attempt to preserve some CO2 in the blood. Its level is too low, and the body desperately clings to whatever is left in order to save itself, because without CO2, normal physiological processes are impossible. But asthmatics respond to this by taking bronchodilators, which allow more carbon dioxide to be washed out of the blood. This makes the matters worse in the long run, because it makes sure that there will be another attack, more severe than before.
The same goes for hypertension sufferers, for example. When you feel that your blood pressure rises, what do you do? You take a pill that dilates blood vessels and thus reduces blood pressure. But why do the vessels constrict in the first place? Why does the blood pressure rise? The answer once again lies in lower than necessary levels of carbon dioxide. As you already know, a low content of CO2 leads to slow release of oxygen by hemoglobin. Your internal organs experience oxygen starvation, and your cardiovascular system tries to make up for it by increasing blood flow. The heart rate goes up, and the blood vessels constrict in order to increase blood pressure. So the body is able to keep up the oxygen supply, but at what price? Your heart wears out more quickly, your arteries harden, and you feel headaches and other usual symptoms of hypertension, which make life miserable. And when you take a pill, it makes you feel better for some time, but your body still experiences lack of oxygen, so you are guaranteed another attack, worse than before.
What can carbon dioxide do?
Actually, carbon dioxide acts as a natural bronchodilator. It also dilates spasmed blood vessels. Thats why the easiest and most effective way of dealing with an asthma attack or a sudden rise in blood pressure is doing these exercises, which raise the level of CO2 in your blood. Thats how many asthmatics and high blood pressure sufferers learn to prevent attacks of their disease. In fact, many people report that they dont need any more Ventolin or similar drugs when they start using these techniques.
As for other diseases, they, too, are helped by higher CO2 levels in the blood. Carbon dioxide regulates so many processes in the body that even slight lack of it leads to disruption of normal physiological processes. And when you bring its content back up, the body starts to heal itself without any drugs. Thats how some people in one experiment in Kiev, Ukraine were able to reverse the most terrible of all diseases AIDS. The breathing exercises, which lead to increases in CO2 levels in the blood, did what no drugs were able to do the disease began to regress, and finally they were released from the hospital with the diagnosis healthy. The only difference between them and other people was that they still had the HIV virus in their blood.
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