You're Breathing Wrong: The Buteyko Breathing Method
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Have you ever paid attention to what really happens as your body gathers oxygen? Does your chest puff out? Do your shoulders rise? If so, there’s a chance that your breathing technique could use some correction. Deep breathing from the diaphragm is the way to go and you might be surprised at the many health benefits it can have.
On this week’s episode Ed discusses a particular breathing method that may help with a plethora of health problems. The Buteyko Breathing Method was invented by Russian medical scientist Konstantin Buteyko in the 1950’s, but is gaining a good bit of traction in today’s modern culture. With a little training and discipline, you can integrate this into your own life and see the results so many others have!
Some Topics We Discussed:
What is Buteyko breathing? (2:43)
What makes this technique different from other breathing techniques? (6:52)
Why does Ed tape his mouth shut when he sleeps? (9:27)
Key Takeaways From This Episode:
Oxygen is good but it has a downside. (5:10)
Figure out if you are a nose or a mouth breather. (6:59)
Your nose is your best air filter. (8:24)
What is horizontal breathing? (12:46)
Products + Resources:
Thank you to our sponsor this episode: Silver Biotics.
CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Brian Strickland 00:43 What's up everyone, welcome back to another episode of The Holistic Navigator Podcast, where we believe in the body's ability to heal itself. And before we begin today, we wanted to say thank you for choosing to listen today, we understand that your time is a precious commodity. But if you enjoyed this podcast and have learned some valuable things, would you please consider going to iTunes and just leaving us a rating and some feedback. This is really what helps us spread the word about holistic healing. And we believe it can have a profound impact on some people's lives. For moving on for those of you who it might be your first time listening, I'm the producer of the show, Brian Strickland. And here with me in the studio, as always is your host, Mr. Ed Jones, and we're coming back from holiday weekend. So how was your long weekend?
Ed Jones 01:35 Thank you, Brian. And yes, it was much needed. Yeah, it was about 97 degrees. And that kind of heat is can be overwhelming if you if you certainly if you're not healthy. They you know it, they put out warnings for people who are elderly and sickly that, to not expose yourself to that. But I am making a commitment again this summer to not ever complain about the temperature. And because you know what we have, we're around a lot of people every single day who whine and complain about their life. And when you hear yourself complaining, it's self perpetuating. And it's just another type of toxic level of emotion. And, you know, I'm trying to teach myself all of the different components of how can I live the longest, most optimal health possible, not the longest years, but the point of being fully functional, feeling well, having enough energy to pursue my dreams and hoping that I can help others do that through The Holistic Navigator,
Brian Strickland 02:37 I probably don't want to hang around me because I plan on whining about heat every single day. But today, guys, we're gonna be speaking about a really interesting topic. Maybe something that most of you really aren't familiar with. And that's a particular breathing technique called Buteyko breathing. Ed, can you just kind of give us a quick rundown of what this breathing technique who started it and why?
Ed Jones 03:05 You know, I'm a person who's a seeker have been my entire life on many levels, but especially in regard to the health and also lack of health that any warm blooded creature has. And I remember very well, 20 or 30 years ago, it was at a zoo. And I saw a turtle that was 105 years old. And it just so intrigued me that how could this animal live that long and thinking deeply about this? It is obvious that one of the components that a turtle accesses that very few people do is slow breathing. And there is a epidemic of misinformation in my opinion as to what we think and how we should breathe, and what we're being taught. And I'm speaking about being taught by people who are teaching yoga, and exercise coaches, and even school teachers that used to tell me stand up straight and take a deep breath and fill it your chest and stick the chest out like they would show on the military films. Well, guess what? As most things that I come across in my 62 years of living, so many were started with good intentions, but they actually were inaccurate. Dr. Buteyko was a Russian physician many decades ago. And he how he came across this who knows who knows how epiphanies happen. But you know, he could have been eating a lot of poppy seeds or doing other things. Who knows? I don't really care, because he came to a conclusion and tested it out on many, many of his patients and it worked. People would start flocking to him because he discovered that he had a really the best option for many, many health disorders, with asthma being number one. And his research and his experience showed us something that very few listening will know about. We all think oxygen is the king Daddy, that we The more the better. Let's grab it. Let's breathe deeply this go to oxygen bars when we're at a town. Heck, they say it can make us feel young and get over hangovers. But the issue is it's not true. As many things is partially true, let me say that. The downside to all of this is without getting at all complex is there's just two parts to the air family that we need to discuss oxygen and carbon dioxide. Well, when you start breathing deeply in your chest, you start hyperventilating when you start and you when you continue breathing through your mouth, you're hyperventilating. What does that mean? That means you are raising the level of oxygen, but at the same time decreasing the level of carbon dioxide. Well, carbon dioxide has some very interesting purposes. It actually allows the hemoglobin to release the oxygen in your cells. Hmm. So even if you're breathing a lot of oxygen, if it doesn't get released in the blood cell, you're getting no benefit from it, because oxygen is what is going to fuel your cells. In the medical literature is actually called the Bohr effect. And mouth breathing elevates your heart rate, blood pressure, sometimes can even result in fatigue, dizziness, it slows the elasticity of your lungs, and even is associated with poor posture. Very few, in fact, I don't know of anyone other than the people I have told this to has ever monitored, where their air is coming through.
Brian Strickland 06:53 Can you kind of run us through just the bare basics of what this technique actually entails?
Ed Jones 06:59 So Buteyko breathing, number one is, and I don't have a cure or a fix for this easily is you have to start thinking, where is my air coming from? Is it coming through my nostrils? Or is it coming through my mouth? Now me speaking on this microphone, I am not totally nose breathing, I am partially mouth breathing. But when you start in between something like this, you really need to start thinking, where's the air coming from and start retraining yourself. And it is a process this will not happen in a day or a week. I was of course, again fortunate to be schooled by a Buteyko practitioner about four years ago. And we would meet every single week, it was almost like a personal trainer, where you go to the gym, you don't expect to get fit in one week, it takes months to even get into the protocol and program. Well, and I want people to, to know that there's a great website that I have followed, called breathingcenter.com. On breathingcenter.com there's a lady named Sasha, she was her whole life is is about educating people on Buteyko breathing. So number one is we start thinking of ourselves, morning, noon and night about where's the air coming through which hole. In fact, Dr. Buteyko said this, you should breathe through your mouth as often as you eat through your nose. That's a little harsh, but it it really hits home. So during the day, start thinking about nose breathing, that's going to help you to raise your carbon dioxide to maintain the balance with the oxygen and it's going to purify the air incredibly. There's not a better filter around than your nose. And when you breathe through your mouth, it's like taking your air filter off of your air conditioning unit and just letting it the all the air come through and eventually clogs up the whole unit and it stops. And then thirdly is when you mouth breathe, you're sending a different signal to the nervous system, which is called the parasympathetic, sympathetic nervous system and it tends to alert it, it makes it think that there's some alarm going on that you need to address. Well, we live in that state 24 seven, so that's not a course conducive to our emotional or physical help. Now, before I move on, the one huge tip that I started embracing probably five years ago about this mouth breathing is taping my mouth shut every single night. Now you don't do this with scotch tape, you have to get these special tape called nexcare. Nexcare is available many places online. And you're going to run this type across the middle part of your lips not all the way from the left to the side and you will not believe how much better you will wake up feeling, your mouth will not be dry, your tooth decay will significantly drop because part of the reason you have to decay is of course, the biggest part is bacteria. And it loves it when it's dry, it just seems to flourish in that environment. And when you wake up, you're going to be more rested. Why is that? Because when you relax the nervous system, you get into a deeper level of sleep for longer periods of time. When your mouth breathing, I think we have a nation full of people who are slightly have sleep apnea. They don't have sleep apnea point that need a C Pap, but they go through periods because of stress and over eating, eating at night before they go to bed. All the other components that really that caused the throat to want to kind of super relaxed at night and that and then it lowers your oxygen and then it kind of wakes you up and then you wake up feeling tired. This piece of $4 tape, I think has saved many people by $1,000 c pap machines. So bullet point number two is make sure that you go and try this tape on your mouth. When you do this, you're going to quit depleting the carbon dioxide reserves and when that happens, you will start feeling just emotionally better if not physically. And you know most people breathe about somewhere between 12 to 20 breaths a minute. The slower you breathe, the healthier you will become and the more peaceful Your life will be. So what is the goal, the goal is six to 10 breaths per minute, not 12 to 20. You can sit there and relax and count your breaths. So that's another thing you can do at home that will help you fine tune to boteco breathing technique.
Brian Strickland 11:59 We wanted to pause just for a quick moment until you bought our sponsor this week. This episode is brought to you by Silver Biotics, creators of silver soul technology. Silver Biotics takes colloidal silver to a new level by providing superior products proven safe and effective through hundreds of reports and studies. It's the only silver technology proven safe through human ingestion studies giving you peace of mind. Whether you're looking for wound care, immune support, or skincare, Silver Biotics wide range of clinically studied products can help you stay healthy. Silver Biotics strong support, strong body, silver strong. I was something the other day or maybe it was a podcast that I listened to. And it was a vocal coach that was talking about the importance of breathing. Obviously, we don't want to breathe through your mouth, we want to breathe through our nose and with this method is it is it concentrating on like that diaphragm breathing. So it's not the chest coming out. But it's your actually your stomach coming out. And that's how you know that you're actually diaphragm breathing.
Ed Jones 13:11 Perfect segue into exactly what I was going to speak about next. Thank you, Brian. And it's called in Buteyko world, it is called vertical breathing, or horizontal breathing and vertical breathing makes you feel taller. Because on the in breath, you're raising your chest and shoulders, we don't want that. What we want is horizontal breathing. And at first, you may find it difficult to take a breath where your midsection and your stomach is moving out. And even to the sides. Because you're trying not to let the chest do it because you're not getting air in the bottom third of your lungs, you don't have the resignation of voice that you will have, if you can draw air from the lower parts. In fact, many people who have you know, I can't really make myself do it. But if you only breathe in the upper chambers, you're gonna have a far, far worse voice, it actually kind of goes up and you kind of talk faster. And then you know, people don't like listening to people like this as much as they kind of get bored. So when you slow down, and you take the breath from deeper parts of the lungs, people want to listen to you more it actually works if you will try to do that.
Brian Strickland 14:24 It really is. It's one of those things that once you begin paying attention to it, then you can't help but notice it. Because even after I listened to that I really started concentrating on my intake breaths. And you know, the majority of mine really were just, I felt my shoulders come up and my chest go out and I was like, oh man, well, I need to actually do a lot better about this. And once you once you kind of get the hang of it. I mean, it's kind of strange, but you do it does allow for a really deep breath. And so you find yourself even when Speaking like this, you can talk for longer, it changes the timbre of your voice, you don't have kind of that, that vocal drop off at the end of your sentences when you run out of breath. And so when you when you really start paying attention to it, it can make a pretty dramatic difference.
Ed Jones 15:17 They can, Brian, that's a great point. And now the thing is, there's many coaches, breath coaches, and all the way down the list that really don't agree with Buteyko. And the thing about Buteyko is, before I even missed this point, you need to do this during exercise also, and those people who, you know, nose breather and exercise, it's, it's dang tough, I will be honest with you. But the one thing that Buteyko speaks about that is so foreign to what we think is common sense is we need to learn to be comfortable with air hunger. Air hunger, well we all know what that is, if you hold your breath, you're gonna start feeling the need to take a breath, well, that's air hunger. And when you start Buteyko breathing, you will have to experience this. And actually, I thought this morning before I came on this podcast, most of my life, I have actually felt that intermittent fasting and fasting was not something I was comfortable with and did not believe in. I now have completely 180 degrees. If you've listened to my other podcast on weight loss and dysfunction of the body, you will hear me constantly talk about the importance of intermittent fasting. Well, the reason intermittent fasting works is because you are triggering within the body, a type of actual balancing of the systems. That's what it is when we want homeostasis, which is balance. And when we live on one side of the equation, you tend to lose that. And that's why when you intermittent fast, it kind of re regulates a whole bunch of stuff that we need. Well guess what? I've just came up with the term intermittent air hunger, and I really believe in it. I actually do push ups at the gym now, under the kind of crazy information from a guy named Wim Hoff who practices holding his breath during exercise and has climbed many mountains and taught many people to do that, within a matter of weeks, that sometimes, they could have never done otherwise. But I will do 40 push ups on one breath. Did I start that way? No. But learning how to be comfortable with air hunger is a part of learning how to be optimally healthy.
Brian Strickland 17:37 What about lung capacity? Do they make any claims about you know, does this increase your lung capacity at all? Can you hold your breath for longer is useful for people that are divers and things like that?
Ed Jones 17:48 If you only do Buteyko, I don't really feel it's going to Super improve your capacity to hold the breath. But if you don't do Buteyko breathing, you're going to compromise any ability that you could build it in the gym or with your own practice. I mean, on the website breathing center, calm and you know, it's way overboard probably. But when you go through the list of what Dr. Buteyko says, it can be reversed by this method. I mean all kinds of allergies, asthma, sinus enlarged adenoids, even down to things like hives and and now here's one is interesting hemorrhoids. Hmm. That would I can't really get the connection there. But Dr. Buteyko said it would. Hypotension hypertension, heart rhythm disorders. hypothyroid, hypothyroidism, I'm only reading I'm down to 46 on this page, even here, he goes to 80 on this page, glaucoma. Then on the next page, he starts a whole new series of dizziness, fatigue, memory loss, tinnitus, short temper Attention Deficit hearing loss. Well, you know what, we know that oxygen and air is critical to every function of this body. And if we are imbalanced in that, just like you will with nutrition or sleep or stress, then the body is going to try to accommodate it. But it does it in ways that is only about surviving not about being optimally healthy. So here we are talking about another piece in the toolkit of how you can without spending any money, learn something that can be incredibly incredibly valuable into your life.
Brian Strickland 19:29 I'd be really curious cuz I mean, where we live in Chattanooga, and seasonal allergies are ridiculous here. All the pollen in the spring. I mean, it just settles in the valley and it doesn't leave. And so like my nose is stuffy for months on end, it seems. So I'd be really curious to see how this works with nasal congestion and if it can actually clear the sinuses as well.
Ed Jones 19:52 I truly believe it can improve them. However, I will go back to the same thing. In fact, I was in Atlanta yesterday and I had a great conversation. With a physician at a place called progressive medical, and he's all into the functional medicine, he talked about this allergy thing again, what happens is when you have leaky gut, then this is what makes histamine and when you have histamine, then you have symptoms. So the fix is not to try to get rid of the histamine. It is tried to fix the guts, so you don't have the overreaction to his domains. But I want to encourage everyone to go to the website that I mentioned, which was breathingcenter.com, and they have some program programs on there. You can do online, but you don't have to spend any money. Get some books on Buteyko breathing. And can you spell Buteyko? For me, Brian, do you have it in front of you because it is where it is spelling on earth. You'll never find it if you just try to Google it.
Brian Strickland 20:49 So its Buteyko.
Ed Jones 20:54 Yes, Buteyko breathing method. Well, we're gonna cut a little short today, but that was a piece of information that is a jewel. So enjoy editing add to your toolbox. And remember, if a doctor cannot do good, he must be kept from doing harm Hippocrates said long ago.
Brian Strickland 21:16 Thanks for listening to the holistic navigator podcast. For more information, previous episodes and other resources, visit www dot the holistic navigator.com. The information on this podcast and the topics discussed have not been evaluated by the FDA or anyone of the medical profession and is not aimed to replace any advice you may receive from your medical practitioner. The holistic navigator assumes no responsibility or liability whatsoever on the behalf of any purchaser or reader of these materials. The holistic navigators not a doctor, nor does he claim to be please consult your physician before beginning any health regimen.