Breathing Is The Essence of Life

To find out more about the Oxygen Advantage®, visit: http://oxygenadvantage.com/

Since we inhale 20-25,000 times in a single day, we would benefit greatly if we were to establish a breathing pattern that involved maximum efficiency with minimum effort.

How We Breathe is Often Overlooked

We spend an enormous amount of money and time on the quest for improving our health, our looks, our weight, our fitness, our sleep, and our energy but the fact is, we already have the secret key to better health, better looks, better sleep, more energy, reduced stress, and a fitter body — our breathing. It’s free and we have it with us 24/7, and the results are a happier, healthier, longer, younger and more satisfying life.

Many people take breathing for granted and pay very little attention to it.

We can manage without food for weeks, without water for days, but only a few minutes without air. The fact that in a single day we inhale as much as 10-20 kilos of air, in comparison to the 1-2 kilos of food we eat, or that a few minutes of oxygen deprivation is enough to destroy the brain’s ability to process incoming information forever, makes it apparent why good breathing habits are so important to our health.

The problem is that we are often not aware of the fact that we have an impaired breathing habit or indeed, how to improve it.

We may even have started to improve the way we breathe but haven’t fully realized the great importance proper breathing has for our health and wellbeing. In today’s busy world, the knowledge of 1) what is a good breathing habit and 2) how to achieve it, is more important than ever since all the stimuli we are exposed to affect our breathing patterns negatively.

Improving fitness and health depends on the release of oxygen to your muscles, organs, and tissues. Increased oxygenation is not only healthy; it also enables greater exercise intensity with reduced breathlessness. In short, you’ll be able to discover better health and fitness as well as better performance.

The Oxygen Advantage Program Benefits

• Reduce Breathlessness
• Improve Sleep Quality
• Improve Blood Circulation
• Improve Oxygen delivery to cells
• Faster recovery after exercise
• Improve Concentration
• Calm the Mind
• Improve Heart Rate Variability
• Reduce Lactic Acid and Fatigue
• Improve Respiratory Muscle Strength
• Significantly reduce exercise-induced Bronchoconstriction
• Improve aerobic and anaerobic capacity
• Increase VO2 Max and Running Economy

Oxygen Advantage training can help in treating:

• Asthma and respiratory issues, including post-COVID-19 care
• Hormone fluctuations in women (PMS, pregnancy, and menopause)
• Diabetes
• Epilepsy
• Sleep Disorders (sleep apnea, snoring, and insomnia)
• Panic disorder, anxiety, and a racing mind
• Weight Loss/Management

Reduce Asthma Symptoms By 50% In 2 Weeks

The word asthma derives from Greek and means “to pant.” While asthma has been around for a very long time, it affects more people today than ever before.

Exercise-induced asthma affects up to 20 percent of the general population and up to 50 percent of certain athlete populations. 50 years ago, our living and working situations were quite different, and asthma rates were significantly lower. During that time, we ate more natural foods, had less competitive stress, our houses were drafty, and most occupations involved physical labor. Back then, our lifestyle was conducive to a more normal breathing volume, and, as a result, asthma was far less common.

Normal breathing volume for a healthy adult is generally agreed to be 4 to 6 liters of air per minute, but adults with asthma demonstrate a resting breathing volume of 10 to 15 liters per minute, two to three times more than required.

Imagine the effect on the respiratory system when an individual breathes twice to three times too heavily all day, every day. Normal breathing during rest involves regular, silent, abdominal breaths drawn in and out through the nose. People with asthma, on the other hand, display habitual mouth breathing with regular sighing, sniffing, and visible movements from the upper chest. As asthma becomes more severe, breathing volume increases.

The first step to reducing asthma is to reduce excessive breathing habits.

Asthma symptoms and the need for asthma medication are significantly reduced following the employment of reduced breathing exercises.

Your success in addressing asthma will be directly related to your success in addressing your breathing.

You don’t have to be a professional athlete in need of a game-changing edge to want to improve your fitness.

Whether you are a weekend warrior running the occasional 10K, the amateur golfer looking for longer distance and better concentration, or you’re just trying to get off the couch, the way you breathe has the power to transform everything you thought you knew about your body, your health, and your performance.

Achieve More With Less Effort

Overall fitness and performance are usually limited by the lungs — not by the legs, the arms, or even the mind. The feeling of breathlessness often dictates our intensity level far more than muscle fatigue. Optimal and efficient breathing is the key to enjoying and improving physical exercise.

To reap the most benefit from your physical training, you need to train your body to do more with less. To do this, you will need to reduce your air intake. Incorporating this concept into your training will result in improved breathing economy and an increase in your athletic performance, along with reduced breathlessness and lactic acid during competition. More important, it will no longer be necessary to push your body beyond its limits, reducing your risk of injury, cardiovascular and respiratory problems, and other health concerns. Nasal breathing during physical training ensures that you do not push yourself beyond what your body is capable of doing.

Gaining the Edge — Naturally

With such a narrow margin for success, it is essential for athletes and coaches to look for new ways to attain a competitive edge. Since oxygen is the fuel for working muscles, anything that increases body oxygenation above normal levels would be of great benefit to an athlete’s performance, and because oxygen is a natural and limitless resource, it is the ideal tool for boosting performance legally.

One way of tapping into your own natural resources is to purposefully subject the body to reduced oxygen intake for a short period of time. When the human body is exposed to situations in which there are reduced oxygen levels — such as high altitude, or by holding the breath — adaptations take place that force the body to increase oxygenation of the blood. Even if you are not a competitive athlete, using these techniques will allow you to get the most out of your workout and accelerate whatever fitness program you undertake. Who doesn’t want to do more with less?

Simulating High-Altitude and High-Intensity Training

High-Altitude training is obviously more feasible for people living in certain locations. Likewise, High-Intensity training may not be practical for some people, as it involves maximum physical effort and respiration until exhaustion.

A practical alternative available to everyone, regardless of location and fitness level, is to supplement their regular training with breath-hold training. Breath-holding techniques allow us to simulate many of the positive benefits of high-altitude and high-intensity training, such as:

• The release of red blood cells from the spleen, improving aerobic performance
• The production of natural EPO
• A higher tolerance to carbon dioxide
• Reduced stress and fatigue on the working muscles
• Improved psychological preparedness
• Improved recovery time
• Reduced lactic acid
• The ability to maintain fitness during rest or injury
• Maintenance of these benefits without the need to travel to high altitudes

The Biggest Obstacle To Your Health and Fitness

Chronic Overbreathing is so rarely talked about and yet we often breathe two to three times more air than required without knowing it. Once the pattern of overbreathing is established, it is often maintained by an occasional deep breath or sigh. When such a habit becomes ingrained both mentally and physically, you will breathe in excess of what is required every minute, every hour, and every day. It doesn’t just happen while we’re conscious; many people sleep with their mouth open, and whether they realize it or not, this drags down their physical and mental energy.

Modern living gradually increases the amount of air we breathe, and while getting more oxygen might seem like a good idea, it is in fact light breathing that is a testament to good health and fitness. To help determine if you are overbreathing, see how many of these questions you answer “yes” to:

• Do you sometimes breathe through your mouth as you go about your daily activities?
• Do you breathe through your mouth during sleep? (If you are not sure, do you wake up with a dry mouth in the morning?)
• Do you snore or hold your breath during sleep?
• Can you visibly notice your breathing during rest?
• When you observe your breathing, do you see more movements from the chest than from the abdomen?
• Do you regularly sigh throughout the day?
• Do you sometimes hear your breathing during rest?
• Do you experience symptoms resulting from habitual over-breathing, such as nasal congestion, tightening of the airways, fatigue, dizziness, or light-headedness?

Answering “yes” to some or all of these questions above suggests the tendency to overbreathe.

Just as we have an optimal quantity of water and food to consume each day, we also have an optimal quantity of air to breathe. And just as eating too much can be damaging to our health, so can overbreathing.

How you breathe in everyday life determines how you breathe during physical exercise.

If our breathing is off during rest, it would be unreasonable to expect it to automatically correct itself during physical exercise. Overbreathing causes the narrowing of airways, limiting your body’s ability to oxygenate, and the constriction of blood vessels, leading to reduced blood flow to the heart and other organs and muscles. These systemic impacts affect your health profoundly, whether you’re a professional athlete or your main exercise is walking up the stairs of your house.

It doesn’t matter how strong the rest of your body is if your lungs let you down. As we all know, our lungs give out long before our arms and legs.

David Jarrell

• Certified OA Functional Breathing Instructor
• Certified OA Advanced Breathing Instructor
• Certified OA Breathing for Yoga Instructor
• RYT-278 Yoga Instructor

Phone: 941-893-7514
Address: 5454 Lena Road, Suite 106 Bradenton, FL 34211

To find out more about the Oxygen Advantage®, visit: http://oxygenadvantage.com/