How Irregular and Ineffective Breathing Creates Problems with Low O2 Content in Body Cells (Exact Mechanism)

Most people believe that whatever the way they breathe (faster and/or deeper, or irregular), their body oxygen content will not be affected. Medical research suggests that just one sigh or a few cough are sufficient to cause measurable changes in brain oxygen content. What is wrong with breathing more or irregular?

For both these types of breath (irregular and ineffective breathing patterns), individuals breathe a great deal more as compared to the physiological and medical norm. The norm is 6 L of air in one min at rest. This is a minuscule volume of air. As a point of fact, it is so tiny that healthy people usually do not discern their respiration at all.

Precisely what is faulty in case of over-breathing (hyperventilation) or ineffective breathing pattern? Firstly, normal breathing delivers virtually maximum oxygen amount to the arterial blood (around 97-98 per cent). If we breathe more, we decrease oxygen pressure in the arterial blood. Why? It is really simple to check, that big and deep breathing is performed using the chest or costal muscles. Just look around and observe people with chronic diseases and breathing problems. Their lowest parts of the lungs do not obtain new air supply with highest oxygen content. Consequently, oxygenation of the arterial blood becomes smaller than the norm.

Next thing is, that all of us diminish amount of CO2 or carbon dioxide in the arterial blood. This substance is a vasodilator and is essential for delivery of oxygen to vital organs (the Bohr effect). Truly, a few hundreds of recent research studies have found that hyperventilation REDUCES cells oxygenation. Thus, the ineffective respiration pattern results in cells hypoxia or lack of oxygen. Nevertheless, development of virtually all chronic diseases, such as asthma, CFS, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, mental problems, epilepsy, insomnia, migraine and many others is based on hypoxia.

Same conclusions are correct for irregular respiratory patterns. The breathing problem is usually even worse. Disordered respiration pattern additionally lowers blood oxygenation.

If you want to test your respiration pattern and body oxygenation, try the next trial.

Check your Control Pause
Immediately following your automatic exhale, pinch your nostrils with fingers and measure duration of your stress-free breath hold. Remember that one’s breath pattern following this experiment must always be similar to their breath pattern prior to the test: no discomfort in the least after the test is done.

This experiment quantifies two respiratory values at the same time. First, the result indicates tissues oxygen content in seconds. Moreover, it measures how large and deep the individual respiratory pattern is.

When the respiratory pattern is normal (in accordance with medical textbooks), the person should be able to hold his breath hold for as long as 40 sec. If the person has only about 20-25 seconds (as for most normal subjects these days), this person breathes nearly twice the clinical norm.

Pertaining to men and women with chronic diseases, their oxygen content in tissues is even less: less than 15 s since these people breathe too heavy (too fast and too deep at the same time). Indeed, if you have sick friends and relatives, you may notice that when they are panting (or have noisy breathing during sleep), their health state is worse. Over 90% of the terminally sick people die in conditions of severe hyperventilation, while their body oxygen level gradually approaches zero: 5, 4, 3, 2, and only 1 s of body oxygen just before the death.

This problem of low body oxygen level can be solved with changing one's automatic breathing pattern: the person should learn how to breathe slower and easier (less) using tested therapies, for example, the Buteyko breathing technique, Frolov breathing device, or Amazing DIY breathing device.