The Oxygen Advantage program is based on the idea that we can improve the quality of our lives by optimizing our natural breathing habits through a series of simple and easy-to-implement exercises. The breathing exercises can be integrated into one’s daily routine without the need for a substantial time commitment. Depending on one’s health goals, this could be as little as 15-20 minutes per day. But it is important to bear in mind that consistency of practice is important to maintain benefits.
The focus of the Oxygen Advantage exercises is on light, slow, and deep breathing, which assists the body by allowing us to tap into and harness our innate internal intelligence. Another component consists of consciously and temporarily changing the blood chemistry through specific breathing exercises and breath holds. The breathing techniques used in the Oxygen Advantage program help to optimize our physiological functions by targeting the biochemistry and biomechanics of the body.
Functional Breathing
Our lifestyles, eating habits, and environmental factors have tended to shift our breathing patterns away from the natural rhythms and mechanisms which are optimal for our bodies. That is, our breathing has tended to become less than optimally functional and in some cases dysfunctional. The exercises provided here are intended to restore functional breathing. They remind us of how we are meant to breathe.
What is functional breathing? To some extent, it depends on the individual and their activity level But in general, it refers to optimal respiration resulting in an efficient exchange of oxygen (O2) and carbon dioxide (CO2) between the body and the environment. Functional breathing consists of three fundamental modalities united by one overarching principle. The three modalities are
- Biochemistry
- Biomechanics
- Cadence
With the uniting principle being
- Nasal Breathing
The concept of functional breathing may sound strange to some. We just breathe, right? We have been doing it all of our lives. But our lives today are much different than they were when our physiology evolved to allow efficient and effective breathing and respiration. That is our environment and lifestyles have affected how we breathe but our physiology is still optimized to how we used to live and breathe. The principles and practices presented here help to promote or restore our functional breathing by reminding ourselves of how we originally intended to breathe and training ourselves in how to do it.
By aligning our breathing style with our physiology, we are able to better tap into the innate internal intelligence of our bodies and the finely tuned process that have evolved to maintain balance in our lives. Some of the many benefits of functional breathing are provided in the table below (taken from The Breathing Cure by Patrick McKeown).
| Breathe Light(Biochemistry) | Breathe Slow(Cadence) | Breathe Deep(Biomechanics) |
| Reduces breathlessness | Stimulates the vagus nerve | Enables slow breathing |
| Regulates breathing patterns | Improves alveolar ventilation | Improves lung volume |
| Normalizes ventilation | Stimulates the baroreceptors | Increases oxygen uptake in the blood |
| Enables slow breathing | Improves Heart Rate Variability (HRV) | Increases ventilation perfusion |
| Reduces negative pressure in the upper airways during sleep | Improves Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA) | Improves spinal stabilization |
| Improves blood circulation | Optimizes parasympathetic -sympathetic balance | Improves functional movement |
| Improves oxygen delivery to the cells | Helps restore functioning of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) | Increases lymphatic drainage |
| Harnesses higher concentration of nitric oxide | Reduces negative pressure in the upper airways during sleep | Dilates the throat during sleep (reduces risk of sleep apnea) |
| Achieves a calmer mind | Achieves a calmer mind | Achieves a calmer mind |
Breathing-Induced Stress (Hormesis):
Simulation of Altitude Training
Life is stressful enough. Why would we want to induce additional stress? It is a fair question, but before jumping in to answer it, we should know that there are different types of stress. When we think about stress in the context of our busy lives, the stress that makes us feel overwhelmed, burned out, and in survival mode, that is what is referred to as distress. According to the American Institute of Stress website (https://www.stress.org/) “People have very different ideas with respect to their definition of stress. Probably the most common is, ‘physical, mental, or emotional strain or tension.’ Another popular definition of stress is, ‘a condition or feeling experienced when a person perceives that demands exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilize.’” This implies that stress is what we make of it.
Regardless of how we define stress, it must be recognized that it impacts us mentally, emotionally, and physically. Examples of the physical impacts of distress include an accelerated heart rate, a more rapid breathing pattern, a rise in blood pressure, increased muscular tension, and elevated levels of blood sugar. Now consider how you feel when you achieve something spectacular, experience a sense of exhilaration, or receive a special gift or treat? If you were to monitor your body, you would find that your physiological responses are largely the same as for distress! To distinguish between the two, Hans Selye coined the term eustress. Eustress has a positive impact on the body, but the physical sensations are similar to those for distress, which negatively impacts us. Distress tends to overwhelm while eustress energizes. As Hans Selye states, “It’s not the stress that kills us, it is our reaction to it.”
There is still another form of stress called hormetic stress or hormesis. Hormetic stress is characterized by intentional and controlled stressors that we expose ourselves to in order to trigger healthy, adaptive responses in our minds and bodies. That is, we are using stress to produce a desirable outcome. One example of hormetic stress is physical exercise. When exercising, we are pushing the body beyond homeostasis as a means of improving our fitness. Homeostasis refers to a state of balance or harmony that is brought about through self-regulating processes. When exercising, we are stressing the body and as a result: our muscles become stronger; our bodies become more flexible; and our capacity for aerobic and anaerobic metabolism improves. Other examples of hormetic stress include intermittent fasting, cold therapy, and high intensity intermittent training. Each of these elicit healthy and beneficial adaptations in the body and help us to become more resilient to change.
We can also use breathing as a form of hormetic stress. Through conscious control of the breath, we can move our bodies out of homeostasis, which triggers physiological effects to bring us back into balance. For example, by overbreathing we cause our blood pH to increase (become more alkaline). By holding the breath, the pH of our blood decreases (becomes more acidic). In each case, the body activates buffering mechanisms to bring the blood pH back to its nominal value of about 7.4. When we minimize our breathing or hold our breath, the level of carbon dioxide in our blood increases, which is detected by our chemoreceptors. For most people, the sensitivity of our chemoreceptors to carbon dioxide is set too high. This is a result of lifestyle, diet, and other factors. When the chemoreceptors are too sensitive to carbon dioxide we have a tendency to feel a need to breathe more, although we have plenty of oxygen and only a moderate amount of carbon dioxide in our blood. That is, we become habitual overbreathers. By introducing hormetic stress, we can train the chemoreceptors to be less sensitive to carbon dioxide and help restore our breathing to its natural state. This is only one of several positive effects that breathing-induced stress can have on our bodies.
We have only briefly touched upon the remarkably and marvelously complex system of checks and balances active in our bodies to regulate homeostasis. A fuller and more complete treatment goes beyond the scope of this document. The exercises provided below have been carefully designed to stress the body on several physiological fronts while reducing the risk of injury.