Over-breathing and Its Effect on Your Health

by admin | Jul 6, 2022 | Reduced Breathing/ Normalised breathing

Updated 22 June 2023

The Common Misconception about Breathing

We all know that Oxygen (O2) is vital for life and breathing brings O2 into and expels carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the body, hence the misconception is that the more we breathe, the more benefits we will get, and CO2 is a waste gas that must be removed.

However, like over-drinking for water and over-eating for food, medical science and facts both have long proven that over-breathing (hyperventilation) is harmful to health. Also, contrary to many people’s beliefs, CO2 is not a simple waste from breathing, it actually plays an essential role in the body’s oxygenation and metabolic processes, and you will be amazed at the benefits to your health once your breathing brings the CO2 to your body to a right level, or at the damages to your health when the CO2 level is abnormal.

The Breathing Mechanics

Breathing brings air to our lungs, where at sea level the air contains 21% O2. When air is inhaled into the lung, O2 diffuses from the alveoli into the blood, and the CO2 diffuses from the blood to the alveoli in the lungs before being exhaled.

Once in the bloodstream, most of the O2 combines with hemoglobin in the red blood cells. Normal breathing results in O2 saturation in the blood from 96-98%. When the arterial blood arrives at the tissues, some O2 is released from the hemoglobin, allowing the tissues to get energy from the chemical reaction between O2 and carbohydrates and fats, and in the process, CO2 is released back to the blood before being exhaled from the lungs.

Why Over Breathing is Harmful to Health

As mentioned above, in normal breathing, the blood can be easily saturated with O2 up to 98%. So even if you breathe extraordinarily hard, the increase in O2 is limited to only 1-2%. This is insignificant; however, over-breathing will expel excessive CO2 out of the blood, which will hinder O2 to get released from the hemoglobin. According to Bohr Effect, when CO2 is low, O2 – hemoglobin binding affinity will increase, causing less O2 release to tissues and muscles. Organs like the brain, heart, liver, and kidney will lack O2 even though the blood is saturated with O2.

You could easily try breathing fast and deep continuously, and you will soon feel dizzy, a symptom of lacking O2 in the brain cells, and you may even pass out if you do this for too long!

In addition to causing oxygen starvation in the organs and tissues, a CO2 deficiency also causes spasms in the smooth muscles of the bronchi, cerebral and circulatory vessels, intestines, and other organs, further harming the body.

Research shows that a large portion of modern people has chronic over-breathing, which is at least in part responsible for a range of chronic diseases, such as asthma, high blood pressure, heart diseases, allergies, mental disorders, diabetes, cancer, etc. In short, chronic over-breathing causes a chronic starvation of O2 in tissues and cells, thus making people sick over time.

How to Prevent Over Breathing

The word ‘over-breathing’ literally is a relative comparison over ‘normal’ breathing, where ‘normal’ here refers to the right amount of breathing required by the metabolic rate at a given time for a person. This means that different metabolic rates require a different amount of breathing to be optimal for body oxygenation. However, the difficulty is that it is not straightforward to know the exact amount for each metabolic situation which could vary from time to time and from person to person.

Fortunately, the human body is quite tolerant, and with a certain level of reduced breathing towards normal breathing, over-breathing can be alleviated, and good body oxygenation can be achieved. To achieve it, there are many breathing methods and exercises available that may be applied to train and improve our breathing, where some of them were passed on from ancient times, and some are from modern-time discoveries and development. Here is a list of common breathing methods:

• Pursed lip breathing
• Nose breathing
• Diaphragmatic breathing
• Mindful breathing
• Yogic breathing
• Buteyko breathing method
• Pranayama breathing method
• Wim Hof breathing method

Buteyko Breathing Method is a science-based systematic breathing method to practice reduced breathing and achieve normal breathing, which is well suited to prevent over-breathing and a large number of associated chronic diseases. Hundreds of thousands of severe asthmatics have been cured by practicing this Method after the steroid-based inhalers failed them, which demonstrates the effectiveness and clinical significance of the Method.

Inspired by Buteyko Breathing, Aimwell’s AYO Breathing Trainer is designed as a tool to help train for diaphragmatic breathing via the nose and provide breathing measurement and diagnostics for accurately performing the Buteyko reduced breathing. In particular, AYO Breathing Trainer can accurately measure breathing volume, which is the fundamental metric and reference for reduced breathing but, unfortunately, has been missing since Buteyko Breathing became a breathing normalization practice. Thus, the availability of AYO Breathing Trainer removes all the guesses and doubts in relation to how much air to reduce while practicing reduced breathing, which is a game-changer for effectively practicing Buteyko Breathing and will benefit more people’s health and well-being.

Asthmatics – Using AYO BT for High Intensity Interval Training

by admin | Jun 14, 2022 | Uncategorized

What is High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)?

HIIT involves short bursts of intense exercise separated from low-intensity recovery periods. The actual exercise involved varies but commonly includes sprinting, cycling, rowing, rope jumping, resistance exercises, etc., with 10 – 30 minutes in duration.

HIIT typically requires 80% to 100% of your maximum effort, during which the heart rate and breathing rate are pushed to a high level.

breathing trainer for asthmatics - High Intensity Interval Training

The Issue to Asthmatics

While HIIT could offer a range of training and health benefits, it does put on higher pressure to the body, in particular, your heart, muscles and breathing. For asthmatics, elevated breathing could trigger Exercise-induced Asthma or Bronchoconstriction (EIB). Statistics show that, up to 90% of people with asthma have EIB.

Typical triggers for asthmatics include:
• Cold air
• Dry air
• Over-breathing

Although naturally, HIIT demands a high level of breathing, most asthmatics tend to over-breathe, which puts an extra burden on their airways, which are more sensitive to cold and dry air than normal airways.
One of the key reasons for over-breathing is the body’s high sensitivity to CO2 in the lung and blood, a characteristic of most asthmatics.

AYO BT – A Tool to Prevent EIB Naturally

AYO BT addresses the above three triggers all-in-one by design, which doesn’t require prescribed inhalers.

It effectively extends the airway, which warms and moistens the inhaled air.
It reduces air intake, thus helping prevent over-breathing.
It helps train the body to be less sensitive to CO2, reducing the urge to breathe heavily during HIIT, thus reducing over-breathing right at the root.

Breathing Trainer for Asthmatics – How to Use AYO BT for HIIT?

Condition the breathing before HIIT
• Adjust the air intake Dial to Levels 2 – 4.
• Wear the AYO BT and do a warm-up jog for 10 – 15 minutes.

During HIIT
• Adjust the air intake Dial to level 6 or higher.
• Wear AYO BT throughout the HIIT.

Cooling down after HIIT
• Adjust the air intake Dial to levels 2 – 4.
• Wear AYO BT for a 5 – 10 minute cool-down jog.
• Reduce breathing with AYO BT right after the HIIT session allowing quick recovery from the workouts while preventing EIB effectively.

Management for Exercise induced Asthma

by admin | Nov 21, 2021 | Uncategorized

What Is Exercise-Induced Asthma?

If you are an asthmatic and also a sports person, especially often participating in high-intensity exercise, you may be aware or even suffer from exercise-induced asthma.

Exercise-induced asthma is more accurately called Exercise-Induced Bronchoconstriction (EIB), and it is a temporary narrowing of the lower airways in the lungs triggered by high exertion exercise, where the small airways in the lungs contract, become red, swollen, and may become blocked with mucus. This narrows the airways and makes it difficult to breathe. It causes shortness of breath, wheezing, coughing, and other symptoms during or after exercise.

Statistics show that up to 90% of people with asthma have EIB.

Why Does Exercise Trigger Asthma?

The two most common EIB triggers include:

Cold air
Dry air

Our airways are naturally accustomed to warm and moist air. At rest, we normally breathe gently via the nose in low tidal volume and slow breath rate typically around 500ml and 12 breaths per minute respectively. When cold and dry air passes the upper airways through the nose, the air gets warmed and moisturised before travelling to the lower airways and lungs where airways are narrower and more sensitive to cold and dry air.

Thus normally when ventilation is low, the upper airways work well as an air conditioner to ensure the lower airways are not experienced with cold and dry air.

However, when we do high-intensity exercise, we often breathe more quickly via the mouth, where tidal volume increases dramatically such as to 2.0 litres or more, and the breath rate can go up to 40 breaths per minute or more. The minute ventilation at high-intensity exercise can be 15 times or more than that at rest. At such a ventilation volume with cold and dry air, the upper airways simply cannot cope, leading to the cold and dry air reaching the lower airways and lungs, causing inflammation and contraction of the small airways making them narrower or even blocked. When the situation is severe enough, it triggers asthma attacks.

How to prevent EIB?

Most people with EIB continue to exercise and remain active by treating the symptoms with asthma inhalers, which are typically steroid-based prescribed medicines. All medicines can have some side effects. Common side effects of asthma medicines include:

A faster heartbeat
A hoarse voice
A sore throat
fungal infections of the throat

Most asthma inhalers work as an anti-inflammatory drug, and this is a passive strategy in that, it mitigates the effects caused by the cold and dry air but does not address the source of the issue directly.

The good news is, that there may be ways to prevent EIB at the source without using asthma inhalers. AYO BT is one of them when used correctly.

AYO BT mask assembly consists of a silicone cushion that essentially functions as a barrier and buffer that prevents cold air from entering the airway directly and at the same time preserves a fair amount of warmth and moisture from every breath. The respirator is so designed that, during inhalation, air enters from the left end of the mask, then travels through the inlet air channel and the inhalation valve before entering the nose or mouth; during exhalation, air travels via the outlet air channel before the exiting the respirator via the exhalation valve.

The silicone cushion, the inlet air channel, the inhalation valve, the outlet air channel, and the exhalation valve together form a temperature and moisture buffer that effectively warms and moistens the cold and dry air entering the mask, which virtually extends our natural airway, and at the same time retain the warmth and moisture of each breath from losing completely.

In addition to the air barrier and buffer function of AYO BT, the respirator is designed to reduce the air inlet and promote nose breathing even in high exertion, thus, it helps further enhance its effectiveness in preventing EIB.

Furthermore, AYO BT is also an effective tool to train for diaphragmatic breathing. Diaphragmatic breathing is proven to be the most efficient way of breathing for mankind, and by applying diaphragmatic breathing, it could reduce the amount of air you would normally breathe via chest breathing, thus further reducing the burden for the upper airway for warming and moistening the air.

In summary, AYO BT is very effective to shield you from the cold wind blowing directly to your mouth and nose, it also helps warm and moistens the air to breathe, promote nose breathing and train for diaphragmatic breathing. When used correctly, it could reduce the likelihood or severity of EIB.

Typical use cases in using AYO BT to prevent EIB:

Jogging or cycling outdoors in cold and windy winter.
High-intensity training.

There are breathing exercises available about how to use AYO BT here. on the Aimwell website.

REFERENCE:

National Asthma Council Australia. Australian Asthma Handbook, Version 2.0. Available from: http://www.asthmahandbook.org.au

Breath Conditioning with AYO BT Before Sleep

by admin | Nov 8, 2021 | Uncategorized

How well do you sleep? Most of us spend nearly 1/3 of our life in sleep. Indeed, we all need good quality sleep to rest and recharge for what we will do the next day, and sleeping well is not only important to our work but also critical to our general health. One of the key factors that may affect our sleep is how we breath conditioning during sleep. If you wake up in the morning having a blocked nose, a dry mouth, or feeling not refreshed and energised, the chances are that you over-breathed during sleep, either by mouth breathing or heavy nose breathing. Research has shown that over-breathing throughout the night will make sleeping quality poor, as over-breathing will not let our mind relax as would slow and gentle breathing. In addition, over-breathing will cause hyperventilation, resulting in chronic oxygen depletion in the tissues and organs of the body, hindering the body’s recovery work during sleep. Overbreathing could also cause snoring or even sleep apnea.

How to breathe well during sleep? There are many ways that could help us breathe better during sleep, such as not eating too full in dinner, not drinking alcohol before sleep, breathing through the nose during sleep, and meditation, just to name a few. One of the strategies is to have a good breathing habit throughout the day so that we will tend to breathe the same way while we are asleep. The rationale is that, although we can not consciously control our breathing during sleep, the way we breathe during the day will more or less influence how we breathe during sleep. To this end, there are many breathing exercises that could help us achieve a healthy breathing pattern. However, most of these exercises would require time, effort, and focus in order to gain good results. Here, we are introducing a simple yet effective way to condition your breathing just before sleep as an addition to many available exercises you might take.

breathe conditioning

How to condition your breathing for a good night of sleep with AYO BT? Similar to warm-up before doing a sports session, conditioning your breathing before sleep would help you breathe calmly and gently, it would also make your mind more relaxed, and as a result help make your breathing calm and gentle during sleep when you breathe involuntarily. AYO BT is a great tool to help you condition your breathing before sleep. It works by reducing the air inlet so that you can only feel comfortable if you breathe through your nose and breathe slowly.

A typical procedure is like this:

30 – 45 minutes before sleep, wear AYO BT for sleep conditioning.
Adjust the BTi inlet toward a low setting. For example, for advanced nose breathers, Select Setting 0 to 1, for novice nose breathers, select setting 2 – 3.
Then wear the AYO BT for 15 to 30 minutes.
You could still do your normal things at that time of the evening, as wearing AYO BT does not require you to focus on your breathing like in medication, hence it would not affect your other routines making it very manageable timewise.
Keep relaxed while wearing ATO BT, remember this is the winding down phase of the day, the moment you deserve to enjoy after a full day of activities. If anything is left to be done, tomorrow is another day.
When time is up, it is also the time to go to bed and try to keep the same breathing as you did a moment ago with AYO BT.
Now enjoy your good night of sleep!

Diaphragmatic Breathing vs Chest Breathing

by admin | Sep 27, 2021 | Diaphragmatic Breathing

Updated June 23, 2023

Do you want to feel energetic and improve your general health? Take a moment to focus on your breathing. Do you breathe through your mouth or nose? Do you feel gasping for air or calm and comfortable?

How we breathe can make a profound difference to us, no matter whether we are ordinary people, elite athletes, or asthmatics. We humans can live without food for 3 weeks, without water for 3 days, but without breathing we can hardly pass for 3 minutes.

Yet, most of us take breathing for granted and don’t pay much attention to how we breathe. It turns out that the breath from many of us is normally fast and shallow, while for some is gentle and effortless, and these different ways of breathing could make a dramatic impact on your health and well-being.

On the in-breath, push your diaphragm down and your belly out; on the out-breath, pull your diaphragm up and your belly in.
(Image by OpenStax College)

Breathing mechanics

In a breathing cycle, the lungs can be expanded and contracted in two ways. One is by lengthening and shortening the chest cavity (up and down) and the other is by increasing and decreasing the chest diameter (front and back).

The first way is mainly performed by the diaphragm which is located between the chest cavity and the abdomen. The diaphragm is the primary breathing muscle that is designed to perform the majority of the breath work. It is a dome-shaped large sheet of muscle that moves down to draw air during inhalation and moves up to expel air during exhalation in a fashion like a diaphragm pump. Breathing in this way is called diaphragmatic breathing, during which the abdomen moves in and out while the chest is hardly moving. Diaphragmatic breathing is often combined with nose breathing. Because diaphragmatic breathing draws air deep into the lungs, it is also called Deep Breathing, where the word ‘Deep’ is meant to indicate deep into the lungs and not necessarily big in volume.

The second way is through the chest / intercostal muscles in the chest wall between the ribs, where the intercostal muscles contract to draw air in and relax to expel air out. Breathing in this way is called chest breathing, during which the chest moves in and out. Chest breathing is often combined with mouth breathing. Because chest breathing does not draw air deep into the lungs, it is also called Shallow Breathing, and it normally draws more air than your metabolic needs.

breathing mechanism, diaphragmatic breathing

Comparison between Diaphragmatic and Chest Breathing

Among many, one of the key advantages of diaphragmatic breathing over chest breathing is its much higher efficiency for oxygen intake. The following summarizes the rationale:

- The diaphragm draws air passing the bottom of the lungs, allowing air to make full contact with the lower part of the lungs, whereas, in chest breathing, the air hardly passes down to the lower parts of the lungs, which in most situations contains more blood due to gravity. Therefore, for the same volume of air, more oxygen can be diffused to the blood via the lungs when the diaphragm is engaged.
- Diaphragm is one large piece of thin muscle, and once worked in sync with the abdomen muscles, can sustain long-lasting powerful breathing than the chest muscles. The pumping movement of the diaphragm is a much better mechanics than the intercostal muscles lifting the chest ribs as far as air moving is concerned.
- The diaphragm moves slower and draws less air compared with chest breathing which could draw a larger amount of air quickly, making it easily cause hyperventilation or over-breathing, which is harmful to health.
- Due to the dead space in the airway between the nose and the lungs, when inhaling the same total amount of air in a minute from the nose, more air will be reached the lungs with slower but deeper diaphragmatic breathing than faster and shallow chest breathing.
- Another very important factor that most of us are not aware of is the fact that fast and shallow chest breathing tends to get rid of too much CO2 in the lungs and in the blood, where medical science has proven that when the CO2 level is too low in the lungs, it would create the condition to cause asthma; and when it is too low in the blood, it will limit the oxygen to get released from haemoglobins when the blood traveling to the brain, organs, and tissues throughout the body. So, if you are asthmatic, chest breathing is more likely to trigger asthma than diaphragmatic breathing; and if you are doing sports, prolonged chest breathing will get you fatigued earlier than diaphragmatic breathing due to less oxygen released to tissues and muscles.

Other than being an efficient way to breathe, diaphragmatic breathing also has other health benefits, such as:

- Makes you calm and relaxed.
- Lower your heart rate.
- Help lower your blood pressure.
- Help maintain a good posture and core stability.
- Help achieve effective lymphatic drainage for improving the immune system.

Having said all the advantages of diaphragmatic breathing, chest breathing is here for a reason. Typically, we may breathe through the chest in situations and events that require a sudden and fast increase in oxygen intake, such as in certain sports requiring a shot burst of breathing, or in certain ‘Fight and Flight’ situations.

Other than these fewer common situations, diaphragmatic breathing via the nose has been proven to be the most efficient and healthiest way in which humans should breathe most of the time. Proper diaphragmatic breathing will make you feel energetic, and it could make profound benefits for your general health as opposed to chest breathing via the mouth, which is harmful to health if breathing like that most of the time. However, in the modern day, most of us more or less do chest breathing, and it is a habit that has been with us for a long time. There are many breathing exercises that could be used for practicing diaphragmatic breathing via the nose.

Understandably, for many, it would require significant time and effort to make diaphragmatic breathing via the nose a new habit. Apart from being persistent, certain breathing devices could help practice and master the technique easier and quicker. Aimwell AYO BT Breathing Trainer and Breathing Exerciser is one of these devices on offer, which is designed to train you to breathe with the diaphragmatic via the nose naturally – the first step you must take to gain better health.