The Importance of CO2 in the Body

We all know that when we breathe, we breathe in O2, and breathe out CO2. So common perception of CO2 is that it is a waste gas and must be removed from the body.

However, the truth is that CO2 plays a critical role in our life, and when its level is too low in the lungs, blood, and tissue cells, our body simply can not function properly. Here is a summary of some of the key effects due to low CO2 in the body:

• It shifts pH value in the blood and tissue cells, altering the normal metabolic processes.
• It causes spasms and tension in the smooth muscles of the bronchi, cerebral and circulatory vessels, and other organs, causing asthma, high blood pressure, heart diseases, and other chronic diseases.
• It limits oxygen in the blood from releasing to reach the brain, heart and other vital organs and tissues, causing them chronic oxygen starvation thus affecting their normal functions.
• It affects stable transmission of electrical signals between never cells while exciting them constantly, affecting logic, sense, reason, wisdom, mood, memory, concentration, etc., causing mental and sleep disorders.

Therefore, the CO2 level in the body can be normally used to indicate how healthy the body is.

The Relationship between Control Pause and CO2 level in the Body

In the 1960s, Dr. Buteyko, the physician who created the science-based Buteyko Breathing, discovered and established the relationship between CO2 level in alveoli and the Control Pause (CP) – a specially defined breath-hold measurement by Dr. Buteyko himself. Such a relationship was later defined as a patented formula as below:
aCO2% = 3.5% + 0.05 * CP, where aCO2% is the CO2 concentration in the alveolar, CP is the Control Pause in seconds.
For example, for a physiological norm of aCO2 of 40 mmHg, at sea level of 760 mmHg atmospheric pressure, the corresponding aCO2% is 40/760 = 5.26%.

Applying to the above formula we get CP = 35.2 seconds.

Because CP can be measured with a watch, and provided the measurement is done closely following the defined steps and method, it can be done by everyone easily.

This is why it is one of the most important parameters in Buteyko Breathing to test how well your health state is.

The Link Between the CP and Various Health States

Based on the research from the world-renowned health educator Dr. Artour Rakhimov on Buteyko Breathing, the following table summaries the link between CP to various health states:

Note:

• The unit for CP is in seconds.
• The correct conditions and steps to measure CP are critical to be representative.
• Morning CP measured on the bed after wake-up is the most reliable condition to measure.

The Link Between Minute Ventilation and Various Health States

Since CO2 level in the body is directly influenced by breathing volume, thus Minute Ventilation (MV), the metric for breathing volume is linked with CO2 level in the body.

Based on Dr. Artour’s research about Buteyko Breathing, we can derive the link following the table below:
For Adult with 70 Kg weight

Note:

• The unit of the MV is in Liters.
• The correct breathing conditions and steps are critical to obtain a meaningful MV.
• The breathing needs to be fully relaxed and be observed during the session with near zero air hunger.
• A recommended way is to use the AYO BT+ App ‘Breathing in Meditation’ featured exercise.
• For other weights other than 70 Kg, the values shown in the above table can be proportionally calculated.

Contrary to common heath state monitoring, such as blood pressure, heart rate, blood sugar, blood cholesterol, where each only provides an isolated parameter of the body consisting of a vastly interlinked number of vital factors, the CP or MV provides an accurate overall picture of our health state in a holistic and efficient way. They had been scientifically and clinically proven since Dr. Buteyko and his colleague’s initial discovery and work back in the 1960s, which have benefited hundreds of thousands of patients since. However, they remain the largely unknown health metrics to most people, and the world should now wake up to appreciate and adopt them for the sake of our ultimate health.

What are Anxiety Disorders?

Anxiety disorders are severe forms of anxiety becoming illnesses, while typical anxiety is a person’s normal reaction to stress and can be beneficial in some situations when the severity of it is manageable, such as alerting us to dangers and critical situations or helping us prepare and anticipate important events with normal feelings of nervousness or anxiousness.

Anxiety disorders, on the other hand, involve excessive fear, worry, or apprehension, where fear is an emotional response to an immediate threat and is more associated with a fight or flight reaction, and worry refers to the anticipation of a future concern and is more associated with muscle tension and avoidance behaviour.

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental disorders and affect nearly 30% of adults at some point in their lives. Millions of people around the world suffer anxiety daily for various reasons, such as stress from work, family issues, health concerns, financial obligations, etc. Anxiety disorders can affect a person’s ability to work, study, and function in normal activities.

Stress is a common trigger to anxiety and it’s important to catch anxiety symptoms and manage them early and effectively to prevent the development of an anxiety disorder.

Unlike Stress, which is typically caused by an external trigger, once the situation has been resolved, it would go away, but severe anxiety, on the other hand, is defined by persistent, excessive worries that don’t go away even in the absence of an external stressor, thus its origin is internal. Anxiety leads to a nearly identical set of symptoms as stress: insomnia, difficulty concentrating, fatigue, muscle tension, and irritability.

Anxiety disorders are classified in a variety of ways: generalized anxiety, panic disorder, phobias, social anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The causes of anxiety disorders are hard to pinpoint but likely involve a combination of factors including genetic, environmental, psychological, developmental, lifestyle, and physiological.

Anxiety disorders are normally treatable by analyzing possible causes and then applying targeted treatment accordingly.

What Are the Key Physiological Links to Anxiety?

In a nutshell, anxiety disorders are the results and symptoms of malfunctioning body organisms, so the first thing to look for is what physiological parts of the body have got affected and then address them directly before doing anything else.

Hyperventilation

It is common knowledge that anxiety causes hyperventilation, and anxiety activates the sympathetic nervous system, sending your body into fight-or-flight mode. During this reaction, stress hormones excite the breathing center in the brain to make breathing heavier.

However, what is less known is that hyperventilation can cause mental disorders including anxiety disorders.

Konstantin P. Buteyko, MD-PhD, is a world-renowned physiologist and the creator of the Buteyko Method, a science-based breathing normalization practice that has since benefited and cured hundreds of thousands of chronic disease sufferers, in particular, asthmatics.

Dr. Buteyko confirmed and was also proved by scientific studies that hyperventilation or Over-breathing is the common cause of a great number of widespread diseases triggered by lifestyle.

One of the diseases that can be caused by hyperventilation is a mental disorder. Here is a summary of his reasoning:

• Chronic hyperventilation causes CO2 deficiency in the body, in particular, in the lungs, blood, brain, organs, and tissue cells including nerve cells, which in turn results in oxygen starvation in the brain, nerve cells, and the body.
• Hyperventilation-caused CO2 deficiency causes pH alkaline shifts in the blood and tissues, altering the metabolic processes.
• CO2 deficiency in the nerve cells excites all of the structures in the nervous system.
• The excited nervous system causes further over-breathing, thus forming a vicious cycle.
• As a result, oxygen starvation in nerve cells, in combination with metabolic malfunctions and an over-excited nervous system, brings about mental disorders, destroys the nervous system in the form of sclerosis of cerebral vessels, and finally causes a deterioration of an individual’s physical and mental health.

This finding is particularly significant in that:

• It identifies over-breathing as a cause or one of the causes of anxiety disorders.
• It indicates hyperventilation can create a vicious cycle with anxiety disorders, as we know anxiety causes hyperventilation, then hyperventilation further intensifies anxiety.
• The conclusion: to break the vicious cycle, we must stop hyperventilation in the first place.

Stress Hormones and Sympathetic Nervous System

The ‘flight-or-fight’ response from anxiety floods the body quickly with a stress hormone called adrenaline. In this type of situation, your brain sends messages to your adrenal glands (located just above the kidneys) to start releasing the hormone into the blood, which activates the sympathetic nervous system to fight or flight accompanied by increasing heart rate, intensifying breathing, raising blood pressure, muscle tension, and restlessness.

However, with chronic or excessive anxiety due to nonphysical or harmless stressors, such as traffic jams, financial worries, frustrating meetings, or relationship troubles, your body can have too much adrenaline and your mind can be affected by a constantly excited sympathetic nervous system which can lead to anxiety disorders.

Relaxing the sympathetic nervous system and controlling the adrenaline to a normal level in situations other than the true dangers or critical events is paramount in order to prevent mental disorders and stay healthy.

How to Relieve or Prevent Anxiety Disorders?

There are many ways to treat anxiety disorders; two of the most common ones are medication and psychotherapy.

However, regardless of either of these treatments that you may seek, we must address the underlining responsible physiological links first before seeking any other treatments or measures, precisely you must:

• Prevent hyperventilation.
• Control the stress hormone and relax the sympathetic nervous system to a normal level.

Here we recommend three effective and proven practices for this purpose:

Buteyko Reduced Breathing

To prevent hyperventilation, Buteyko Reduced Breathing is the most profound and effective method available, as the aim of this breathing technique is to increase the CO2 level in the body, which will effectively prevent hyperventilation if adopted and practiced correctly.

In addition, Buteyko Breathing requires diaphragmatic breathing via the nose, which promotes slower and lighter breathing that activates the parasympathetic nervous system responsible for relaxation and relaxes the sympathetic nervous system responsible for fight-and-flight.

As added benefits, increasing the CO2 level in the body will also help prevent many other underlying chronic diseases, such as damage to the nervous system due to oxygen starvation from hyperventilation, hypertension, metabolism malfunction, and immune system disorders.

A minimum of 1-hour accumulated time of reduced breathing practice is normally required to be effective, especially if your state of hyperventilation is high. However, some parts of the practice can be done at any possible time slot you could find, such as observing or consciously slowing down your breathing during the daily commute, when doing some work that not requiring your full attention, during an easy reading, etc.

Meditation

Meditation has been long proven and confirmed by extensive scientific research for its effectiveness in stress and anxiety relief, relaxing the mind and the sympathetic nervous system.

A regular meditation practice, even just 10 minutes twice a day, can have dramatic effects on stress levels and adrenaline levels. Studies show that meditation is effective at reducing blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, slowing heart rate, and improving immune-system and digestive functioning. This is all due to meditation’s relaxing effects on your body, which switch it from a state of stress, or sympathetic fight or flight nervous system activation, to one of relaxation, or parasympathetic nervous system activation, decreasing amounts of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol.

In addition, observing breathing during meditation helps calm and reduce breathing, which in turn helps your concentration during the meditation, which enhances the quality of meditation.

Physical Exercise

Physical exercise helps reduce stress and promotes relaxation. This is because, during exercise, the body releases endorphins, which are neurotransmitters that promote a sense of calm and well-being and reduce pain and discomfort. Exercise also increases blood flow to the brain, which can help improve mood and cognitive functioning.

Regular physical activity also helps reduce muscle tension, promote relaxation, and provide a distraction from worry and negative thinking.

Even just a 10-minute walk a few times a day can be enough to reap the benefits of physical movement to lower stress and anxiety levels that can trigger the release of unwanted adrenaline.

In addition, a prolonged physical exercise of 20 – 30 minutes of light to moderate intensity will help raise your adaptation to CO2 level in a similar way as reduced breathing at rest. So in a sense, physical exercise is an extension of reduced breathing at rest.

Summary

Buteyko Reduced Breathing, Meditation, and Physical Exercise are 3 complementary and interlinked wellness practices, and their regular and persistent practice will provide a solid foundation to relieve and prevent most anxiety disorders.

Further, these 3-practices are so fundamentally beneficial that we all should adopt them in our daily routine, just like our 3-meals each day, to establish a lifestyle that promotes our ultimate well-being regardless of if we suffer from anxiety disorders or not.

In the book “Breathing to Heal” by Sasha Yakovleva, she says:

“Try to decrease the volume of breathing by imagining that your airflow becomes a little diminished”.

All of the described ways to achieve “air hunger” are either vague or hard to follow correctly in practice:

• “5-10% less than your normal inhalation’ – is not something a normal person can sense or feel correctly.
• “short automatic pauses” – how short?
• “imagining that your airflow becomes a little diminished” – what “a little” is a little? That is the question only up to you to interpret.

Even Dr. Buteyko thought that generating the right amount of light air hunger was the most difficult to learn from his described method as below:

1. Decrease
2. The depth
3. Of breathing
4. By relaxation of the diaphragm
5. Till slight shortage of air (Buteyko, 1991)

Furthermore, in Buteyko Method, the main metric to test how you breathe is via CP measurement. This is a simple and accurate way to measure how well the body gets oxygenation, provided that it is measured correctly. However, as many of us experienced, the CP can be affected by many factors, making it vary from time to time. This is perhaps one of the main difficulties in practicing Buteyko Breathing.

In addition, CP is an indirect and non-Realtime way to guide your breathing exercises, for example, it can not be used directly as a metric during Reduced Breathing training, and it can only be used as a body CO2 tolerance or oxygen level monitor before and after each breathing exercise.

How Do We Solve the Issues?

All the issues mentioned above related to Reduced Breathing can be rooted in the fact that there are no tools that are readily available to measure breathing data, in particular, breathing volume.

As Reduced Breathing simply means to reduce breathing volume following Buteyko Method, it is no brainer to say that we need a device to measure the volume we breathe in order to practice reduced breathing, so that we know how much air we breathe, and how much air we need to reduce during breathing exercises.

Over more than half a century until now, people who practiced Buteyko reduced breathing have had to use gut feel and guessing to guide the exercise. It is understandable that in the era of Buteyko, there weren’t breathing measurement devices that ordinary people can get access easily.

Further, we can also define the target MV based on the level of air hunger. For example, if we define the following:

No air hunger as No RB: MV corresponding to your CP.

Light air hunger as RB1: 10% less of MV corresponding to your CP.

Moderate Air Hunger as RB2: 25% less of MV corresponding to your CP.

Strong Air Hunger as RB3: 50% less of MV corresponding to your CP.

Then we can have the following target MVs forNo RB, RB1, RB2, RB3 in relation to your CPs:

Note: for body weights other than 70Kg, the corresponding MVs can be proportionally calculated.

Final Words

By using MV as Reduced Breathing training metric, it removes the difficulties when it comes to practicing a level of air hunger accurately. It also provides an alternative way to find out your CP. This is a game-changer for practicing Buteyko Reduced Breathing, as it can help achieve more effective Reduced Breathing exercises that promise an easier and quicker journey in your endeavor to normalize your breathing.

So if you have a hard time making progress in your Buteyko Breathing training, wait no further to acquire this great Australian invention AYO BT+ to help you out.

Related Article:

Reduced Breathing Exercise Protocol with AYO BT+

The Buteyko Breathing method consists of a series of exercises designed to help reduce breathing volume, including controlled breathing exercises, breathing through the nose with the diaphragm, and reducing talk time. The activities are usually done in a specific sequence and can be done anywhere, at any time.

How Does the Buteyko Method Work?

The Buteyko method teaches individuals to control their breathing in a specific way to reduce the air volume inhaled and exhaled, this is also known as the minute volume. This reduction in breathing volume helps restore a healthy balance of carbon dioxide and oxygen in the body, which can lead to various health benefits.

The Buteyko method consists of a series of breathing exercises and techniques that aim to reduce breathing volume, including:

• Controlled breathing exercises: This involves breathing in and out at a slower pace, focusing on breathing through the nose and reducing the volume of air inhaled and exhaled.
• Breathing through the nose with the diaphragm: Diaphragmatic breathing through the nose is believed to be more efficient than chest breathing through the mouth , so the Buteyko method encourages individuals to use the diaphragm to breathe through their nose as much as possible.

By learning to control their breathing and restore a healthy balance of carbon dioxide and oxygen, individuals who practise the Buteyko method may be able to alleviate symptoms of various health problems, including asthma, sleep apnea, and anxiety.

What is Buteyko Good For?

Buteyko breathing teaches you how to reduce breathing, i.e., to reduce the air volume you breathe. The way to reduce the breathing volume during practice is to create a light air hunger. How ‘light’ is light is vague here, even Dr. Buteyko thought this was the most difficult to learn.

According to proponents of Buteyko Breathing, the technique can help to improve a range of health problems, including:

• Asthma
• Sleep apnea
• 慢性阻塞性肺疾病（COPD）
• Allergies
• Hypertension
• Anxiety
• Panic attacks

Aimwell Breathing and the AYO BT+

If you practice the Buteyko breathing technique, AYO BT+ can be an excellent companion to enhance your practice. Thanks to its Minute Ventilation tracking, AYO BT+ can measure breathing volume and rate accurately, making practice Reduced Breathing much easier.

If you search the internet for a definition of normal respiratory rate for an adult, you may find the answer to be either 12 to 16 or 12 to 20 breaths per minute (BPM).

Minute Ventilation (MV), which is the product of Breath Per Minute (BPM) and Tidal Volume (TV), is one of the important breathing metrics to monitor. For example, a MV of 15 Litres at rest is associated with very sick people, and it is a breathing volume contributing to hyperventilation, which is at least in part responsible for a range of chronic diseases, such as asthma, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, etc.

There appears a lot of medical research has been undertaken in the last decade on breathing techniques and their potential clinical benefits. This is in the context of the breathing retraining method for reduced breathing and slow breathing known as Buteyko Breathing pioneered by Dr. Konstantin Pavlovich Buteyko started back in the 1950s, when he discovered that over-breathing is the root cause of asthma. Buteyko Breathing has been demonstrated to be very effective in treating a range of chronic disorders, particularly asthma, as well as a wide number of profound health benefits.

Recent research has also found that breathing can affect heart rate, in particular, during inhalation, it makes the heartbeats faster, and during exhalation, it makes them slower. In the physiological term, this is called Heart Rate Variability (HRV).

Higher HRV is more desirable because it indicates a healthy heart and overall healthy physiological functioning, including a more balanced parasympathetic-sympathetic functioning. Research has shown that HRV peaks when the breath rate is 5.5 or rounded off at 6 BPM, and this is common in healthy humans.

Coincidentally, research has also found further benefits at 6 BPM, such as:

• • Most efficient gas exchange at the lungs
  • Increase of blood pressure fluctuation leading to significantly lower average blood pressure for the same cardiac output.

Based on the above, it is logical to conclude that a 6&6 breathing pattern should be adopted by most people to not only gain the benefits of maximum HRV but also to ensure no over-breathing occurs. Therefore, instead of trying to breathe at the optimal respiratory rate, we should try to breathe with an optimal breathing pattern, i.e., to breathe at 6 BPM AND with 6 litres MV at the same time.

You could try to breathe the 6&6 pattern at any time at rest, but especially do it via meditation before sleep to gain an immediate additional benefit of better sleep quality.

Now you may wonder how you could know your MV, assuming you could manage the BPM by a watch.

In summary, optimal respiratory rate alone is not sufficient to ensure the best health outcome, and your physiological norm of Minute Ventilation must be included together to ensure you do not over-breathe,

Aimwell AYO BT+ Breathing Measurement and Breathing Exerciser is an effective tool for you to measure your breathing volume and train for the optimal breathing pattern.

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.

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