Is a Breathing Coach Worth It?

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This story first appeared on capsulenz.com

For something I do about 23,000 times a day, I thought surprisingly little about just inhaling and exhaling.

I reflected on this briefly when I took yoga classes 10 years ago, although I was focusing more on just feeling grateful for my marrow – that little part of our brainstem that automatically controls our breathing, which meant I didn’t have to spend the whole day outside of yoga class obsessed with it.

But then my health took a bit of a bite out after being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, and I realized that maybe I needed to start paying serious attention to my body and all the things I was holding onto. for granted.

In the middle of this, a specialist told me that I should have surgery on my sinuses to help put an end to the constant colds and infections that plagued me. Avoiding getting sick sounded good, but surgery was the last thing I wanted to deal with at the time, so I put it on the back burner. Three years later, I came back to the idea and went to another surgeon for a second opinion before going under the knife.

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After a 15 minute conversation and a camera plunged into my nasal passages, which was about as nice as it sounds, the surgeon noted that I had a slightly deviated septum, but followed up with something quite surprising.

“You could have the operation,” he said, throwing his plastic gloves in the trash. “But can I suggest something else for you to try first?” Work on your breathing.

He had noticed that I was taking a lot of shallow breaths – certainly not the slow, deep, diaphragmatic breaths I assumed my yoga time had assured me of adopting. I had to stop breathing heavily from my upper chest and never breathe through my mouth again, he said. If that didn’t work for me then I should come back for another look.

It was a surgeon who first noticed that I was taking a lot of shallow breaths - certainly not the slow, deep diaphragmatic breaths that I assumed my yoga time had assured me of adopting.

Eli DeFaria / Unsplash

It was a surgeon who first noticed that I was taking a lot of shallow breaths – certainly not the slow, deep diaphragmatic breaths that I assumed my yoga time had assured me of adopting.

This surgeon, who was the first I had seen and who had taken me away from an operating room, was clearly on something. I got my hands on everything I could read on the subject, including James Nestor’s book, Breath.

James, a journalist, spent years researching breath and, along the way, transformed into a human guinea pig, testing the results of mouth breathing. The results have been astounding. Within 10 days, he developed sleep apnea, high blood pressure, and his stress levels were out of this world – simply because he wasn’t breathing through his nose.

Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and studies, other discoveries he found about proper breathing were miraculous. Modern research shows that if we make even a slight adjustment to the way we exhale and inhale, it can have far-reaching effects on our health – from starting athletic performance to stopping exercise. asthma and autoimmune diseases. It can even straighten the scoliotic spines.

I thought about Nestor’s book and what my surgeon said every day, and spent months without a sinus infection, let alone a cold. But then I got a huge one. The link between this disease and the few very stressful months that preceded it (when I had resumed bad and old habits) was undeniable.

Maybe a breathing coach could help you?

Ideally, we each want to breathe only four to six liters of oxygen per minute.

123RF

Ideally, we each want to breathe only four to six liters of oxygen per minute.

I went to see Dina Ceniza from the Breathe Clinic. With a Bachelor of Science (Biomedical Science) under her belt, Ceniza is a certified practitioner of buteyko – a method of recycling your breathing, developed in the 1950s by Dr. Konstantin Buteyko, a Russian physician.

Ceniza discovered the method after being in the emergency room with heart palpitations and difficulty breathing, and fearing she was having a heart attack.

“I went to medical school. I’m not a doctor because I haven’t finished, but my husband knows I’m not someone to say I need to go to the hospital unless I really mean it, ”she says.

Her heart was fine, but she continued to have problems and was hospitalized twice with suspected allergies and asthma attacks. It was then that a doctor introduced her to Buteyko and she was able to significantly reduce her medication.

Eager to share her passion, Ceniza took me through a series of tests in her practice, including connecting me to a capnograph, which measures the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the exhaled air and can assess your habits and breathing habits.

The focus is on the CO levels in buteyko, because its inventor discovered that changes in these levels – caused by unhealthy breathing habits – actually cause changes in blood chemistry and our metabolism. Over time, this manifests itself in a range of symptoms and illnesses.

“We know that CO₂ helps regulate breathing,” Ceniza says, “but CO₂ also calms the nervous system, so people with low CO₂ have hyper-reactive and hyper-vigilant nervous systems. for those who are prone to it, it can also cause anxiety, panic attacks or, at the very least, high stress. ”

For me, the capnograph brought good news. When I was at rest, I only breathed through my nose and my oxygen saturation levels were at 97%.

To do our own test on the effect of mouth breathing, I spent a minute just inhaling through my mouth. My CO₂ levels started to drop dramatically, and even after I resumed nasal breathing, it took over five minutes for my levels to return to where they were before.

Changes in CO₂ levels - caused by unhealthy breathing habits - actually cause changes in blood chemistry and our metabolism.

Scientific photo library / Getty Images

Changes in CO₂ levels – caused by unhealthy breathing habits – actually cause changes in blood chemistry and our metabolism.

But, the capnograph wasn’t all good news. “You have chronic hyperventilation,” Ceniza told me. “It’s currently sweet, and the good news is that there is something you can do about it.” My results did not surprise Ceniza, as she saw a consistent link between chronic disease and hyperventilation.

Ultimately, she says, we each want to breathe only four to six liters of oxygen per minute. I was taking 7.5 liters. Also, when I didn’t think about it, my breathing was once again 100% in the upper part of my chest, rather than being diaphragmatic. As a result, my CO₂ levels were below optimum.

While still in the “light” stage, Ceniza suggested a few exercises that I do at home for just five minutes a day, and to check with her on my progress, which might be enough to improve my breathing by 20 percent. and get in line with where I should be.

But, already, I am considering investing a course with her as a respiratory coach. If something so small, something we all do without thinking about it, can make such a big difference to our health, it surely is a worthwhile investment.

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