The Science Behind Functional Breathwork

We know we breathe oxygen in from the atmosphere, and getting oxygen out of the atmosphere is pretty challenging. All of these different systems are at play to maximise the capacity of the body to take oxygen out of the atmosphere and get it into our lungs, from the lungs to get it into the blood, and from the blood to get it into the cells.

It’s not enough to breathe in all this lovely oxygen floating around the lungs. We then have to get it into the blood and into the cells for it to be utilised for energy.

There is a path that it has to go through.

Carbon dioxide is the waste product of respiration. It gets a bad rap, but we want to demystify that myth because your body needs oxygen as much as it needs carbon dioxide.

There are two important gasses regarding respiration and breathing; one is not good, and one is not bad.

Everything in the body is there for a reason, to maintain health, balance, homeostasis, and correct function.

Then, there's a third gas, nitric oxide. It’s produced in the nasal passage and has a host of benefits.

So when we breathe in, oxygen comes in, hopefully through the nose, but for many people, it’s through the mouth. Then, it goes down the airways into the two lobes of the lungs.

Nitric oxide is created in the nasal cavity. When you breathe in, you have a buildup of nitric oxide. This has many, many positive effects on the body.

It’s antimicrobial. It's antiviral. It operates almost as a cleansing system for the air coming in.

It operates as a vasodilator. WHICH MEANS it dilates the nose and nasal cavity blood vessels. This means that when I breathe in, I'm going to have the sense that I'm breathing in; the oxygen coming in through the nose will be much more readily available to be sent straight to the brain in terms of that dilation activity.

It dilates all the blood vessels in and around the nose and in and around the nasal cavity, giving that oxygen boost to the brain, which is just what you need when you need to focus or be a little bit more sharp or concentrate.

It also allows the diffusion of oxygen or carbon dioxide within the lungs in a much more evenly distributed fashion. So, when you breathe in, it can be quite a challenge to get the oxygen down to the lower lobes of the lungs.

Within the lobes are the bronchioles with alveoli; they almost look like a bunch of teeny, tiny miniature grapes; there are hundreds and thousands of them. The surface area of the alveoli is huge, and it needs to be there for the oxygen to diffuse into the blood.

And believe it or not, if you took the alveoli out of the body and laid that surface area down on the ground, it would make up the area of an entire tennis court. And that's the surface area of the space within your lungs, obviously, all bundled and wrapped up, so there is space available to create the exchange of oxygen from the atmosphere into the lungs and from the lungs into the blood. The oxygen is carried around in the blood on a cell called haemoglobin, the red blood cell.

So, haemoglobin is essential for the uptake of oxygen from the lungs into the blood. But that's not where the story ends. We then have a job to get the oxygen from the blood off the haemoglobin into the cell, where carbon dioxide comes in. So carbon dioxide is building up as a waste product of cellular generation and regeneration. It's a waste product.

It builds up when it meets a specific capacity that the brain is monitoring. This will signal to the brain, which signals the diaphragm to breathe.

Your breathing rate depends on how sensitive your brain is to the level of carbon dioxide buildup.

Carbon dioxide breaks the bond between oxygen and haemoglobin almost to offload the oxygen into the cells.

So, if you could imagine, like a bus, the bus driving down the road is the haemoglobin, and the passengers on the bus are oxygen.

Carbon dioxide is like the bus conductor standing at the next bus stop, ready to open the doors for the passengers to come out. Without much carbon dioxide, the doors aren't opening, and oxygen remains circulating in the blood.

So carbon dioxide is super-important.  

YOUR BRAIN monitors the level of carbon dioxide and how sensitive it is, not your level, just your sensitivity.

Suppose we have a very low threshold for carbon dioxide. In that case, that means that the brain will be telling the diaphragm to breathe regularly because it will only take a little bit of carbon dioxide buildup to signal the brain to breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe.

And that's going to give us what we call short, fast, shallow breathing. If we have a higher tolerance to our carbon dioxide, then more time will pass as the carbon dioxide builds up. And, the brain isn't going to be signalling the diaphragm as often.

The breath will happen less often but potentially bigger and more profound. So that means that we get to be able to do the same things but on a much slower and deeper breath. And slower, deeper breath allows us to utilise the oxygen that's coming in much better because when we breathe in anyway, there's a bit of a dead space that happens, the oxygen that never makes it down to the lungs.

It just diffuses along the way. If I take lots of breaths, that's lots of dead space. Whereas if I'm taking fewer but bigger but deeper breaths, my downtime or dead space is much less. So, fewer breaths will allow us to get more oxygen in from a volume of oxygen uptake.

The great news is you can alter this level of carbon dioxide sensitivity so we can train the brain mechanically to breathe less often.

And if you are stressed, or where something quite shocking happened and suddenly the body says there's a shock, a surprise, or a stress, an event that happens, what happens to your breathing? Well, of course, it gets short and shallow and fast. And if your breath is short and shallow and fast for an extended period, then this becomes your natural state - your brain thinks you're in fight and flight, and it creates a stress response that you're currently going to live in. Your tolerance for your own carbon dioxide will be very, very low, and it’s like a loop you stay in. 

NOSE BREATHING

Where we REALLY figure out whether we are or are not a functional or dysfunctional breather comes into the sense of understanding HOW you breathe. Do you breathe through your nose? Which is the only place you should breathe because the nose is designed for breathing?

Are you a mouth breather or are you a nose breather? So, do you breathe through your mouth, or do you breathe through your nose? The nose is the only organ designed for breathing. Your mouth isn't designed for breathing. Your mouth is designed for talking, laughing, eating, drinking, singing, and all those other wonderful things, but it is not designed for breathing.

You could start sleeping with your mouth closed, and then you could eventually open it during the night, and you could close it before you realise, and you will never really know or tell. So when you understand that the mouth was never designed to breathe, and if you look at animals, the only time you'll ever see is a dog with his mouth open.

Breathing is when it's panting or frantic or giddy and excited, and animals will breathe through their nose all the time. We've designed our nasal cavity. The whole face structure is designed for us to breathe through our nose. So your mouth is for talking, which I'm doing a lot of right now. Laughing, eating, drinking, and singing expressions are not designed for breathing.

Sometimes, people say, I can't breathe through my nose because it’s congested. But your nose is probably congested because you're not breathing through it.

Practising nose breathing while you sleep helps to clear the airways.

When you breathe through your nose, the gas nitric oxide is produced in the nasal cavity. Nitric oxide is a vasodilator that dilates the blood vessels in the nose.

When you breathe in through your nose, you create nitric oxide. Its primary function is to dilate the blood vessels. It also helps dissolve oxygen and get it deeper down in the lower lobes of the lungs.

If you breathe through your mouth, you won't get the nitric oxide produced in the nose.

There are around 32 benefits to nose breathing!

The other thing is that it cleans, filters, and moistens the air.

There is a built-in turbine system in the back of the nose.

So, when we breathe, our diaphragm contracts and moves down. So it's a contraction. It's like a bicep.

When you breathe in through your nose, the diaphragm activates, pulling down. But number two, activating the release of nitric oxide in the nose allows for that dispersion model to happen much, much easier within the lungs.

It allows oxygen to enter, be taken up through the capillaries and blood vessels in the nose, and be dispersed evenly amongst the lungs.

There's no point in having all the oxygen in the upper part of the lungs. You've got loads and loads of little receptors, those alveoli in the lower parts, and we want to get some oxygen down to them as well.

Your diaphragm contracts as you inhale, so the muscle gets shorter and moves down. The turbines in the nose act as resistance, so the diaphragm has to pull down. So, it's an actual exercise system.

So that whole kind of ventilation effect where if I breathe in through my nose, my diaphragm has to function to almost drag the air in actively. So there's a pull, a drag, or a workload in effect placed on the diaphragm. And as you breathe in, the diaphragm has to contract, and it has to contract quite in quite a strong way to get the right volume of oxygen in. And sure, that's a good thing.

All muscles need to be strengthened and stretched. Power up the diaphragm by breathing through the nose.

When you excessively breathe through your mouth, you breathe cold, unfiltered air right back in, and it hits the voice box.

Also, there is a chicken-and-egg situation because most of the time, if you have a blocked nose, you think, "I have to breathe through my mouth. “

But actually, nose breathing helps to decongest. There is a detoxification process if you are a mouth breather and you become a nose breather. In the first few days, you may find you're really fluid, and you might feel a bit congested in the air until the passageways clear out. And that's the body, the nasal cavity, the passage, the vessels, the capillaries all healing themselves and almost coming back to life again.

If you take a glass of water to bed with you every night and throughout the night, you wake up to drink the water because you're thirsty. That will be a huge indicator that you are more than likely a mouth breather because you shouldn't need to have your sleep disturbed to drink water at nighttime.

The air is filtered, moistened, and warmed when you breathe through the nose. So you don't have this cold, harsh neck hitting the vocal cords, and it is, as I said, filtered.

Another interesting point about nose breathing at night is that when you breathe at night - when you go to sleep at night- the positioning of your head, neck, and shoulders changes.

So you might start on one side, move over to the other side, and then end up on your back. And all the while, this area here, so your tongue is if your mouth is open, your tongue has a potential drop back into your throat. And if your mouth and jaw drop open during the night, this passageway here can be obstructed. And that's where you might find you have a possible sleep apnea. Or you have this kind of constant where you gasp for air and wake up.

If the mouth is closed, the tongue will rest naturally on the roof of the mouth. It's a natural resting position that holds the support of the front of the face and actually keeps the whole junction up and open. It keeps that nice wide bridge open but also keeps the air passageway open at the back.

Therefore, the tongue doesn't fall back into the throat, obstructing the breath sense.

With a closed mouth, you're not dehydrating at nighttime; therefore, your sleep quality improves. We know that this is dropping into the REM sleep stage, which is where the brain detoxifies.

And the more time you can spend in that state or the more quickly you can drop into that state and stay there when you wake up, the more refreshed you will be.

We might wake up thinking, "Well, I got 7 hours, "but we still feel some brain fog. So, ultimately, you shouldn't be disturbed at all during the night. Becoming a functional nose breather will greatly improve the quality of your sleep.

Want to learn more? We’ve got so much to tell you about the numerous benefits of Breathwork. Read more of our blogs HERE.

Or book a 1:1 session with our founder, Milena Jaksic, HERE

Have a look to see when our next Sync Method live event is HERE

Or book a corporate session with Milena at your workplace and introduce your team to all the physical and emotional benefits some daily breathwork can bring. HERE