Breath-ease for better health
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"If you don't have enough CO2 on the hemoglobin molecule, on the blood plasma, then it's not going to release oxygen to where it needs to go. So CO2 is in essence a gatekeeper of oxygen. So if you've given off all your CO2, if you're doing Wim Hof breathing, for example, every day. Right? You're doing a lot of breathing. You're bringing in a lot of oxygen — oxygenating the cardiovascular system, the venous system, but it's not really gonna get to the cells and muscles." — Mark Szymczak
Breathing is the ONLY habit we do 24/7. Why not get it right?
Whether you enjoy hiking, exercise, dancing, cycling, musical instruments, meditation, bio-hacking ... or deal with asthma, allergies, anxiety, heart conditions, sleep issues, dizziness or shortness of breath, this episode is for you.
This episode is taken from a recent workshop in our Freedom Circle Men’s Membership Group.
Learn more about our Freedom Circle here.
We feature guest Mark Szymczak, a respiratory fitness specialist and biofeedback practitioner. Mark has a Masters Degree in Applied Breathing Sciences and is founder of the Sedona Quantum Consciousness Center.
FULL RAW TRANSCRIPT OF THIS EPISODE:
[00:00:00] Curt Mercadante: Welcome everyone to another, uh, awesome live workshop here in the freedom circle. Uh, mark, uh, just so you know, the freedom circle is our private, uh, membership group for men. And we deal with what I like to call uncovering holistically, your freedom that's already in there. So we'll do, uh, sessions like this, having to do.
[00:00:22] Well, as I learned today, it's not just health, it's health, spirituality emotions. Uh, we had a, a, a, a, um, a, uh, workshop last week on kind of letting go of the ego, but we've also done business, LinkedIn, uh, you know, branding, uh, and, and the like, so welcome here today. I, I, I, I put this, I ran into, uh, to mark last week at natural grocers, and I kept, I kept referring it to his breathing.
[00:00:49] He's like, it's breath eases. Although it's, it's all the same thing. So it's actually breath, ease, but mark, mark, and I met at a conference last year. Uh, mark, uh, has, [00:01:00] is, is from California, moved here, like many have fled, uh, the golden state to come here to Arizona, uh, and escaped his refugees and, uh, and started what these called the Sedona quantum consciousness center.
[00:01:12] Uh, they have an incredible array when you talk about holistic freedom. Uh, this breath ease program is just one of those programs they have, but they have bio charger, meditation, something called,
[00:01:23] Mark Szymczak: uh, the, the ho MedEd,
[00:01:25] Curt Mercadante: a variety of topics. Uh, I'll share the website, not topics, but, but powerful modalities that you can do.
[00:01:32] I've been there a number of times. Uh, I'm blessed to have known mark mark when we had our freedom of red rock mens. Uh, we took all the men over to the quantum consciousness center and mark did a, it was about three hours, uh, a three hour program on breath. Ease. You're gonna see a small part of that today.
[00:01:51] And I will say of everything in the retreat. The feedback I got was most powerful about this presentation, because it will literally [00:02:00] save your life. Most of us, and I know Richard, uh, is, is going through the oxygen advantage with Patrick Macon. Uh, most of us breathe wrongly. And, and mark, I I'll share a quick story.
[00:02:13] You know, Julie, as a speech therapist is really getting into myofacial release, but also big into the types of food she's doing picky eating and also talking about the mouth breathing. And what she's finding is there are so many parents that are in denial and, or get very defensive because we come to see the term mouth either as a derogatory term when it was originally used by, uh, George Catlin.
[00:02:40] And it's, it's a name that native Americans had for white people because we breathe through our mouths, which is why our and George Catlin wrote this, say Western price foundation writes us about Theis in, in Australia. The literal shape of their heads are different than ours. We have flat faces, [00:03:00] which goes to mouth breathing.
[00:03:01] So I won't steal any more thunder from you. Mark, mark. ZZA incredible. Um,
[00:03:07] Mark Szymczak: thank you for joining us today. Yeah, you've learned a lot Kurt. Right. And your whole family is, uh, benefiting from that. So I appreciate having people with smarts, with grit, like Kurt and his family members to take information and run with it, not just take it and go, okay.
[00:03:25] That's good to know at SQC we're really aligned with what Kurt does, cuz we're about freedom, right? And this breathing, the bio optimization, you know, essentially it's just one part of the freedom. We also host like a American national movement. Um, you know, so freeing the mind, the body, the soul in many ways to become our best, our highest self.
[00:03:47] And so that's whats QC stands for, and we empower people. We not just have the transformative texts, which is wonderful, right? Like med beds and the bio charging and neural feedback and biofeedback. [00:04:00] But we also, um, we do it with community. So we do a lot of this transformative tech. With community so that it can be a joy, this Ascension process, this health, uh, moving higher and health can be joyful.
[00:04:12] Right. And quantum, you know, we use the quantum field to assist us with that when we're in group prayer. And so we really encourage group prayer around some of our devices, the bio charger in particular, which, uh, Kurt spin Kurt was, he was amazing. Cuz he was, felt it from 300 yards away, like three football fields away.
[00:04:31] Kurt was like, something's going on? and it was in a, I thought I was having a stroke yes. yes, yes. And so yeah, one, my, my wheelhouse is breathing, you know, and I came to Sedona. One part, you know, one of my missions here is to help all the breath workers here understand some of the risks. They have with some of the methodology, the Kini, the Wim ho cuz there are inherent risks.
[00:04:56] If, if, um, you are having people move into these spaces [00:05:00] and they pick up bad habits from them. So I'll get into a little bit about that. There's any, uh, you know, I, well, if I, the presentation is often a couple hours, so I'm gonna try and uh, get through this quickly. We have about an hour Kurt. Is that right?
[00:05:14] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay.
[00:05:17] Curt Mercadante: And again, if there's Q and a, we, we are known to go a little bit over and people can log off and watch the archive replay afterwards, but yeah,
[00:05:24] Mark Szymczak: for an hour. So yeah. Fantastic. Good to hear. So, um, you know, and just to give you a little bit about myself, I'll talk, I have another slide on it, but I have a master's in, uh, applied breathing sciences.
[00:05:38] And so I, you know, I, I tend to think, I know a little bit about the breath after getting a master degree in it, and we use optometry biofeedback a little more on that in a second. Um, oops.
[00:05:51] Curt Mercadante: Was that you mark as a young child?
[00:05:54] Mark Szymczak: yeah, it was, it was a pictorial of me, right. I was asthmatic as a kid, so [00:06:00] and so yeah, I give my story about how I was asthmatic.
[00:06:05] This is a real slow, um, PowerPoint. It's not moving through very quickly. So let me, um, here we go. Uh, so, you know, breathing health is it's one of these pillars of health that few people understand. You know, we, we know about nutrition, how important that is. We know about hydration. We know about sleep and having mental balance, you know, getting our head space, correct.
[00:06:31] Um, and, and emotional balance, snow balance. And, um, you know, but breathing is one of these pillars of health people kind of forget, or don't really understand. There's few people that really understand this aspect and it really affects our health and performance and, and breathing is related to sleep related to hydration, nutrition, exercise, and emotional balance.
[00:06:54] And all these are also. Affected by breathing. So they're quite intertwined. [00:07:00] Um, you know, it's the one thing, the one habit we do, we all have, it's a habit, both part of our autonomic nervous system, but it's also a habit. And, uh, so it's the one habit that we have from the beginning of our life, to the end of our life.
[00:07:15] And sometimes it can go awry and that's why I'm here to clear up a lot of myths and, um, help you understand it from a deeper chemistry perspective. So my story, I was asthmatic at a young age actually until middle age till I was in my mid or early forties, I was asthmatic. Um, and so, you know, To me as a dear, dear to my heart in that I really thought I wasn't getting enough.
[00:07:41] And I'll show you that over time here, that I was getting plenty, um, I managed to go to school, become an engineer. And so my undergrad is in engineering and I was in sales for quite a few years. Um, I became a biohacker. I found that I had some time cause I was in sales and some of it went [00:08:00] pretty smoothly.
[00:08:00] So I ended up having some extra time to become a, a biohacker. So for 15 years, I got into the world of biofeedback, neural feedback and other, you know, ancestral health aspects. Part of the reason I moved to Sedona, cuz it's so vibrant with, you know, the possibility of moving higher on health. Since we're at elevation, we got abundance in sunshine and we have this cold 55 degree Creek water that I live next to.
[00:08:23] So it's really quite awesome. Um, I meant, you know, at, after the. you know, 50 12 years of biohacking. I finally an opportunity came up to get a master's. It came across my death in, apply my desk in applied breathing sciences. And it, it just spoke to me. It sung to me cuz I was, would like to, I wanted to become kind of a practitioner more than just a hacker.
[00:08:48] I wanted to have some credential behind me to at least show people that I knew some stuff and this was dear to my heart. So it's across. Training between behavioral health, [00:09:00] physiology and psychology. So it really pulls together, you know, a number of different degrees and pulls it into one. And it was an online program that was just fantastic.
[00:09:10] And we use biofeedback equipment, specifically, optometry biofeedback to help people understand their breathing habit. And if it's dysfunctional and then how to make some changes in their life to improve upon that. So I got into that. That's my daughter there and myself, you know, 10 years back or so, I don't know.
[00:09:30] It's probably more like six years back. Um, and this is, we'll get into a little bit of the equipment a little bit later. Um, you know, when I changed, so. I'm I was asthmatic, I said up until forties and I finally figured out, you know, went to an alternative healthcare worker practitioner and she helped me understand how my gut was just inflamed.
[00:09:51] Right. I was glued. I was eating wheat products, sheet, dairy products, and that I was allergic to these. And so I fixed that, you know, over the course of a [00:10:00] year and it got a whole lot better, my asthma, but it didn't go away, especially exercise induced asthma. And when I finally figured out how to breathe better, you know, and improve my, what we'll call respiratory fitness, I really went into a peak performance mode and was able to climb mountains.
[00:10:16] I've done a number of, for, you know, rain near, you know, Shasta. Um, and, and I run up Hills these days. I've never been in better shape in my whole life. And today I'm 56, you know, it's kind of sad, but, and in some ways it's good. I feel great about it. And so I kind of, um, walk my talk to some degree and I have to keep it up.
[00:10:35] Since I'm talking about this all the time and showing people, and I've helped a lot of people out over time. So the highlights we'll get into is about dysfunctional breathing and how it's related to stress and how stress relates to dysfunctional breathing. We'll talk about some myths and the chemistry out there, um, dysfunctional breathing's health impact, uh, whether we're going to be have symptoms versus [00:11:00] vitality as a function of how we breathe.
[00:11:02] And we'll talk about respiratory fitness and how to, uh, pull off an optimal breathing habit or move toward an optimal breathing habit. And then a little bit about becoming more Bulletproof hormetic stress. No doubt. Kurt's probably talked about, uh, if not, we can do another presentation on hormetic stress and how to harden yourself and become Bulletproof.
[00:11:24] Uh, so one of the, when I give this presentation, like last night, I gave this to about 12 people here in Sedona and, uh, I have people fill out a breathing health quiz, and this is on my breathing.coach website. So you might just know it's pretty easy to remember www breathing.coach, uh, which is one of my websites.
[00:11:44] Then there's also one at Sedona, qc.org. It stands for Sedona, quantum consciousness.org, where you can see the technologies, but the breathing website, um, is really related strictly to my breathing practices. And there's a quiz right there [00:12:00] at the front that says that, uh, helps you understand without getting on the equipment, how well you breathe.
[00:12:07] And so there's a, you know, we can kind of look down this list a little bit and see that. These are symptoms, um, that typically one might have, you know, the big one here is mouth breathing. You know, if you are a mouth breather, then that is problematic right away. But other signs that we might have, uh, dysfunctional breathings, if you have chest tightness or your chest breathing, um, altitudes, easy altitude sickness, anxiety, or panic, dizziness, you know, uh, rapid breathing, you know, uh, heart issue.
[00:12:43] So we'll get into a lot of the things that pop up if you are not, um, a healthy breather a little bit later, and then there's scoring down at the bottom. So you kind of might know who you are, if you have, uh, issues with breathing, right. It kind of, [00:13:00] you know, certainly if you have sleep apnea or sleep issues or gunky mouth in the morning, that is a, uh, product of.
[00:13:08] Of poor breathing at night. So a little bit about, you know, my, my family, these are all members of my family and it's kind of like every, when you have a hammer, like, oh, I know now about breathing. Everything is a nail up there, but now these aren't all my families. They're some of them, my two kids here, I went back and saw pictures of when they were young.
[00:13:28] They're now 22 and 23. Um, but I noticed that their mouths were open and quite a few pictures. And I was like, oh, okay. And, and they did have some issues going up and Kirk can relate to this, cuz I think he has a couple children that, you know, have their mouth open or did until he's corrected it. And unfortunately, and this is where I is dear to my heart to get this.
[00:13:51] To parents, especially because if you've got kids that have their mouths open, most of the time are breathing mouth breathers. It's really gonna hurt their [00:14:00] performance in school. Their facial features a whole lot of things. And as I saw within my kids, my son had a lot of emotional intelligence issues, anger issues.
[00:14:09] Um, he was inattentive in school and, you know, reflecting on it was like, oh, he didn't sleep so well probably at night. Um, and the there's a lot of studies out there saying, Hey, if children are not sleeping well at night, then all bets are office to how they're gonna perform during the day. And so before you put 'em on.
[00:14:29] Rid Lynn, you know, you ought to check their sleep. Well, I would say, Hey, let's check their breathing because it's probably a function of how they're breathing at night as to whether they get good sleep or not. It can be a large factor, a large component. And sure enough, you know, my son, when we checked his chemistry out and this was more like when he was 16.
[00:14:49] Yep. It wasn't quite on, it was off a bit as was my daughters. And she had heart issues when she was six, seven years old. We weren't doctors couldn't figure it. It [00:15:00] was just, um, when she was hiking, she was mouth breathing and, and we think that was the case. She had panic attacks when she was in high school, um, and anxiety.
[00:15:11] And before a test, she would lose a lot of, you know, all that she had memorized. And it was prob because, and we figured out cuz we were doing it real time at this time that at this point that, oh, she had her mouth open and was moving into an anxious state and hyperventilating a little, and it was causing certain parts of the brain to come offline.
[00:15:31] And so my father was a marathon runner, but ended up having a heart attack at age, you know, I think he wasn't even 60. And we're like, what gives dad? And. Like, wow, probably too many jelly donuts, no like many runners. They mouth breathe all the time and it turns into a habit, you know, day and night. And so when we checked his chemistry and this is more in his mid seventies, yep, sure enough.
[00:15:53] His atrial fib and a lot of his other heart conditions, his chemistry was really off with his breathing and it was contributing to [00:16:00] some of his current issues. We've got that somewhat remedy. Now at age 82, my aunt, uh, has pretty severe. We don't tell her this, but you know, attention issues, ADHD and her facial features were elongated and all the function of the way she breathe.
[00:16:18] So, uh, so you know, on this slide, I just, your takeaway is, Hey, if you have kids that, um, have sleep issues, you know, let's, let's get, 'em checked out sooner than later. And so there's a couple ways to do that. One with that breathing health quiz, another will, will look at here in a second, come on, baby.
[00:16:42] Well, let me start talking about this slide, cause I know what it is. it's, it's a it's by Butenko who have you, uh, someone here was reading oxygen advantage, Tom McEwen. That's wonderful. It's a fantastic book. Um, and, and he dials it in nicely. You know, this is what, how I look [00:17:00] at breathing. Dr. BKO was kind of the father of breathing.
[00:17:02] He was in the fifties and sixties. He was the, uh, the head of the Russian. He was the head. um, medical doctor for the Russian Russian Cosmo knots. And he really understand stood the breath like no other. Um, and in fact, there's a test. They, you know, it's called Buco breathing method. That is really helpful.
[00:17:27] And in fact, when I was process 15 years ago, I looked it up and figured out how this breathing method could help my health a little bit, but it, I, it wasn't thorough. The coaching from the DVD just wasn't thorough enough to change my as turn my asthma around completely. Uh, but nonetheless, there is something called a control pause that, uh, he suggests, and this is another way that we can determine what, how well we breathe.
[00:17:54] And so if we were to just. Take a light breath and we're not doing a whole lot right now. At [00:18:00] least you are not, I'm doing a lot of talking. So I'm doing a lot of mouth breathing as I talk, but yourselves sitting there, if you're not activating a whole lot of muscle, so you really don't have a whole lot of need for breathing and we'll get into why in a second or in a few minutes.
[00:18:16] But right now, do this quick little test where you're going to pause your breath on an kind of a midway through an out breath. You're not gonna take a big breath. It's just a, you know, normal in breath, normal, like almost all the way out. And then we're gonna pause and hold off. Um, because first you want, you don't wanna see how long you can hold that breath.
[00:18:36] It's more a function of, until you feel the first urge to breathe. You wanna pause and count the seconds it takes until the first urge to breathe. So not how long but urge, right. Should we do this mark? Say that again? Kurt. Uh, should we do it through our nose? Yes. Yep. Let's oh, good. Thank you. Yes. [00:19:00] So not enough breathing yes.
[00:19:01] Through our nose. Appreciate that. Any other questions before we jump into this little test? All right, so we're I'll count. Let me get my timer on my phone here.
[00:19:33] Okay. Are you ready? Uh, here we go. A light in breath, normal in breath, normal out part way. And 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. 15 16, 17 18, 19 [00:20:00] 20 21 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 30. Anyone still going? okay. Usually that I had someone last night that was still going at 30. It was pretty amazing.
[00:20:18] And, and, um, anyway, he out owned me during, when we had owning going on during the bio chargers. So he wasn't kidding. I mean, I, I believed him when he said that he held it cuz no one has out owned me before, but it's a Testament to his practice. Okay. So what does this mean when we have. Um, you know, when you're at 10 seconds or below, it would suggest that we probably had some of those symptoms going on or other symptoms with regard to, uh, dysfunctional breathing.
[00:20:49] And, and it's not like, oh, you would breathe every 10 seconds. That's not what this is testing is that you have one breath, every 10 seconds. It's just that you're, you have an ability to pause [00:21:00] for an extended period of time. And some people are like, well, I forget to breathe. And people notice that I'm not breathing well.
[00:21:06] Yeah. You're sitting around doing nothing and there's really not a whole lot of reason to breathe, maybe. So, you know, this pause can be upwards. Dr. Bakka would like to see it up at 60 seconds. Believe it or not. Now that's pretty crazy to me. I'm getting there in the 35 second range, you know, maybe on a good day, a little more bad day, not so much, but I'm working my respiratory fitness on a daily basis.
[00:21:30] So most people are in this 10 range sometimes under if they have a lot of those symptoms. That we saw in the breathing health quiz. Uh, if you're in the 10 to 20 range, that's better maybe few symptoms. And if you're 28, you're, you know, 2030 then likely not as many symptoms. Um, but still in all cases could stand to improve that respiratory fitness.
[00:21:56] So, um, yeah. And I'm not [00:22:00] gonna ask, you know, where people were at. It's just a way you can gauge, if you do take on improving your breathing habit, then uh, you can do this test. Every few days, or at least once a week, when you wake up in the morning, before you crawl out of bed, just do this control, pause, exercise.
[00:22:20] And you'll notice if you're doing, you know, some of our other exercises throughout the day that you will improve this pause. And so give yourself an at boy, little pat in the back for making progress. And you'll also see some of those, hopefully some of those symptoms go away. All right. So this slide that we've been looking at is just, you know, about all the chemistry that's behind breathing, and I'm not gonna dive too much, but a little bit into this, cuz it has a it'll help shift your paradigm.
[00:22:50] And one of the things we have to do for people, I can't just give you a set of exercise and say, go do this. You have to see the why behind it. You know, and [00:23:00] shifting one's paradigm is important. Oh, there was the control pause. Okay. Here was the slide. All right, but let's talk about some breathing myths that are out there.
[00:23:10] One is that we have to be mindful of breathing all the time and that's not necessarily true when we, when we take on a new habit or a new skill set. Yes. We need to be mindful of it because we're moving from con from unconsciously incompetent to maybe now you're becoming consciously incompetent, especially if you were under 10 seconds, then you're okay.
[00:23:35] We would call it, you know, somewhat incompetent in respiratory fitness. But now you're conscious of it. We wanna move during training to conscious competence where you are working it and you're consciously working it. So you're becoming competent. And then eventually it's unconscious competence, right?
[00:23:52] Where. Hey, the breath is part of our autonomic nervous system and it needs to be working with us for us, without us thinking about it. [00:24:00] That's where we wanna go. And as the one habit we do 24 7 throughout our life, why not? Right? This is huge longevity hack. Um, and I'll tell you why as we get into it, the other big breathing myth out here is that CO2 is a waste gas, and nothing could be further from the truth.
[00:24:19] Um, we'll dive into that shortly. Uh, and likewise, the more air, the better that, Hey, air is free. Why not breathe? You know, big breathe all the time and we'll, you know, will show why that's not the case chest breathing will get into and mouth breathing will get into also their myths that these are fine.
[00:24:41] Okay.
[00:24:47] Curt Mercadante: We can all hold our breath while the slide changes.
[00:24:51] Mark Szymczak: mm.
[00:24:56] Maybe my computer's heating up and that's why [00:25:00] Sedonas. Internet is always, is always fun. yes. All right. We'll talk a little bit about dysfunctional breathing, how it affects our stress levels and how stress will affect our physiology and our breathing itself. So with regard to CO2 being a waste gas, you know, I was a corporate wellness after I got the master's degree.
[00:25:25] I was a corporate wellness instructor for quite a few years. Um, your director of an international company, you know, the corporate wellness guy. And then I did some corporate wellness for other companies. And, you know, one of the things I noticed that sea level executives are very high in stress. I have other technology that helps look actually as determines a person's stress level and they're very high.
[00:25:51] And so they tend to, you know, breathe heavy. Uh, but even the engineers, anyone under stress, you know, especially if they're just throwing down some food, [00:26:00] they're not exercising quite right, then they're adding a lot of stress to their body. So, um, just be aware of that, catch yourself, you know, be mindful.
[00:26:10] Now, if you do catch yourself, mind, mouth breathing, you know, especially while doing emails or on the phone when you're heated, you know, we'll see that that's typically when we might be breathing a little bit harder when we've got our autonomic nervous system is in a little more overdrive situation. So CO2 isn't a waste gas actually only about 17% of it is supposed to be expelled through the body.
[00:26:36] Um, the rest of the 83% is used internal to the body, excuse this, uh, poorly done slide. I went back and fixed it, but must have pulled up the wrong presentation. Uh, but essentially it it's suggesting that nearly all our chemical reactions are our body are influenced by pH and pH, as it turns out is a function of our breathing.[00:27:00]
[00:27:00] So, and when I talk about the fluids in the body, I'm not talking about like the digestive tract, that's gonna change anywhere from 2.3, up to 8.3, you know, and, and levels of alkalinity to acidity, right? But I'm talking about the pH of the cerebral spinal fluid, the interstitial fluids of the lymphatic tissue lymphatic system of the hemoglobin, right.
[00:27:24] Of the blood plasma. These all, you know, are mostly water and hence the pH has to stay in a very narrow window and that window. Is, uh, close to 7.44 it's between 7.34 and 7.45. That's where it needs to be. And we have buffer systems that help maintain this pH level. Uh, anything below 6.9 or above 7.8 is fatal say so thank goodness we have some of these buffer systems.
[00:27:55] So, this is one of the, you know, things in our body that next to getting oxygen to [00:28:00] the cells is the most critical thing in the body. As far as minute to minute goes, is maintaining these balances. So we'll see why, how breathing affects this. pH it turns out that pH is a function of our high of our bicarbonate buffer system, H co three, which is bicarbonate buffers over CO2.
[00:28:22] And what is CO2? Well, CO2 is breathing, right? Cause if we're giving awful lot of CO2, or if we're holding a lot of CO2 in our system, right, then we're changing that denominator. And so if, um, and. If we're breathing a lot through our mouth, we're giving off a lot of excess CO2 and that's called hyper hypocapnia.
[00:28:50] And what happens is this pH goes up since the denominator goes down, as CO2 as we get rid of CO2, the pH is gonna go up. [00:29:00] And so we have, you know, more bicarbonate buffers will be made to help bring that pH into line. But we can see that that eventually kind of gives out if we're over breathing too much.
[00:29:11] And that's where the problem starts to occur. Cuz that's when we start to have our pH a little bit out of balance, we can move. Let's see if I have a pointer,
[00:29:25] Curt Mercadante: we can see your, uh,
[00:29:26] Mark Szymczak: your cursor. You can. That's interesting. Oh, there it is. Yeah, I can see it. Okay, great. So if we're. if we are healthy breathers, we tend to be here. You know, this is like the pH of 7.4 are where our problems start to begin. And if we are over breathing and giving off a lot of CO2, then we're more inclined to move along this line, right?
[00:29:55] Our breathing, our CO2, um, at, at times [00:30:00] our pH will move beyond that where even our buffers can handle it. And that's where symptoms start to occur. If we are healthy breath, there's excellent breathers. Then we stay, our pH stays within a narrow window here and we don't move beyond that 7.4 problem. It's rare that we have, um, problems.
[00:30:21] Of respiratory acidosis, which means that respiration we're under breathing and therefore we're moving toward acidity. Right? What we do have is metabolic acidosis, which is when we eat a, you know, a carbohydrate, intense diet, we tend to have more acidity in our body. And that's where minute to minute our kidneys are, are, excuse me, over the course of four to eight hours, our kidneys are helping to affect our pH as a function of what kind of foods we, you know, and you've heard of the alkaline diet versus, you know, Non alkaline more.
[00:30:57] Acidics no meats, eggs [00:31:00] butters tend to be acidic. I'm not denigrating them. Those can be very healthy. You know, OSIS is a wonderful thing. Um, however, you know, if we have a lot of uncomplex carbs, then you know, that's a different subject, but anyway, there's metabolic acidosis versus respiratory OSIS. And so let me move on.
[00:31:21] another important aspect of, um, carbon dioxide being important is something called BOLO. If we don't have enough CO2 on the hemoglobin, we know that, you know, he hemoglobin or red blood cells are helping to move oxygen and CO2 you. To the lungs and then away and out the lungs, you know, expelling the CO2, right?
[00:31:43] When our cells are respirating at the cellular level, they're giving off CO2 taking in oxygen. Well, it turns out so on the hemoglobin molecule you'll have both oxygen and CO2. That's what hemoglobin does is move transport. These around. That's a big part of what it does anyway. And it [00:32:00] turns out according to Boar's law, that if you don't have enough CO2 on the hemoglobin molecule on the blood plasma, then it's not going to release oxygen to where it needs to go.
[00:32:12] So CO2 is in essence, a gatekeeper of oxygen. So if you've given off all your CO2, if you're doing whim H breathing, for example, Every day, right? You're doing a lot of breathing. You're bringing in a lot of oxygen, oxygenating the cardiovascular system, the venous system, but it's not really gonna get to the cells and muscles, you know, tissues that need it.
[00:32:36] And maybe the tissues don't need it at that point. If you're just sitting there doing whim, ho breathing and not really moving, then it doesn't need a whole lot of oxygen at that point, the muscles don't right. The muscles give off lactic acid when we're moving. That's why, when we exercise, we tend to breathe harder because we have to offset that lactic acid and what offsets that well, the respiration the CO2 [00:33:00] does or moving that seal out of there and bringing in oxygen.
[00:33:03] So that's where the respiratory OSIS occurs, um, to offset that lactic acid. So again, CO2 is a gatekeeper to oxygen getting delivered. So, um, yeah. So when if we wanna become an efficient machine, when we exercise having enough CO2 in our system, and by the way, end title CO2, meaning the CO2 that we breathe, that's directly correlated to the CO2 in our venous, in our cardiovascular system.
[00:33:36] So it's kind of one to one related. So when we measure with my equipment, the co end title CO2 coming outta the nose, we're measuring, um, the CO2 that is in the, in the blood as. So another number three reason CO2 is important is that that's a vasodilator, those of you that take Viagra, you know, that's a, that's a vasodilator, right?
[00:33:59] That's [00:34:00] not necessarily CO2 doing that. It's nitric oxide doing that, but in the, in this case, Hey, the CO2 can also dilate the blood vessels. And so, um, you know, if you have hypertension, you know, that's a function of constricted blood vessels. So having better CO2, having better breathing can help with hypertension.
[00:34:20] Um, you know, and so we are more efficient at moving our blood plasma around when it's dilated as opposed to constricted, um, headaches, migraines can be a function of constricted blood vessels as well. Um, so bronchial tract, the CO2 actually opens up the bronchial tract and allows the smooth mu muscles of the bronchial tract to open up.
[00:34:43] So as an asthmatic, this was counterintuitive. I actually had to stop breathing in order for those, uh, the bronchial chambers to open up and to calm down. And that was very difficult to do. Cuz when you're in a middle of an asthma attack, you tend to think you need [00:35:00] more air. And when I was able to shut that down and more calmly, get into parasympathetic and quiet the breathing down.
[00:35:07] Yep, sure enough. It opened it up and I was able to not use some of my, you know, at prevental some of those other medications they give you, you know, that end up hurting the heart by the way. Um, hold on one sec, it turns out CO2 also helps with the GI tract and smooth muscles of the gut. , uh, it helps, you know, the, uh, what do we call it?
[00:35:35] Well, it's essentially the digestion process peristalsis. That's the word I was looking for moving the Mo gut motility, moving the food through the, through the gut. And so having good CO2 and having good diaphragmatic breathing helps with this, you know, moving, um, food through this system.
[00:35:58] CO2 also plays a [00:36:00] role in electrolyte absorption. Um, and so it's kind of critical. If not, if you don't have good CO2, then the, the, the, uh, cells are gonna start robbing some of the minerals from the bones and even CA in those cases, it may not get into the cells as well. So it's, it's important from that standpoint.
[00:36:23] I'd also, you notice that, uh, CO2 is a. Part of those molecules or atoms also fall into HCO three. So it's part of our bicarbonate buffer system. So it allows for more bicarbonate buffers to get made in the kidneys. So quite critical. Um, it's like the best supplement in the world and it's free if you know how to let it build up in the body, which we'll get to.
[00:36:47] So number three, myth wise is that more air is better. Well, turns out that, you know, people think that Hey, air is free, but kind of like food, you know, more is not necessarily better. [00:37:00] so my sister who was a swimmer is like, mark, how come I'm so exhausted at the end of swimming, you know, for her half hour, it's like, well, how often do you breathe, Mary?
[00:37:10] She's like every stroke. I'm like, oh, well you're not doing that much exercise when you, when you swim, um, that you need to breathe every stroke. So I had her start breathing every five strokes. I breathe every seven or eight strokes when I swim. And it ends, it turns out that yeah, you don't need that, especially since you're breathing through the mouth.
[00:37:30] When you swim, you don't need to breathe quite as much. Uh, we'll talk about chest breathing right now, because if you put your one hand on your heart or up on your chest, and one hand down on your belly, take a minute to do this and just kind of breathe through your nose
[00:37:48] and just notice where each, which hand is moving more.
[00:37:58] Is that the one in your [00:38:00] chest or the one down in your belly?
[00:38:08] Well, I didn't little story. I didn't know about how important diaphragmatic breathing was. And I went into an alternative care practitioner. This is probably 15 years ago, at least she's like, oh, I can tell you're a chest breather. And I was like, what, what does that mean? sounded derogatory, kind of like mouth breathing, chest breather.
[00:38:29] And she's like, well, you, the shape of your chest is, is tells me that you're a chest breather and sure enough. Yeah, because of my asthma, I've been using my scaling muscles and some accessory muscles, my PS to do my breathing. So I was breathing up here for, through a lot of my life and it had reshaped my whole chest.
[00:38:46] It's quite dysfunctional looking I've I've fortunately over the 15 past 15 years that got changed around. Um, and so, yeah, ideally we wanna be down there in the diaphragm, down there in [00:39:00] the belly breathing. Because it helps with digestion. It also is para much more parasympathetic, meaning much more rest and digest activating than sympathetic.
[00:39:12] When we're in our chest, we tend to be in a fight or flight moon. It may not affect the chemistry a whole lot, but it does affect our muscles and our, our mental game. So mouth breathing, I kind of already mentioned that, you know, that mouth breathing is, is it fine? No, not really. Why is it not fine? Because when we breathe through our mouth, especially at night, we're giving off a lot of CO2, excess CO2, cuz we, um, you know, we're taking in a lot of bacteria through our mouth when we breathe through our mouth.
[00:39:51] Um, we're not getting, I'll talk about nose breathing a little bit, but essentially a big thing is that we're giving off way too much CO2. And we can [00:40:00] see that in the equipment that I have. Uh, although we won't be getting to the equipment today, sleep disorders occur with kids, you know, sleep disorders, dental plaque, long face ed syndrome, which we'll talk about.
[00:40:11] I have a slide on throat digestive disturbances cavities, right? Male occlusion of the teeth. Let's talk about that a second, because Western a price, you know, he was the dentist back in the fifties and he did a lot of studies on Aboriginal tribes and was like, whoa, look at this. When he, he looked at their traditional diet, they had great teeth and jaw structures.
[00:40:35] And as soon as we switch them over to a, you know, shitty American diet, um, you know, things went awry the next generation, you know, it got worse. And the next generation, after that, even worse, well, Yeah, maybe the food was a part of it, but, you know, epigenetics, it could have been a function of quite a few things, including the, because the, if they were eating [00:41:00] more carbs, instead of going out, running and catching their food, maybe they weren't breathing correctly either.
[00:41:07] And we'll see that breathing has a big impact on the facial features. So here's at, at the top of this slide. Well, let's try this again. Ooh, doesn't wanna,
[00:41:23] Hmm. Okay. We're gonna, you're gonna have to picture this other slide here. it's called long face syndrome and essentially, and I have, I have several family members with this that if we don't have the tip of the tongue, On the roof of the mouth for most of our life. What happens is that the face starts to droop in many cases, not always, but in many cases, the face will droop and the jaw, the jaw droops down and there's male occlusion of the teeth so that, um, the, the whole mouth becomes smaller.
[00:41:59] [00:42:00] Then you have to get certain teeth removed in order for them to be straight. You know, whether it be wisdom, teeth or other teeth, and that's problematic over time. Uh, that's a big deal. Not just because it costs money, but because you know, when you get teeth removed, there's the possibility of capitations and other issues over time.
[00:42:19] And so, Dennis. You know, I went to a lot of dentists, but they didn't seem to care about this cuz they, I figured they would know whether someone is a mouth breather or not, but, and they, they just wanna sell an appliance kind of open up the airways, um, or do surgery. So I was a little dismay. Um, but anyway, so this face kind of sags down and the nose gets spent.
[00:42:40] And so, you know, because of the facial cha face changing. So this is a great way to incentivize kids, you know, teenagers or even young ones, Hey, you want a pretty face. And most of us parents want our kids to be pretty. And it's a much prettier face when you're breathing through your nose instead of through your mouth.
[00:42:57] And if it's happened that [00:43:00] okay, cuz teenagers, you still have some plasticity in the face up through age 20, 22. So there's slides. I don't have 'em here, but I've seen YouTube videos of people that kids that put the roof of their tongue. You have to put the back of the tongue up against the pallet, you know, through the day and be mindful of this to really put pressure back up on the face in order to move that jaw line back up.
[00:43:24] And you have to be a nose breather at that point. Hey mark. Okay.
[00:43:29] Curt Mercadante: Yep. Mark. I, I, I, I wanna jump in here because a, a big part, you know, reading Patrick Macon's book and, and going through your I've been through your, your presentation, Julie's been through your presentation and Julie is a speech therapist. I mean, it really impacted her in terms of it, you know, we have, uh, our daughter has like perfect teeth, right.
[00:43:49] But, but our sons, uh, two of our sons did not, and one of our sons is undersized and would always wake. , uh, it was clear he had sleep apnea. Mm. [00:44:00] And I know a big part of the ADHD and I'll call it epidemic because really what it is is people just saying, they're not sitting still in class, so they let's put 'em on drugs, which is like, I won't go there.
[00:44:11] Um, but it's it's um, and, and by the way, that's, that's with adults too. And the doctor doesn't ask about any lifestyle factors. I recently got into it with a doctor about this, and I, I said, that's mental practice. Um, so what we started doing was, uh, mouth taping. Uh, we Julie and I mouth tap. We're never sick.
[00:44:32] We wake up in the morning. Our teeth are spotless. No bad breath, no morning breath. Why? Cuz that bacteria's and I, so we started doing with our kids cause we took them to dentist and the dentist said, oh yeah, we either gotta pull teeth and you need braces, which is, you know what, 5,000 bucks a, a person.
[00:44:48] And we had been through your presentation. I said, I'm not paying that. Of course, as a parent, you're scared and you would rather throw money at it and go away and be unconsciously incompetent. Like, as I tell parents, I don't give a shit what you [00:45:00] do for yourself. But when it comes to your kids, don't be unconsciously incompetent, right?
[00:45:05] Yeah. It gives to that point where you can help them. So we, we, they mouth tape at night now, uh, our, our son is now because you know, sleep affects, like you said, the growth he's sleeping through the night. Um, but their teeth are changing. My son, my oldest son is 13. He is almost 14. His teeth. He used to have this big.
[00:45:28] Are changing. Guess what? It cost the price of mouth tape. And at, during the day, at the various times, uh, Julie got something called a munchy and it's, uh, it's a, um, it's, it's almost, it looks like a mouth guard and they put it in while they're watching TV. So instead of having TV apnea, right. Where you sit there watching TV, and by the way, there's something called email apnea too, where you sit there and you
[00:45:52] Mark Szymczak: type and right, right.
[00:45:54] Curt Mercadante: They, when they read in the morning or watch TV at night, basically they gotta keep it [00:46:00] in and what it do well, it helps with the teeth, but it also keeps their mouth shut. So they have to breathe through their nose. So it like basically reprograms are subconscious to then become unconsciously competent.
[00:46:10] Um, so I just wanna say as, as a dad. Like, yeah, it's worked for me, adults don't care. Adults would rather throw money and, and breathe like shit for themselves. But for your kids, my God. Yeah. Do this for your kids. I wanna save you five grand, a kid, uh, right. You know, and I wanna save you from. God, putting your kid on these powerful drugs.
[00:46:31] It is, it is. I have, I have relatives who are teachers and they say, these teachers, the kid can't sit still. And so they put 'em on a powerful drug and it's
[00:46:38] Mark Szymczak: just, yeah. Disheartening. So yeah, it's what got me into this cuz my son, they wanted my son on these things is what got me into neural feedback. I didn't realize at the time that was really a strong part of it was a function of his breath.
[00:46:51] So it was kind of late, but you know, now he's a peak performance guy in the Navy, you know, one of their special ops programs. And so it, it [00:47:00] is life changing. So thank you for that story Kurt, because it, it is, we need to really help the kids out and throwing money and the dentist, they, they, you know, just like doctors.
[00:47:10] That system is just messed up, you know, that they don't look at epigenetics and lifestyle factors, and they're just not taught that to some degree, you know, a little compassion around, they're not taught that. And there's reasons now that we know we're all awake as to why to some degree, but, but nonetheless, that's great.
[00:47:26] So, um, I would like K before I forget, I wanna, if you don't mind sending me information about that or a link to that mouth piece, because I wanna incorporate that into my presentation and oh, the munchies. Yeah, the mu. yeah. Mm-hmm yeah. I'll, I'll
[00:47:41] Curt Mercadante: send you a link. I'll send everyone a link because everyone asks how I mouth tape with my beard and it took, it took months of testing and we found something called Kieso tape, which flexes with my beard, but keeps it shut.
[00:47:55] Uh, so yeah, it's it's uh, that, that was a challenge, but then I had someone else who [00:48:00] just, who got something that actually was more like a, a, a head sling. Actually, he, he bought it on Amazon at your presentation. He was at my retreat and it's a, and it's, you know, it keeps the mouth closed. So yeah, I'll
[00:48:11] Mark Szymczak: also do that.
[00:48:11] Yeah. So there are different ways to skin that cat the head sling is one of 'em 3m mouth tapes, the cheapest way for those without beards, but do throw me that other, um, stretchy tape that, you know, I'd love to see that as well. Thank you for all the extra homework you've done on this cur this is fantastic.
[00:48:28] Having someone that's cares about this as much as I do. It's beautiful. So onto the nose, we have these well, well, why nose breathe? Why is it so important? Well, all factory receptors, because we can smell, you know, in our ancestors, of course you, you know, that was really important to them, to, for catching food or finding, you know, food.
[00:48:47] Um, and so, you know, they were always breathing through their nose, uh, you know, and when they were hunting, even they were breathing through their nose. And so they had naturally built up good respiratory fitness, [00:49:00] um, filtration and immune health. Like, you know, we have these silly in the nose beating at 800 times a minute.
[00:49:07] It's the best, you know, HEPA filter out there better than any HEPA filter, I should say. Um, and so filtration wise, you know, whether it be the pollutants that are out there, the chem trails that are out there, uh, you know, we need to infiltrate a lot of the, the pollens that are out there, you know, it's better to have it filtered, you know, Uh, a filter on this.
[00:49:29] So the nose is important there. The smaller passageways is a biggie. So when we're breathing through the nose, we can't, we don't have quite the volume that we do when as when we have our breathing through the mouth. And hence it's a slower process. And so that slow, uh, that slow breathing is much more parasympathetic.
[00:49:48] It's much more rest and digest. So it curtails the rapid breathing and the heart loves that. Mm. We won't be able to see, cause I don't have the equipment with me today, but when you start breathing slower, the heart rate comes [00:50:00] down. So it's a big longevity hack too. Cuz when you have a lower heart rate, you're essentially adding life, you know, adding more heartbeats or adding.
[00:50:08] You're not, you're not racing through your life quite as quickly. And so it's another reason to get your nervous system in. Um, the nose breathe in. When we breathe through the nose, it worms and moisturizes the airs for better flow into the lungs. The other biggie is that we've got nitric oxide production occurs in the nasal cavities.
[00:50:28] And so when we breathe through the nose and nitric oxide is distributed throughout the body. And, and N O is a, was the molecule of the year in the late nineties. It's a big vasodilator. It's also kind of a neurotransmitter. And so has quite a few functions in the body that I won't dive into, but it's kind of like a, a Viagra too.
[00:50:48] It really opens up the, uh, venous system, so, and prevents blood clots. So yeah, another reason that you don't wanna shortchange the nose breathing, and by the way, [00:51:00] um, when you, I was gonna say nicotine is, is actually helpful for eradicating, um, viruses, if you believe in virus there, you know, they noticed that those people that.
[00:51:13] Smoke do not end up in the hospital with COVID and they were strangely surprised by that thinking that smokers would have poor respiratory health. When in reality they had, they were knocking out viruses. So just a little tidbit, not that we smoked through our nose or anything well,
[00:51:32] Curt Mercadante: I I've seen three people over the last week, pull down their COVID mask to puff on a cigarette.
[00:51:37] So I won't, I won't, I won't think badly of them anymore. They're actually saving their lives.
[00:51:41] Mark Szymczak: Yes.
[00:51:45] poor health with one habit and better health with the others. uh, okay. So we all probably understand what these chem trail thingies are up to and how they're throwing poisons at us left and right. Including in [00:52:00] the air. So it's another reason to be breathing less and breathing through our nose because when we breathe less, we're essentially taking in less of this pollution.
[00:52:15] All right. So what happens when we're over breathing, breathing through our mouth or rapid breathing through our nose? Not that too many people do that, but if we're doing this over breathing and we have this physiological degradation going on, vaso constriction, you know, uh, reducing the blood flow, smooth muscles of the gut, constricting, bronchial constriction, these pH imbalances going on electrolyte imbalances in our buffer system, you know, being out of balance and we've got this sympathetic activation going on, where we're in more fight or flight, then we start to then symptoms start to show up like emotional imbalances, you know, cardiovascular issues, palpitations, angina, arrhythmias, you know, increased heart [00:53:00] rate, peripheral issues will show up.
[00:53:02] And so these can. This is maybe not always, not all of these are caused by over breathing, but they can be exacerbated or caused by over breathing. Uh, you know, the list goes on respiratory complications, shortness of breath, bronch, constriction, asthma, vascular conditions, you know, hypertension, migraines, thrombosis, performance, deterioration, no sleep apnea, poor sleep for focus because of that, uh, altitude sickness, you know, and decreased consciousness, dizziness when we're over breathing, you know, confusion, brain fog for that matter, the list goes on to kinesthetic balance, eye, hand coordination, sensory decline, skeletal muscle decline.
[00:53:42] Again, if we are not getting the good electrolytes into the, um, bones, we're gonna have some skeletal issues over time. Uh, tetany was another one there. That's where you're kind of cramping up. If any of you have ever done any holotropic breathing or doing breathwork right. Where you're [00:54:00] purposely over breathing for an extended period of time.
[00:54:02] Some of these breath workers say, oh yeah, just work through the Tet knee. It'll it's fine. It's fine. No, it's really not. It's a sign that you're, you're moving in a really wrong direction, pH wise and it's causing problems real time. Um, GI issues, nausea, cramping, bloating. So if you tend to have any of these symptoms on a regular basis, maybe it's a function of the way you breathe stress and hyper vigilance, you know, cognitive impairments, again, that attention deficit, poor memory learning deficits, you know, both my kids, this was affecting their cognitive capacities, you know, through the day.
[00:54:40] Um, and so, you know, I wish I had caught this a lot sooner. So, you know, key point here is that, Hey, CO2 extremely important. Um, mouth breathing, really not the thing you wanna be doing, and, but you wanna be doing nose [00:55:00] breathing. All right. Moving on. How does breathing go outta whack? You know, well starts. Hey, Hey mark.
[00:55:09] Mark.
[00:55:10] Curt Mercadante: I wanna real quick. Sorry. So we're at 11. If anyone needs to go, this will be archived later today. Uh, send me any questions. I'll get 'em to mark. If you have to leave and, and, and we'll, we'll get that back to
[00:55:22] Mark Szymczak: you, so, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Please continue. okay. Thank you for letting me drone on . Um, breathing, you know, we, we have these childhood traumas, you know, from even just being born can be problematic, right.
[00:55:39] When we're not born in water, we're, you know, I don't wanna say, but you know, it can be quite traumatic early on in childhood. Um, our, you know, we get shame, we get bullied, you know, we have accidents all the time, right? We have pollens in the air that may make us stuffy or, you know, not be able to [00:56:00] nose breathe at all for that matter.
[00:56:02] Right. So maybe we become more hyper vigilant because of these different things that go on and it doesn't have to be just in childhood. Although we carry on a lot of the things that occur to us in childhood, it can be, you know, when we're older for that matter. And we're still in this world that is CR you know, suggesting somehow that we need to be more hypervigilant and sympathetically activated to get things done.
[00:56:27] You know, it could be just the way we exercise for that matter. Oh, I need more air. Therefore, let me breathe through my mouth. And that extends, that habit extends to when we're not exercising. So there's just thousands of different ways, you know? Um, if, if, and if our mental stress is off, right, if we have these environmental triggers, if we, you know, our mother-in-law is yelling at us, or we come home to a spouse that, you know, we don't appreciate, right.
[00:56:56] And we're triggered by a spouse or, you know, at work, we [00:57:00] have a office, you know, fellow employee, or a boss that we don't jive with. Right. It can step up our hypervigilance, our sympathetic nervous system, um, or even scary movies for that matter. Right. We have this apprehension worry, fear, panic mode. That's hitting us all the time.
[00:57:18] And our nervous system is an over arou. Our heart rate is going up. Our breathing's going up to get ready for fight or flight. Our pupils are getting are dilating, right. But we don't do anything. You know, in the end we just kind of sit there. Well, wait, presentation needs a little revamp. Um, if there's no movement and the buffer system is weak already, then your CO2 is gonna plum.
[00:57:46] and your pH is gonna go up and you're gonna have electrolyte imbalances. And that's where, you know, our stress, this stress, this outward stress that's out here is going to actually turn into inner stress in our [00:58:00] physiology. So this is where the rubber hits the road that this outer stress that happens from childhood, you know, through now is creating a stress, a sympathetic arousal that has us breathing, and it's then causing these stresses on our physiology and then it's causing disease over time.
[00:58:18] So it always says stress is the main cause of disease. Well, this is how it does more specifically. And this is why things like meditation are so important just to kind of clear this process, this stress level down there are other things, cold water, you know, there's a lot of other things that we can do, but meditation's probably the best known for getting down, you know, moving our sympathetic into more parasympathetic.
[00:58:44] So, if we can get our mental head, you know, our head straight and our inner calm, you know, there, and we can get our respiratory fitness jacked up a little bit. Um, then our peach buffers come in line, our electrolytes are better. Blood flow, nitric [00:59:00] oxide oxygen delivery is better. pH is in the zone and life gets better, you know, a whole lot better.
[00:59:06] So that's why this training is worthwhile. And we can move into a more optimal breathing habit, which frees up, you know, our stress levels improves our cognitive performance, attention, sleep, athletic performance, and emotional intelligence. Right? All these things can really, and I've noticed myself, wow, I'm just getting a whole lot better at other parts of life.
[00:59:28] Um, just by having a better breathing habit. All right. Um, so how do we go from here from, you know, having poor respiratory fitness to better health, you know, and better respiratory fitness. Well, the first and foremost, there's this education, this paradigm shift you have to have, which hopefully this presentation gave you or reading some of these books, you know, like the oxygen advantage, you have to shift your belief around breathing tapings.
[00:59:57] The big one as Kurt alluded to. Right? And if you, you [01:00:00] know, are scared of this, or maybe the first time that you do this at night, you might wanna just put it on before nightfall for half an hour, just to get your nervous system used to having taped there and used to breathing through the nose. And of course you wanna work before you do that.
[01:00:14] You wanna make sure that your nose of breathing through the day. You don't wanna try and work it at night. If you're not comfortable nose breathing through the day. So first you wanna do some training. Increase your nose breathing habit during the day. And that might be things it's that's well, what, what are the things that we can do through the day?
[01:00:34] Um, well, be mindful, first of all, that we're breathing through our nose, catch ourselves, you know, we're ever mouth breathing and change that around. You might even wanna wear tape at times through the day. Um, another is really improving our ability to hold CO2 in our system. So essentially we're desensitizing our system to CO2, believe it or not, it's CO2 that tells the brain.
[01:00:59] So in the [01:01:00] back of the brain, there's something called the, the ponds and the Medula. And they have sensors there and throughout the body on how much CO2 is in the system. And if we have, if the body is sensitive to CO2, it has us breathing like every few seconds, like we breathe, breathe, breathe. Breathe.
[01:01:20] And I've put people on my equipment and sure enough, I see them rabbit breathing their heart. Rate's up, they're in this hypervigilant state. And so we wanna calm that down the way to do that is for that CO2 sensor enough to go off this quickly. So we have to acclimate to having more CO2 in our body and the way to do that is just holding our breath.
[01:01:41] Right? So there are D three dive tables. I have pictures here of, um, divers because they have some of the best respiratory fitness in the world. They can hold their breath for minutes underwater at depth. Um, I think the record's 26 minutes, not at depth, but just, you know, slightly underwater. And so these guys [01:02:00] really have desensitized themselves to CO2.
[01:02:04] Um, another way you can do that, I run. Let me see if I can show you. I run. I have a steep hill here. That I live on. And so I'll actually run this hill every other day. Do interval training on the hill with just nose breathing. I used to on flatland at elevation at zero elevation. I would run sprints, uh, at first, just running all out as hard as I could nose breathing and then, oh, to develop even more CO2, um, you know, de desensitization to CO2, I would run sprints while holding my breath.
[01:02:39] Don't start with that. Right. Just get used to hiking, walking with nose, breathing if you are a mouth breather, but eventually you can move to some of these other more hardcore hacks for developing, um, holding more CO2 in your. Uh, optometry biofeedback, um, is another. And, and let me back up to [01:03:00] other exercises that you do, you have to use your own imagination here.
[01:03:04] You know, what exercise do you like to do through the day? Do you like to hike? Do you like to swim? Right. Just work to where you have a shortness of breath, essentially, where you are putting a etic stress on your respiratory system, where you feel like, oh man, I I'm not breathing well. I, I need more air, well live with that air hunger.
[01:03:24] Right? Be it, feel it, you know, encourage it because eventually you're going to feel like when I first started these Hills, I could do one and I would have a light jog up here. Now I do four or five of 'em and I'm virtually sprinting uphill at elevation. You know, we're at 4,500 feet. Optometry biofeedback.
[01:03:44] I don't have my equipment here and we're out of time, but essentially I have equipment that helps people look at their breathing chemistry at their heart rate at their CO2 levels. And when they see it real time and they see their PHS low [01:04:00] because their CO2 is off and then they feel it. When I have them over brief, further, it really sends signals to them.
[01:04:09] So if you happen to be as Sedona and you want to spend some time on my equipment, it really can be life changing, especially for kids and to play around with this. Um, even if you've done the work and you eventually come to Sedona, it might be rewarding. I have to charge you, but it still can be rewarding for you to see, like yesterday I have a dig, do player in my group last night and his breathing was fantastic.
[01:04:32] Cuz what do you do when you play the dig? You really have a extremely long exhale. And so he had a chart that kind of looked like this one. This is heart rate and heart rate variability that we won't get into. But part of, one of the bigger biohacks is increasing your heart rate variability. And I also help people do that with this equipment.
[01:04:50] Um, I also help them with reduce their muscle tension with this equipment. Um, we also want to do consciousness hacking, which is calming the mind. So [01:05:00] for that, you know, to accelerate that, um, mental fitness and calming, you know, the, the mental chatter that's upstairs, uh, we have neural feedback at our center.
[01:05:11] Um, and if you haven't looked into that, there's, there's ways to do neurofeedback, fairly inexpensively. Now used to be with kids that they need 40 sessions, and you would really change kids or adults for that matter. And you still, you know, a lot of neurofeedback practitioners, I'm sure there's one in your town.
[01:05:28] If you're in a fairly good size town and these, uh, neuro feedback is essentially expedited me. You know, and we do full QEG, which is a brain cap that measures the different, you know, 20 sensors or 20 parts of the brain and looks at the different brain waves to determine what might need to be tweaked a little bit in order to bring about, uh, calmer state, uh, or a better state for that matter, depending on what one values.
[01:05:55] So these are different solutions. Um, you know, if you [01:06:00] want some coaching on this, just to help along these lines, you know, I'm, uh, can be employed, you know, for that sort of thing. Kirk probably could too at this point so, um, and I will have some certification level training classes for becoming a formalized breathing coach that is not a breathwork coach, uh, rather a breath ease coach.
[01:06:24] So that'll be coming up here in Sedona, um, toward the end of the year. So yeah, that's really it guys, uh, you know,