Interview: The Oxygen Advantage with Patrick McKeown

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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to the Optimize podcast. Today I'm thrilled to be chatting with Patrick Miguan and I'm really excited about today's chat. We're going to actually have two separate interviews, one on the Oxygen Advantage, which is going to be this chat. And then we're going to talk about another one of his books called Anxiety Free. And I was, as I was sharing with Patrick in our kind of prelude to this discussion, I change a lot of things in my life all the time. I'm constantly optimizing, so it's tough for me to say what specifically one thing may change my life in different ways, but I'm pretty sure that the practices I adopted from Patrick's Oxygen Advantage have most significantly changed my life, period. It's truly astonishing. And I've done a lot of things and you know, some nutrition things have been huge and some mental training things have been huge. But most recently, unquestionably, this is it. Learning how to breathe properly is something that I took for granted forever. And Patrick, your book really introduced me to the importance of getting it right. So just a deep thank you for that and I'm really excited to share your wisdom in this context and invite our members to go deeper into your work. So welcome.

Happy to be here.

The Oxygen Advantage. Simple, scientifically proven breathing techniques to help you become healthier, slimmer, faster and fitter. Talk to us about I like to start just the Oxygen Advantage. Why did you name your book the oxygen advantage?

For 15 years I've been working with children and adults. Mainly they had asthma, they had snoring, or they had anxiety. Children would come to us because their dentist had referred them because mouth breathing children can develop crooked teeth. So we were always working with health. And it was a few years ago somebody asked me, why don't you try and connect this with sports. And I said, how would I go about this? This was an exercise physiologist. He said, you need to show is there a connection to reducing lactic acid? And that was part of it. So we were wondering, you know, we knew the background to it, that yes, to breed you can influence the amount of oxygen delivered to the cells and tissues. We knew that, but we wanted to tap into harnessing oxygen. And even though it's based also in other gases which play a role, and for example, carbon dioxide is a crucial one, but a lot of people think carbon dioxide is a waste gas. So we said, well, people know that oxygen is a good gas, so let's look specifically at that. But also tie in how the other gases play a role there.

That's great. That's one of the things we'll talk about, is the unacknowledged role of carbon dioxide and getting that right. So what happens when we get oxygen right? What is the advantage?

Well, Brian, I have to say, most of Western society has it wrong. And I'm not saying all, but I'm saying, you know, I hear it so, so often. I was one of these guys for about 25 years taking big breaths. I was a chronic mouth breather. I had my mouth open during sleep, continuously breathing through it. I used to wake up exhausted. I had undiagnosed obstructive sleep apnea, asthma, chronic rhinitis, everything else. And I still thought it was beneficial to take deep breaths, to take big breaths. It's something that's absolutely endemic, you know, throughout the Western world and even in sports. The ironic thing is, you know, you were talking about your little seven week old. Your seven week old baby will show us all how to breathe. Because when we were born, we were breathing two ways, in and out, through the nose and breathing lightly and also using the diaphragm. So healthy baby, you know, as the child grows up, we develop habits. We're sitting down at desks all day as adults, we can be under stress and also we can be talking a lot. And talking influences your breathing. So many factors of modern life change our breathing. But ultimately the rule with breath is a normal and good breathing during rest. It should be in and out through the nose. It should be driven by the diaphragm, it should be light, quiet, effortless, and gently paused on the exhale. And I know there's a few things I've thrown in there, but ultimately, light breathing is king. If you went for a run alongside an elite athlete, you'd Notice that they're breathing for the amount of physical exercise that they're doing, a really good athlete has got light breathing. And conversely, if you went for a walk, you know, alongside somebody who's very unfit and say they're carrying their suitcase, you'll notice that they're really kind of out of breath. So we're like human beings. We should be like cars in a way. How efficient are we with our breathing? And light breathing ensures optimum oxygenation. And conversely, the more air we breathe into our lungs, the less oxygen that's delivered. So the instruction to take a deep breath is correct. It means using the diaphragm, but the instruction to take a big breath is incorrect. And many people Talk about Take 25 big breaths in and out, and, you know, super saturate your cells with oxygen. Well, I have to say it's not correct. If you take 25 big breaths in and out of your mouth, heavy breaths, it will offload CO2, and it's the loss of carbon dioxide that will actually reduce the amount of oxygen delivered to the cells. That's why people feel lightheaded when they take. Take big breaths. And the other thing is, you know, if we're sleeping with our mouth open, as I was, we're taking heavy, big breaths all night, heavy breathing, probably snoring, possibly holding our breath or stopping breathing, and we're waking off very tired. So here's the situation of big breathing. But we wake up exhausted. And when we switch to the nose and when we understand the roles that the nose plays in the human body, and once we understand that, like I. And I was giving a podcast to this yoga expert just three, four weeks ago, and he had a community of yoga people. And I'm saying, like I said, it's great that yoga is talking about breathing, but if we are to talk about breathing, we need to understand the basic physiology of what's involved, you know, because when we understand what's involved, then we know why we should be breathing in one way as opposed to why we should be breathing in another way. And it's. It's simple stuff. It's been around for a long time. No secrets to it. But I suppose it is a secret in one way because most people don't know about it.

Well, let's go there. There's so many things in what you just said that we can talk about. We will talk about many of them. Talk to us about the basic physiology.

Basic physiology is when we breed oxygen trunk oxygen passed into lungs. It passes from the lungs into the Blood. And in the blood, oxygen is carried by a protein called hemoglobin. And when haemoglobin is carrying oxygen, but the catalyst for the release of oxygen from the hemoglobin is increased temperature and increased carbon dioxide. So if we do physical exercise, our cells, our body gets warmer, temperature increases, and our cells produce additional carbon dioxide. And that environment is perfect to encourage oxygen to be released from the red blood cells to the cells. It's no good just having oxygen in the blood. We need to get oxygen to be delivered from the blood to the cells, because it's. When it's delivered, it can be used by the body to power that. You know, the functions of the organism. But if we breathe too hard, we get rid of carbon dioxide, too much of it. So it is true we do breathe to get rid of excess carbon dioxide. But the role here is don't get rid of too much of it. If you get rid of too much of it, not enough oxygen is going to be released from the red blood cells to the cells. So in order for oxygen to be released, we need a normal amount of CO2. And what determines blood CO2 is our breathing. So basically through our breath, it regulates the amount of CO2 in the blood. When our breathing is normal and light, we have optimum levels of CO2, and that ensures optimum oxygenation. So that's one aspect of it. So that totally turns on its head, the whole instruction of taking the big breath. The second is nitric oxide. And nitric oxide, it's a wonderful gas throughout the body. The Journal of Science in 1992 said it was molecule of the year, that it unites all the major disciplines of medicine. It plays quite a few roles in the human body and the nose. The paranasal sinuses are quite a source for nitric oxide. So basically, nitric oxide is released from the paranasal sinuses into the nasal cavity. And when we breathe through our nose, we carry this nitric oxide into our lungs. Nitric oxide opens up the airways. It's a natural bronchodilator. Nitric oxide also sterilizes the incoming air, and nitric oxide improves what's called ventilation perfusion. So in essence, because we sit upright or we stand upright, if we were to look at the lungs, the concentration of blood is generally in the lower parts of the lungs. But if we're breathing with our mouth, we breathe generally into the upper part. So the greatest concentration of blood is in the lower lobes. But if we're using our upper chest or breathing through the mouth, we're breathing into the upper. When we breathe through our nose, we automatically start activating the diaphragm, which is our main breathing muscle. So nose breathing brings the air naturally deep into the lungs. And mouth breathing brings the air naturally into the chest. If any of your listeners, all they have to do is look down at their body, take a breath through the mouth and see is it the chest or is it the diaphragm that moves. So nose breathing activates the diaphragm. But nitric oxide, when you breathe through your nose, you carry, you pick up nitric oxide. If I have my model around, I'll show it to you. I have it somewhere, but God only knows where it is. So if you carry nitric oxide into your lungs, nitric oxide brings the blood from the lower lobes to the upper. So here you have a better gas exchange taking place. In a nutshell, nose breathing is responsible for a 5 to 15% improvement in arterial oxygen uptake in comparison to mouth breathing. Nose breathing breeders better oxygenation up, better oxygen uptake and better oxygen delivery than mouth breeders. And how many children are mouth breathing? 50%. So we have a car crash waiting to happen here. There's a few really important things that we need to look at. The nose is responsible for 30 functions in the human body. That was by a Dr. Morris Cottle, an ENT surgeon in the 1970s. He stated that but a few things. Forward head posture is influenced by whether the mouth is open or closed, the development of the face and the development of the airway is a child. If the mouth is open, as mine was, the jaws are set back. When the jaws are set back, the airway is smaller. When the mouth is open, the palate is high. And when the palate is high, it infringes on the nasal cavity, so it's more difficult to breathe. So 60% of the faces formed by the age of 4 years of age and 90% of the growing face is formed by 12 years of age. 50% of children are habitually mouth breathing. Nobody is telling these kids any different because the awareness isn't out there. And yet we know that this is going to influence these kids health for the rest of their lives. In adults, increased gum disease, increased dental cavities and increased bad breath, sleep disorder, breathing and anxiety. And I will tie it all in with mouth breathing. And also, how you breathe during rest will also influence how you breathe during physical exercise. If you have an individual going around with the mouth open and breathing hard during rest, they're also going to have excessive breathlessness. During physical exercise, we want our breathing light during rest and that will translate into light breathing during exercise. So, so yeah, the optimal way to breathe through the nose, lightly and using the diaphragm.

Can you talk to us a little bit more about those 50% of the kids and of course X percent of the adults who are breathing through their mouth. What do we do about that?

I think we really need a shift of awareness. I've got no statistics for the amount of children in the United States. A lot of the awareness of mouth breathing is coming from Brazil. And you know, there's therapies there, even myofunctional therapy, speech and language, SLPs, speech and language pathology and all of these modalities are interested in whether a child breathes through the nose or through the mouth. So they have looked at it. And Brazil, ITS studies show 55% Portugal, 56% Japan, 35% of children habitually mouth breathing. If parents understand. And this is what I tried to put the connection in the book, I put a chapter in there, you know, because I think really we, I want to help people in sports, but the next generation in sports are the children who are currently mouth breathing. And that's why, you know, I put it there because I have to say, you know, the publishers, they were absolutely brilliant. But they said, Patrick, they said we can't include this chapter. And I said why can't you include the chapter? And they said, because the readers are going to upset because, you know, you're showing that people who mouth breathe, it changes the shape of the face. I said that's fine. I said my own face has changed. But I said about what about my child and what about the reader's child? You know, so we can still get the information out there, but it's really about awareness. There's so much documented evidence. Brian, I regularly give talks in the United States. I give a talk next week in Columbus, Ohio and the doctors there will be aware of the importance of breathing through the nose. I gave a talk at the Alpha Educational Institute last week in Washington D.C. and they were aware of it. You know, I gave a talk before that, a week before that in Chicago at the AAMS and that was 5, 600 people, all medical professionals. You know, we're talking about dentists, orthodontists, medical doctors, pediatric dentists, pediatric doctors. They're aware of it. So it just hasn't filtered into the normal population. And that's unfortunate because really feel that to drive this change for both children and adults, it's going to be Driven by the general public. But we need to get it out there. And that's why I'm always delighted, you know, to chat with yourself, you know, because I think it's a great forum. And does it make sense? If you look at the animal kingdom, you know, very few animals breathe through an open mouth, with the exception of a dog. And a dog will use kind of its body. You know, it uses its tongue to regulate its body temperature. But if you were to look at the dog, at most times, actually, the dog would have its mouth closed. And the cat and the rabbit and the horse and the cow, the sheep, and all of nature's animals breathing through the nose, except for the human, because the human doesn't know what the nose is for. So, yeah, making that change is good. And you know what? It's. Physiologically, it's a healthier way to do it. Look at the breathing of people who are sick. Sick people breathe too much. Is it their sickness that's increasing and changing their breathing, or is it the increased breathing that's influencing their sickness? And, you know, a good way to look at breathing is, how do we breathe when we get stressed? I always ask clients coming in, I say, you know, how do you breathe when you get stressed? Do you breathe faster or do you breathe slower? They'll say, well, I breathe faster. And I said, do you sigh more or do you sigh less? I sigh more when I'm stressed. And do you breathe using your upper chest or your diaphragm when you're stressed? So upper chest. Do you have more noticeable breathing when you're stressed? People say, yes, they get it. When we're stressed, we breathe more. And when we breathe more, the amount of blood flow that's feeding the brain reduces. And in some people, it reduces by up to 50%. So the carotid arteries, which are the main arteries treating the brain, they constrict. That's why people feel lightheaded if they breathe too much. So that's what we want to address, simple information. And sometimes the most simple information is the information that's overlooked. You know, as. As. I had a debate with one professor for medicine, and he said. He says people breed. I said, that's correct. I said, but they don't all breed the same. And you were talking about diet, and you were talking about, say, water consumption, air. And that's what we survive on as human beings. We survive on food, water and air. We can eat too much, we can eat too little, we can drink too little water. We get dehydrated. But we can also drink too much water, and that is a problem in the sports industry. Professor Timothy Noakes, who wrote a great book called the Lure of Running, is well recognized. He's also written a book called Waterlogged because the sports industry drink is kind of cultivating all of these athletes to drink as many, you know, fluids as possible. But it's problematic and unfortunately it is causing some fatalities. So my point here is we need a certain amount of food every day, we need a certain amount of water every day. How much air should we breathe? That's the key, you know, so breathing, if you were to look at the importance of a function in the human body, the importance is determined by how soon the organism perishes when we switch it off. And with food, we can last without weeks. Water for days and breathing for just a few minutes. It must meet certain defined parameters and that's what it's going back to. So, yeah, it's interesting.

Very practically for me just to start thinking about, well, what can people do differently? I was just sold by what you just said, which you obviously discuss in more detail in the book. Again, highly recommend the book. Everyone listening for you and your families immediately switched to nose breathing and just becoming aware of how often I slipped into mouth breathing. And then when I was training, Dr. Mercola talks about you and his book Effortless Healing and actually wrote the forward, I believe, to your book, if I remember correctly. And so I read both those books around the same time and then started training through while breathing through my nose, which obviously when you start doing something like that, that's new. It was rather challenging. But again, I was convinced and I experienced what you said, which is, look, the whole dynamic is going to change where after that brief period of discomfort and just learning a new skill, everything will become easier, the training will become easier, the recovery will become easier. And I've seen that even as we said in the beginning in our Prelude, my high intensity workouts are now done exclusively through my nose. First few times I tried that, it was horrible, horrible. But now it's the quick, the speed with which I can recover by not allowing the over breathing through the mouth is astonishing to me. But then I think perhaps the most important thing I did, which you talk about in the book, is putting a piece of tape over my mouth, surgical tape over my mouth at night. And I jokingly, whenever I share this, I always say it might be the most impactful and absurd thing I've ever done, but it works. And just this, having this tape over my mouth Again, I'm not sure which of those variables. I'm sure it was all influenced, most impacted, but it's been huge for me. Tell us about anything that particularly jumped out at you that you think is relevant to explore in more detail. And then specifically, I definitely want to hear your recommendations around the tape over the mouth at night and why that's such an impactful thing to do.

Okay. When you first switch from mouth to nose breathing, it's a little bit of a challenge. Sometimes people will have rhinitis. They have their noses partially blocked. Other people may be more fully blocked. You can open up the nose by simply holding the breath and say, for instance, once the female isn't pregnant or once you don't have any serious kind of medical conditions, Very safe exercise to do. You take a gentle, soft breath in through your nose, a gentle, soft breath out through your nose. You pinch your nose with your fingers. You can just gently nod your head, holding your breath for as long as you can. And for your listeners to continue holding their breath until they feel a medium to strong air hunger and then to let go, resume breathing through their nose, calm their breathing. Wait a minute. Do it again. Wait a minute. Do it again. Do it five or six times. The nose will start opening. When we hold the breath, nitric oxide pools inside the nasal cavity, and it may be nitric oxide that's opening up or reducing the inflammation in the nose. It may also be carbon dioxide, it may be heat. We don't know for sure, but we know it works. Your breathing will influence the intensity of how you can go with physical exercise. So we have a bolt score, which is the length of time that one can comfortably hold the breath for. The shorter their bolt, the more breathless they get with physical exercise. So the purpose is for the individual to practice the exercises. And as they do so, their bolt score increases. And as their bolt score increases, it's easier to maintain nasal breathing. Now, some people will have an advantage to nasal breathing than others. I. Because I have the structures, my nasal cavity is quite small, my nostrils are pinched. I would have a slight disadvantage because I don't have the space sufficiently to breathe in and out through it. I can, of course, and I can do physical exercise, of course, with my mouth closed. I do all my physical exercise with the mouth closed. But you will have other athletes with really good facial structures, and they can do it easier. It is tougher at the start because you're adding an extra load. But that's the key because you're improving the respiratory muscle strength. Because you are adding an extra load to it, but you're also improving body oxygenation because you're harnessing nitric oxide. And the taping of the mouth at night, that's a small paper tape that we introduced 15 years ago to our own clients. And we found it made a huge, huge difference. Now we have to state like we don't use it if the people have tummy complaints or if they've been drinking alcohol. We also asked them to put a fold over each side so they can take it off easy. And it doesn't matter whether people use the tape or not. The key is we have to get them out closed. So if the mouth is closed during sleep, sleep is deeper. So I started taping up about 20 years ago and I haven't stopped it since. I still tape now. If I fell asleep somewhere on a plane, for example, my mouth is closed, but the tape actually becomes a crutch that you put a small piece of tape in the mouth and instantly there's a connection there for sleep time. So taping has been huge. Breathing through the nose has been huge. And you know, even my own energy levels, you know, breathing through the mouth versus breathing through the nose, no comparison, you know, no comparison. So I think it's a combination of things. Think a lot of people will get, not everybody, not everybody will get results. You know, some people feel that they wake up very alert anyway, so they're, they're not going to probably find all that much by getting them out closed now. It's better, you're still better off. But for some people, for I'd say 60% of people, maybe 70%, once they get them out closed at night, their sleep is. There's no comparison. So the rule of thumb is any, anybody who's waking up at a dry mouth in the morning and also waking up tired, you need to get your mouth closed, breathe through your nose.

Amazing. We talked about sports and working with athletes. Talk to us about that.

Yeah, it's been tremendous. It's opened up the field of breathing to a, an entirely very motivated. And also where we can show different benefits. I spent four years looking through what effect does regular, you know, what effect does do the breathing exercise have on the individual. Putting the connection together, doing breath holding to improve aerobic performance. You hold your breath. We simulate high altitude training. We use pulse oximetry with all our athletes. So basically we use a little non impulse oximeter and we show that with the exercises that we can simulate high altitude training. You simulate high altitude training. If you can lower the SpO2 below 95%, we would expect with the exercise to get them into the 80s. When you go hypoxic, which is lack of oxygen, your body will make adaptations. And one adaptation there is that your spleen contracts to synthesize. Well, no, actually your spleen contracts to release more red blood cells in circulation, and the kidneys become hypoxic and deliver to a lesser extent. And they synthesize a hormone called epo. And EPO is quite infamous with some cyclists who are doing the Tour de France. So it's a hormone, so, so, you know. But the hormone is naturally produced in the human body. When you do rat holding, and you go into a low oxygen environment by holding the rat, your body starts producing or making adaptations to increase the red blood cells into circulation. Red blood cells carry your oxygen, Aerobic capacity increases. There are some non responders, but that's the same if athletes go up into high altitude. Not all athletes will get the improvements to the red blood cells from high altitude. And what we do is going to be the same. The second aspect is delaying the onset of lactic acid and fatigue. We deliberately drive the body into a hypoxic state, where it's hypoxic, hypercapnic, low oxygen, high carbon dioxide. We're subjecting the body to increased hydrogen ions, a lot of hydrogen ions, making the blood very acidic. And by doing that, the buffering capacity of the body has to improve. During a sprint, the oxygen saturation may drop from, say, 98% down to 93%. Well, when we're doing our work with the sprinters, we're dropping it from 98% down to 85%. So we're completely disturbing the blood acid base balance. The body makes adaptations, buffering capacity increases and that delays the onset of lactic acid and fatigue. We also add an extra load onto the breathing muscles to improve respiratory muscle strength. The diaphragm can become fatigued both during endurance and also during high intensity. And if the diaphragm gets tired, which is your main breathing muscle, if that gets tired, it steals blood from the legs. So if there's blood being stolen from the legs to feed the diaphragm, and now the legs are in trouble, so the legs go jelly. So if you improve the strength of the diaphragm and the intracostals, you're delaying, or at least you're, you know, you're able to push your body harder to the point there's an onset of diaphragmatic fatigue. Another aspect is people with asthma so just even your normal individual with asthma, that historically was my main work and I've been involved with four clinical trials with asthma including one with rhinitis and we've seen very, very good results. We've 16 clinical trials in total. So you'll have many athletes who are subject to exercise induced Asthma. Could be 10%, maybe even more depending on whatever sports we can have that snoring big problem, athletes who don't have the energy levels mentally, you know, so we help with that with getting a deeper sleep. Concentration levels following the breath is very good for training the brain because nowadays Brian we're looking at Facebook, we're in and out of social media, we're distracted by our emails, our phone is buzzing, there's text messages coming in, everything is taking our attention and the brain is getting distracted and the brain is getting distracted to the point that it can only hold its attention then on something for a short period of time. So you could have say it's attention deficit. So an interesting one was in 2002 Microsoft did research, they looked at what's the average attention span of the westerners brain. Now I know they looked at people in Canada so you know, we'll give the Canadians some leeway here at this. I think it's going to be applicable to all nationalities. But basically they studied the western individual's brain, they said the attention span is 12 seconds, that's 2002. In 2012 it is reduced to 8 seconds. It's a big problem, 25% of a drop. Now what that means is that the ability of the individual to hold their attention on something for a period of time is reducing. Their brain is very much distracted. Stress levels have increased, anxiety has increased because stress and anxiety is the inability to switch off thought. And the more we think, the more stressed we get and the more we think the less we can concentrate on what we're doing. So for athletes it's very important to focus on the breath and the breathe. Light exercise, it gets you to get an air shortage where you're deliberately slowing down your breath to the point that you feel a need for air. And when you're feeling that need the mind is very concentrated on the breath and that holds the mind in place. So basically you're training the brain to hold its attention on something exclusively for, for a period of time without distraction. And of course it's normal, you know, when you focus on your breathing it's normal for the mind to wander. But then we bring it back, the mind wanders, we bring it back the mind wanders, we bring it back and with that it's like developing that we're developing the brain muscle, you could call it neuroplasticity, that the human brain is subject to change. You know, it does like we can influence it, we can influence its development even into adulthood. And they've done this with U.S. marines. They've had four platoons of U.S. marines. They had two platoons looking at their breathing for six weeks, a half an hour a day for six weeks and two platoons control group didn't do anything. And the group that were following their breath, when they put them into battlefield conditions, they were far better able to cope with stress. So the amygdala, which will be part of the fight or flight response, that would shrink when we follow our breathing. So we're, I think on many fronts breathing, you know, was usually was the domain of guys with nothing better to be doing. You know, some guy that he's plenty of time, he can be focusing on his breath all day. But nowadays, when you see big corporations looking at it, U.S. marines, top athletes, now we're starting to realize there's something huge in this in terms of many different facets, not just in training the brain. Improving concentration, improving sleep, reducing asthma, improving respiratory muscle strength, improving aerobic capacity and improving anaerobic capacity. So there's a lot going on with a number of different exercises, so many.

Different things that we can unpack on that.

The other thing is that when, when I was writing the book, I had to make it clear that if it worked, I, I have to back it up with science. And this is not opinion. You know, there's, there's quite a few studies and the science can be accessed easily from our website. We've put the papers up there, we've put the abstracts and then people can download the full papers, you know, over the Internet. You know, oftentimes people can make claims to this, that and the other. No, but if people really look at this, they'll see the signs to back it up. So I think, I think it's very important to mention that because, you know, there's always going to be, you know, maybe products coming out in the market and they don't deliver the claims that's made in the products. And I, I didn't want to go down that route. If I could show it and I would include. And if I couldn't show it, it wasn't included.

Yeah, that's amazing. And it's an important point. I appreciate you making it for two reasons. One, just this is grounded in science. And two, tell us your website where people can go and learn more.

For sports it's oxygen advantage.com and then for health it's buteykoclinic.com which is spelled.

B U T E y k o clinic.com so check all that out. This is so good. I so appreciate you and your passionate wisdom. I'm wondering if we want to, well, pause and we'll do anxiety free separately. I was thinking we could continue, but I think it'd be helpful to separate the two.

Sure.

Is there anything in the context of the oxygen advantage we've obviously simultaneously talked about a lot and yet only scratched the surface. Is there anything significant that you think we didn't touch on that we should.

You know, I think people should, should really kind of start just observing their breathing. Pay attention to whether you're getting breathless, easy. You know, for example, are you breathing through your mouth? Do you wake up at a dry mouth in the morning? How does your child breathe? And on that then I did a TED talk, you know, if people, they might find that interesting. And I've gave a couple of exercises on it. Practice the exercises. So the whole goal in the TED talk was can you change your breathing and improve your body temperature in three minutes? So that was the exercise. The whole goal was can you by slowing down your breath, influence your blood circulation? We've got a hundred thousand miles of blood vessels in the human body and when you really slow down your breathing, the blood vessels open up so people can feel warmer. And also people can have, they can experience increased watery saliva in the mouth, which is activation of the parasympathetic nervous system. I think once we start playing with it. So yeah, start off small and you know, I think it's great that we can change our blood circulation and delivery of oxygen through the breath. Go on to Google, look at Bohr effect. Bohr effect. And that describes how oxygen is released from the red blood cells to the cells. Carbon dioxide increases, ph drops and oxygen is released and all of that stuff is available. That effect was discovered back in 1904 by Christian Bohr. But yet we often hear about breathe in oxygen and get rid of as much carbon dioxide as possible. Well, it's like this. Oxygen is released from the red blood cells to the cells and the presence of carbon dioxide. So I'd say to your, to your listeners, become aware of it and you know, stay, start playing with a little bit and see where it takes you.

That's fantastic, Patrick, thank you. We'll talk again about the anxiety free for now. Remember oxygenadvantage. Com. Learn more about Patrick and the power of breathing. I really appreciate you. Thank you.

Great. Thank you very much, Brian.