Pee Strips, Power Lungs & Pulse Oximeters: How To Flip The Switch On Your Body's Own Natural...
Ben Greenfield interviews Dr. Belisa Vranich about breathing techniques and assessment. She explains the BIC baseline test, different breath types, and tools like spirometers and pulse oximeters. The episode covers nasal breathing, breath holds, and how breath training affects performance, digestion, and lymphatic flow.
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Hey, what's up, you guys?
It's Ben Greenfield.
Sipping my elderberry wine. No, seriously, I'm drinking elderberry wine. My wife found an elderberry tree way off the edge of our property and fermented it, meaning not the whole tree, but the elderberries off the tree for almost a year. And this stuff is freaking potent. I drink a tiny little glass on ice.
I actually put a bunch of sparkling.
Water in it because I gotta like cut it down and holy cow. I don't know the alcohol percentage. But if you've never gotten your hands on elderberry and like fermented a giant jar of elderberry wine out in your garage, you're missing out on a crucial part of life, I suppose. Cause I dig this stuff. I'm drinking it like every night. Elderberry is good for your immune system, by the way. Speaking of things that you can drink that are good for you, this podcast is brought to you by some of the coolest protein powder that I've found lately. And it tastes amazing, this protein powder. So don't get me wrong, it tastes like banana bread. I'm serious. And it is all clean, whole food based ingredients. They've packed a bunch of greens into it, electrolytes, fiber. So the protein is called chocolate banana nut. You just have me up at the flavor right there. Paleo protein superfood. It's got stuff like egg protein, hemp protein, something called Sacha enki protein, which has to be good with a name like that. And that's actually a very bio absorbable form of a vegetable based protein by the. They throw in a whole bunch of superfoods into it. Things like chia seeds and flax seeds and macaroot and bee pollen. And it's just like, it's protein that tastes amazing. You could just stick a spoon in the protein powder and just eat a spoonful of it. You could probably put it in elderberry wine and it tastes good. The same company also makes this stuff they called energizing superfood. And it's kind of similar, except what.
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Because today's podcast episode is all about breathing. Well, a deep breath and a sip of wine. Enjoy the show folks.
In this episode of the Ben Greenfield.
Fitness show, you have to be motivated and really understand your body and understand why you're doing things and feel connected to the lesson personally to be able to make the change, changing your breath to be a good one. Not only because the way you breathe is one of the best predictors of your current health and longevity, but because if you're just trying to get better at everything, why not start with the oxygen that's in your body and the muscles that you use to breathe. If you're breathing in a way that's moving your lymph and you're breathing with your whole body, you're also supporting your digestive system.
He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.
Power.
Speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement.
Get out there.
When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy.
All the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.
Hey, folks, it's Ben. Ben Greenfield. And in the past several months, I've taken a deep, deep dive, pun intended, into breath work. And in the past years, you know, if you've been a longtime listener or reader to my blog, you know, I've written articles on everything from, you know, like combining ketosis and breath holds and free diving slash spearfishing, to, you know, how to make your own hyperbaric exercise with oxygen therapy devices, to WIM HOF style breathing for cold thermogenesis and climbing up mountains in your underwear, to underwater workouts that I've done with Laird Hamilton down in Malibu, to making yourself high with holotropic breathwork completely drug free, to the use of like, fancy breath strips and this device called the turbine to enhance nasal breathing during things like exercise and sleep. But lately I've actually been making an even more concerted effort to consistently do things like deep nasal breathing and rhythmic breathing and breath hold tactics during my walks and during weight training sessions and during road trips and when I'm sitting on an airplane and beyond. And by concerted, what I mean is like, consistently every day I've been making an attempt to make these forms of breathing become automatic because breathing is just so freaking powerful. And just about everybody that I know who's not dead does it. And there's this new book that I recently read. I actually recently wrote an article about it too, which I'll link to in the show notes, which are all going to be over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com BreathePodcast. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com breathepodcast. And by the way, yes, breathe is spelled with an E, B, R, E, A, T, H, E, in case you were wondering. Anyways, though, there's this new book I read and it's called Breathe the simple, revolutionary 14 day program to improve your mental and physical health. And I read this book. There are terms thrown around in this book that I thought it was just going to be the stereotypical book that was like, oh, you're shallow breathing, you're stressed out, try to take deep belly breaths and here's how to do it. Lay on your back and blow up a balloon or something like that. All this stuff that we see over and over again. But this book instead had a ton of practical breathing tactics that I'd never really read or seen before. And it's really written in a very easy to read, easy to understand way. And I figured I should just get the author on the show so that I could delve into some of these really practical, you know, straightforward, jargon free explorations of how your body was meant to breathe and also to delve into the ins and outs of proper breathing. So my guest today is, and I've just learned how to pronounce her name, Dr. Vranic. Dr. Bellisa Vranic. Did I do a good job? Belisa?
That was great. That was really good. It was actually very dramatic sounding. I hope I can meet your expectations.
It was very, very euro. And Dr. Vranic is, she's a clinical psychologist. She's got over 20 years of experience. She spent the last decade dedicating herself to the study of breathing. She just wrote this book like it just literally, I think came out this week. And she has appeared all over the place like cnn, Fox and the Today show and Good Morning America and Inside Edition, the Wall Street Journal, Cosmopolitan, Men's Fitness, the Huffington Post. She was a former sports psychologist for Gold's Gym. She's a columnist for Shape magazine. So she doesn't just talk the talk, she walks the walk too. So, Dr. Vranich, take a deep breath because we're about to delve into the Ben Greenfield fitness show on breathing.
And the puns are just, they just come out of nowhere and you find yourself surrounded by breathe and breathing and lungs and oxygen puns. So it happens. It happens.
Exactly.
Yeah.
I'm sure that does not annoy you in the slightest.
Not at all. It tickles me.
Although I actually am. I'm serious. It annoys me when people, when they're like writing an article, will use the word breath instead of breathe. Like learning how to breath properly.
Yes. Learning how to breath properly or taking a deep breathe. Yeah, yeah, it's just an e. Just add the e when you, you know, when it's there. But yeah, that happens all the Time, and hopefully it did not happen in my book. I'm pretty sure I caught all those times that I wanted to and did do it as well.
Oh, I went through it with a red pen. You're fine.
Thank you.
You wouldn't be on this podcast if you'd made that.
Er.
You'Ve got all sorts of things in this book. But one of the things that intrigued me that I think is a good starting off point here, is you talk about how to determine your baseline breath, which I think is important for people to even know if they are breathing properly or what their baseline breath is. So can you go into what the baseline breath is and how people could determine that?
Sure. Well, the first thing I wanted to talk about is why I decided to have a baseline breath. Because it's kind of a funny idea to think that you can get a grade or figure out, you know, where your breathing is. Because everybody assumes, well, I'm live alive, it should be fine, right? And actually, no, you can really be on a spectrum from an F minus to an A plus as far as your breathing and the way our bodies are set up where we're, you know, kind of designed to be able to survive, not thrive under the worst conditions and worst eating and breathing habits possible. So I decided to do a baseline and have people be able to get a grade on themselves. Just because you can't see your lungs, you can't see air. And there's this myth of, well, it's just breathe. And the fact is that most people, when I do what's called the bic, it's the breathing iq, are really along a spectrum of either pretty decent breathing or really terrible, terrible breathing. So my thought of how to teach breathing started with, well, at least let's see where your baseline is. Like you said, I come from a gym background, I come from a science background. And I like knowing here's what my number is, here's what my grade is, because then it just pushes me. I got a little competitive side to me to just get better, you know, get better. And I think everybody's sort of geared that way where if they're a D or an F, how often do I have people say, I've never gotten a D or an F in my life. And now my breathing, which is the most important thing I do, is supposedly a D. This is horrific. And it motivates them to change and to get better, which is my mission. So that's a little background on why I decided to do a baseline. Because in general, you have to Go to a pulmonary clinic, at a hospital to get spirometry done, which is just your kind of average hospital type of numbers for breathing. And most of us don't go in for that unless we either ask for it or we think we might have COPD or emphysema or something like that. So I wanted to get a way to do a baseline for just like you and me and everyone else kind of walking around your average Joe.
Got it.
And the spirometer, by the way, that's the device that you take a deep breath and you exhale as much air as you can into the device. Is that the one I'm thinking of?
Exactly. And it's sort of a frustrating test. The long bic, which is one I do when people come see me in the clinic I work, actually combines everything. It has every single breathing test, including spirometry, meaning your lung capacity, your lung velocity.
Oximetry. It has every single breathing test you could take, plus my bic. But the BIC is a little bit new and it's something that people can do on their own. Because my background when I was, I'm just, I still am a psychologist, but when I was only doing clinical psychology, my, my way of, of doing therapy was what's called psychodynamic, which is very, very dynamic as, as the name shows you. But I pull from all types of different psychology, all types of ways to problem solve and think to be able to solve a problem that someone had. So it's a fast paced, very problem solution oriented way of working. So when I started getting into breathing and wanted to come up with a method that resonated with everyone, it was the same way, which is, let's see where you are, let's get this fixed and let me give you the tools for you to be able to do this, fix it and keep living. So my goal is not to be able to sort of keep people having to read and do everything I tell them to. It's more like, here's the tools, I can do them for you, you can come see me. But I would rather that everybody, everywhere be able to take their own measurements and fix their own breathing and really make an impact. That's, that's widespread.
Gotcha. Okay, cool. You open up a few little cans of worms there that, that, that I want to delve into. Because you have this, this bic. And the BIC is a questionnaire, right?
It's a way to get a grade. So it's not necessarily a questionnaire. The problem with questionnaires is that you're self identifying a lot of information and with breathing, that's kind of tough to do. So the BIC looks at your breathing on two. You know, it gives you two sides of your breathing. You have to combine your style of breathing and an actual measurement right around the bottom of your ribs, what's called your vital lung capacity. So you have to take those two measurements and you come out with your grade. So it is not just a self report.
Oh, is that the baseline breath?
That is for the baseline breath, yeah, exactly.
Okay, so walk me through how this is actually done.
Sure.
In a little more detail.
So you have the book and it's at the back of the book. You'll see a graph at the back of the book where you look to see what your style of breathing is and, and what your vital lung capacity is. So let's start with style of breathing. And it's actually the one thing that people. It's probably the most important thing, but it's the thing that people don't look at. They really don't analyze where they breathe from. So for instance, most people will take a deep breath and on the, and on the inhale they'll stretch. They think they stretch upwards and they get a little bit taller, their shoulders come up and they're called what I call vertical breathers. Now some folks are very vertical breathers, which means they really like, you can actually see them go upwards on the inhale and exhale and come down. So there you have, if I'm going to break it down just into two or three different categories, you're very vertical. Your vertical breather that goes up on the inhale and down on the exhale. Okay, then you have your horizontal breather. Very, very few people are horizontal breathers. I'll see horizontal breathers. Probably 1 in 50 will be horizontal. And it's usually that they've read my book or you know, something else, you know, they've done some other training somewhere else, something, you know, out of the ordinary. So horizontal breathers are pretty much like your dog, your cat breathes. They breathe expanding in the middle and contracting in the middle where the biggest part of their lungs are. It actually makes a lot of sense to be a horizontal breather. And then folks also fall in the middle of those two. They're mixed breathers. They're hybrids that have a little bit of vertical and a little bit of horizontal.
Okay, gotcha. Quick question before, before we delve into like deciding which type of breather you are and proceeding more into this bic. What about like a.
What about like a baby?
Like, when you look at a baby, are they like, do we come out a horizontal breather or a vertical breather? You know, is there a way that you breathe naturally? And the reason I ask that is, for example, you know, I'm into diet and nutrition. And one thing that's really interesting is like breast milk is really high in ketones and babies burn a ton of fatty acids. And they're basically in like this state of ketosis when they're born. And then when we start feeding them like Gerber baby cereal and Cheerios and toast and macaroni and cheese, we eventually, by the time they're adolescents, create really good sugar burners who are unable to tap into fatty acids and ketones as efficiently. And I'm curious if it's kind of similar with breathing where babies come out and their hormones, horizontal breathers, and then eventually from stress and chest breathing and mouth breathing, whatever, we develop vertical breathing tactics. Is there.
It's actually exactly that. Yeah, there is something to that. And like you bring up PH of. You know, when you're fed a certain way as an infant or as a baby, you have very good ph. And then you start getting fed garbage. And you know, your acidity changes because of the garbage that you're. That you're fed. But also. So you come out having your breath being one that supports a neutral ph. And as it goes changing to be a vertical breath, it makes you more acidic.
That's interesting.
It can make you. Yeah. Or it makes it unbalances your ph because it can, depending on the way you're breathing, you can go to either extreme of the scale, neither of which is good.
Right. There's actually. There's a book about that, about the ph, how we often think that you should just try and get rid of CO2 as much as. And so a lot of people will over breathe. It's a book. It's called the Oxygen Advantage.
Excellent book, by the way.
Yeah, it's a great book.
I'll link to it in the show notes for any of you who want to read that book. But it's this idea that by constantly breathing off CO2, you can create a state of too much respiratory. I guess it would be alkalosis. And actually put yourself into alkaline estates. You can shift the ph in either direction. Interesting.
Yeah, yeah, that's an excellent book. And the over breathing is a style of breathing that's one of the breakdowns of vertical, mixed and horizontal. Because you have. Where you're breathing From So when I look at vertical, mixed and horizontal, I'm really looking at what part of your anatomy are you using to breathe, how is your body moving, how are you using your skeletons and your muscles to breathe? And that's not looked at very often. And then afterwards looking at over breathing, under breathing, intermittent breath holding.
If you're a gasper or a paradoxical breather, there's a whole bunch of other breakdowns that you can actually look to see what you are. But at the very least you should know are you a vertical, a mixed or a horizontal breather, and start changing in the direction that you want to go, which is going back to that horizontal breath that you used to have as a child. I usually don't talk about babies breathing, people talk about infants belly breathing. But the fact is that infants really don't have a choice in how they breathe. They don't, their, their postural muscles aren't, haven't developed so that they can actually breathe any other way than the brain, the way that they breathe, which is that belly breath. But if you go ahead and look at children sort of between the ages of 5 and 10, that's when you can start seeing the breath change. Because most five year olds are still horizontal breathers, although they've developed, you know, obviously balance and being able to move around. But it actually changes usually by the time you're about 10, definitely by the time you're an adolescent. And if it doesn't by then, and most people have changed by then, definitely by the time you're in your 20s and then you've got a bad breathing habit that lasts 10, 20, 30, 40 years and takes your ph along with it.
So yes, and one other quick thought before we delve back into this BIC that you were going through and I identifying whether we're a vertical or horizontal breather. I'm curious if you've ever come across this book by Dr. Kate Shanahan. She's a nutritionist worker for the LA Lakers and she actually writes about how.
The shape of the face.
And again, I want you to think I'm obsessed with babies, but this is something that came across my mind when we were having this discussion. The shape of the face, the shape of the jaw, the neck, the chin, et cetera, is actually influenced quite a bit bit by.
Vitamins responsible for bone and bone building and bone metabolism, particularly vitamin D and vitamin K and how mothers who have low amounts of vitamin D and vitamin K intake and babies who have low amounts of A, D, E and K tend to have asymmetrical faces and jaws that are kind of like drawn back. And they tend to be people who breathe incorrectly and literally the shape of their face. I mean, she goes into how the symmetry of the entire body changes. And you essentially have, like, less beautiful children who are able to breathe less efficiently when they're deficient in fat soluble vitamins or when the mother is deficient in fat soluble vitamins. Have you seen this book before?
I haven't seen it, but I do know that depending on how your jaw and the musculature that's around your head and your neck can really make an impact on how you breathe, whether you breathe through your mouth, whether you breathe through your nose, and, you know, whether you become an apical breather, meaning that you breathe, you know, sort of up by your collarbones. So that wouldn't, that wouldn't surprise me. It sounds fascinating. Yeah.
Yeah, it is fascinating. She just came out with a new edition of that book, Deep Nutrition, and I'm going to try and get her on the podcast to talk about it.
Excellent.
Yeah. So we find out in this bic. First we find out if we're a horizontal breather or a vertical breather. And that's based off of. Off of like a test that you do that's within the book here, grading your vertical versus your horizontal breathing.
You can actually look like when I, when I say to someone, well, let's see. If you're a vertical breather, it's pretty easy. You can either look at yourself in the mirror and just take a deep breath. And if you really feel your shoulders or if you see your shoulders move upwards and you feel like you get taller on the inhale and then on the exhale, you sort of settle down, that you can actually self report or someone can look at you and watch you breathe. And the fact is that most people are vertical. I'd say nine out of ten, maybe a little bit more, are vertical breathers or mixed vertical breathers. It's really, really rare to find someone who has kept that horizontal breath. So you're. Almost everyone is a vertical breather. They've caved because there's so many pressures to breathe vertically. They've caved to.
Culture, to modeling their breath that their parents have to all different kinds of things and breathe vertically because we're told, and we have this, this concept that it's a good breath to breathe up and down.
Got it. Okay, cool. So we find out whether we're a vertical or a horizontal breather, and then what's the Next step.
So the next step is a measurement. It's called vital lung capacity, and it's one that was taken way back in the 1840s and 50s that people started taking this. It's still done in some physical therapy schools in Canada. There's a great video online where a physical therapist named Paula Moore does it. She shows you how to do it. I show you how to do it in the book, and I'll tell you right now. Now, you take a soft measuring tape, and you put it about 2 inches underneath your sternum. So it's sort of the very bottom of your ribs in front of your body. It's above your belly button, the very sort of 2 inches below your sternum. And you take a deep breath in, and you measure that number, and you take the breath the way you usually breathe. You don't change your breathing to try to be a horizontal breather. At that moment, you really look to see, what is my number? When I take a usual breath, you inhale. You can even try taking a big inhale, as long as it's the way you usually breathe. Measure that number. You exhale, you measure that number. And now a little math gets thrown in, but the general idea is that your inhale should be bigger than your exhale.
Okay, got it.
And if you want the math for that, it should be that what you do is that you.
Let's actually say that we measure you, and you are. Let's say Your inhale is 36 and your exhale is 34. Would kind of be a typical inhale and exhale for you. Okay. So that's. There's a difference of 2 inches between your inhale and your exhale. Well, average, just average would be 3.4, 10% of the exhale. So you've got two inches between your inhale and your exhale. You should have 3.4. So your goal then is to two things. Change your vertical breathing to a horizontal breath, and change your inhale and exhale to have a bigger difference between the two. Where Your inhale is 3.4 inches bigger than your exhale. Now, that's incredibly technical for a lot of people don't want to be measuring themselves. But the fact is that there should be a significant difference in inches between your inhale and your exhale. And you should not be moving your shoulders very much at all. Most of the movement should come through the middle part of your body, expanding on the inhale and contracting on the exhale. And you would be flabbergasted by how many people are either not breathing, expanding in their middles, or if they are, it's really minuscule, leaves you unbalanced and deficient in a lot of the things that you need.
Okay, gotcha. This is really interesting. And by the way, for those of you listening in, I realized that towards the end there, Melissa broke up just a bit with the audio. It is the hazards, wonders of technology when stuff like this happens. But ultimately, I think you got the gist of what she's saying there in terms of that baseline breath. And that's towards the end of the book where Belisa has a full appendix that goes into how you can take the measuring tape and get this measured for yourself. And by the way, Belisa, the other thing that you mentioned as you were going into the baseline line breath that I wanted to make sure I did not neglect to ask you a little bit more about was all these little tools that you have to do a full measurement. I think you said these are at your office, you talked about a spirometer and an oximeter. Just because we have a lot of people who love to self quantify and love all these little biohacking tools and stuff. If somebody were gonna build themselves the ultimate breath measurement, Batman lab, so to speak, what do you think would be the crucial tools to own, or what would you have have at your office if someone were to walk in there?
Oh, you know, I love that person. I actually love skeptics and I love that person who's like, give me more numbers. So you've got a spirometry. So I look at your lung capacity, what's called your FVC and your FEV1, which is velocity, which is very important. Both of those are very important for everyone, but particularly for athletes, if you want to take an efficient breath and a breath. Breath that doesn't take up too much time. Say you're doing intervals or. Yeah. Or you're fighting or you're doing something where you get a little amount of time to be able to take a couple deep breaths. Don't want to expend too much energy taking them, but you do want to replenish your body. So those two on the spirometer, I also look at oximetry, so I look to see what's your percentage of oxygen in your body. That number tends to fluctuate a little bit. I only take it because there are very few people that are. That are healthy, that are under, say, 95%. But I do have folks that come in, they're 94, they're 95, and that's a little bit alarming if you're under that. If you're even lower, then sometimes I don't even let you leave because it's a problem to be walking around that low. Once your oxygen goes down that low, you're at a high risk for a heart attack, right?
Unless you're exercising. Like for example, I have this big, big HEPA air filter hypoxic air generator made by this company called Hypoxico out in my garage. I used it when actually I used it when the spartan races that I was doing the past couple years, they started doing all sorts of these high altitude places. So a couple of times a week I'd go out there and just walk on this incline treadmill that I have next to this hypoxic air generator. And I would know it was a good session because it comes with this little pulse oximeter that you put on your fingertip every few minutes during the session. But when my blood oxygenation would begin to fall below about 80%, I would get a really, really good training response, slash mild headache. But you can also use this for performance, can you not like purposefully reducing your blood oxygenation levels?
Well, the other thing you bring up is you can absolutely do things like that, again, carefully because a lot of people are out there doing things that are not very carefully, that are a little dangerous. But you also have to think about exercise induced oxygen deprivation. So, you know, if you've been exercising a lot and using a lot of oxygen, you are going to take a little while to get back into a balance. So looking the oximeter is interesting for that number. But again, I really like looking at a couple other things that I'll talk about because most of these numbers are not functional unless they give you information on what to do about it afterwards. And that's. I was meeting a lot of people that were frustrated at, well, I can get these tests done, but usually if I'm over 80%, the doctor just tells me to leave. They don't tell me, well, you know, you are okay, you're within normal limits. And then like Paul Check says, like within normal limits, when you combine, when you look at your average population just means you're kind of sick like everybody else is. So part of me putting together this test was being able to give you numbers and things you could do about them. Because to me, 90 isn't an A. 90 means you're 10 points under having optimal breathing. And I want my breathing to be optimal. I want my oxygen to be optimal throughout my lifespan. Not only because the way you breathe is. Is one of the best predictors of your current health and longevity, but because if you're just trying to get better at everything, why not start with the oxygen that's in your body and the muscles that you use to breathe? Right, Right, right. Yeah.
Okay.
So again, it's. It's a functional test. Because you take the test and then you have things to do afterwards. It's not, hey, I'm normal. I can just go on my life. It's like, hey, I always look at it as how. How many degrees under being perfect am I not, Hey, I can go home. I'm at 80. It's like, hey, I'm 20 points lower than what I could actually be. So, again, that's more like the type A competitive person that I am. But there's a lot of people out there that think the same way of, well, this is good for my age range, but, hell, I don't want to be good for my age range. So, anyway, so acidity. So I definitely do. I like the. There's a particular acidity strip I really like. You just get it at Whole Foods. It's wrapped in tinfoil. It's in a little coil. They tend to work better for me. And I like looking to see how acidity is, because when you're acidic.
Is that a urine PH test?
You can use urine on it. And again, you know, with physical. It's not. When you use saliva. When you use urine, you should take it a couple times. There's times where it's more reliable than other times, but I do saliva just because it makes the tests go quicker, and it tends to be fairly reliable. You know, if I have to give my patient a urine acidity test, it takes a while, and I really just want to know ballpark where they are as far as acidity.
Right.
So you can. You can use saliva with them as well. And there's plenty of literature out there that will tell you when to take it, when to take the acidity test, what not. You know, don't chew gum, obviously, or drink coffee right before you take it, because it will totally throw things out of whack. But it will give me an idea of, are you walking around at 5 or are you walking around at 7.4? And that's the range that I'll get. I might have a class, and I'll have people that lick the acidity strip, and nothing happens. It stays yellow, and I have people that lick the acidity strip, and it's almost black. So if you think about the difference in ph from one person next to the other, and it's interesting because you can have both those people eating the same thing, but if their ph is off because of the way they breathe, so it's respiratory acidosis or alkalosis, then they can change their eating as much. You know, they can change that a lot. Still not going to make a difference on their acidity because they're not trusting their breath.
Yeah, yeah, that's something. By the way, we mentioned that book Oxygen Advantage. That's something I think he goes into in that book about how people who, for example, over breathe and create like a net alkaline state constantly within their body, they tend to actually crave some acidic foods. Right. Like sugar and starches and coffee and alcohol because those foods help to restore acidity to an over overly alkaline ph. Sometimes you see people who have breathing issues, especially like over breathing, tending to crave junk foods.
Yeah. And I mean, they probably crave junk foods for a bunch of different reasons. But one of the ways you can change that immediately is by changing your breathing because it's not necessarily metabolic, although you probably crave those things because you're out of whack. But the easiest way to change them, you know, there's really interesting algorithms. Water out and green. I'm a big fan of green juices and vegetables and such. But change your breathing because that's a tool that you have right there and we're just ignoring it because we don't know how to get a baseline and how to change it, which was the whole, you know, my whole reason for doing this. So, so yeah, it's, that's, that's fascinating. I'm finding in general that when people change the way they breathe from the beginning and end of class or the beginning of end of whatever practice you design for yourself after you come up with a workout for yourself is you can change it 0.4, 0.4 degrees in 90 minutes. So you can come in with a being acidic and leave being almost normal just by changing your breathing in 90 minutes. So I'm collecting data on that because I'm kind of a data nerd on what changes when you change your breathing. So the reason I take that the acidity again is functional is that you take it when you come in to see how am I walking around and how much has it changed by the end of class or by the end of this appointment. I look at a breath hold and not because I'm breath hold crazy, because I think there's too many people right now that are really, you know, obsessed about their breath hold. And unless you spearfish or free, you know, holding your breath is interesting, but it's not necessarily indicative of anything too important except for if it's very, very low. So my folks who are really sick, if they come in and usually if they can't. 45 is your average for breath hold. So if you're holding your breath, you know, if you can only hold your breath 18 or 20 seconds, you're probably not doing so well. You're probably very, very acidic and you're probably sick. I don't have healthy people that can't hold their breath, you know, at least till 20 or 30. So for me it's sort of another red your body doing. So you have to remember I get people that are coming in to address their breathing and their oxygenation because they're recovering from cancer or they're recovering from heart disease or they have panic attacks or they've got copd. So how is your body doing? The breath hold kind of alerts me to what's going on with them. I also do something called a bolt which is a breath hold on retention. It's a Russian measurement.
Yeah, I've been doing that one. That's part of the, is the Buteyko breathing method. Is that how you pronounce it?
Yes, exactly. I stumble on it as well.
Got it. And can you describe how that test goes?
So that's just a breath hold on retention where you hold your breath on an exhale. Their numbers are very high so everyone tends to fail that one. So I'm not really sure, you know, with, with many things that sort of come from old school Russian mentality, it's really hard to find the research to and to really get some good hard numbers on. And that's one where I've found I can't really find some good hard numbers on. So most people do are not able to hold their breath to I think the 40 seconds that they say is average. But again, it's an interesting measurement. I like throwing every single measurement I can find into to my BIC.
When I'm working with anybody in a sport where holding your breath is important. So for instance, fighters like being able to hold your breath on an inhale or on an exhale because you might be getting choked and be on an inhale or an exhale. Yeah, being able to hold your breath and know how long you can hold your breath is important.
Being able or surfing.
Surfing, surfing. It's, you know, it's not that first wave. It's the second and third wave. So you have to be able to know how to take a breath between them. And you also have to know, I mean, the. There's a lot of really good people that teach breath holds in. In. In surfing.
Yeah, that was. That was Laird Hamilton's whole reason that he started doing those crazy underwater workouts that he does in Malibu. I don't know if you know of him or Brian McKenzie is another guy who's the big tattooed fellow who's often in the pool with Laird and who I've gone and done these workouts with where they'll carry dumbbells back and forth across the bottom of the pool or tread water with the dumbbells in between their legs, kind of like half upside down with their face under the pool. And obviously, all of this stuff can be kind of dangerous unless you're under supervision. But these guys do all that just so they can handle it when. When the big waves push them under and they're down there for, like, two minutes.
Well, Laird is sort of a genetic.
Alien. He's really such a beast, in a good way of a man. And I do have a footnote about what he does and the importance of the breath that he talks about, for sure. And I doubt he ever does this alone in his pool. Like, just never do these things by yourself. You should have people around and you should. You should know where you are as far as your health before you go doing them. Because above water in my class, and I don't do any of the extreme things, although I do some extreme breathing workouts, people get really tired, and we're not adding ice or kettlebells to class. So you should first get through the basics before you go throw yourself off the deep end. Although I love training, that's really hard, and that really pushes you. But, yeah, I have a. He's in a footnote. I don't know what page, but I definitely mentioned him because he is such a. He is such a fan of breathing and of paying attention to your breath. But with the breath holds, there's other sports that are really important to be able to hold your breath. And funny enough, it's if you shoot, so go into the range or if you golf. Having a really good breath hold is important because if you can extend the moment when you're motivated, most peaceful on the very end of the exhale, then you'll have more time to be able to shoot or to putt your short game in golf. So it's really, it's really interesting how important breath hold is, but you have to do it with the intention of recognizing when you're most quiet. Not really, just like, oh, I can hold my breath longer than you, so you have to buy me a shot.
That's really interesting. I'm a bow hunter and there's this trip train to hunt competition that I often compete in which you got to draw and hold for 60 seconds and then shoot. And in many cases, one of the things that you do to keep the pin from moving around is you just shut down your inspiratory, expiratory muscles and any breathing patterns. And of course, you try to slow your heart rate and try to minimize movement in general. But I never really thought about doing breath hold training to actually improve shooting.
Yeah, and it does. And I mean, for people that anybody who can't move when they're doing something, be that a surgeon, a tattoo artist, if you're, you know, if you're an eye surgeon or anything like that, is that you have to be able to. You then have to take a breath after and before. And that's what a lot of people don't do. They just continue to hold their breath or to do what I called hover, which is that you don't take, you know, you don't breathe a lot and then you hold your breath. You need to be able to train yourself to hold your breath. Be very still. Recognize that place between heartbeats at the very end of the exhale when you're most still, and then when that's over, to take really big, enormous breaths to make up for it so that you don't end up always chasing your breath and trying to catch up to that balance again.
Right?
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Wow, there's.
There's so many things you can test for. So. So you have like, a spirometer. You have blood oxygenation, you've got your breath hold, you got your. Your vertical and horizontal measurements. You have, like, the PH test that you do. I know there's a. There's a lot of other things you talk about in your. In your book, and I don't to want. Want to get totally derailed by going into testing equipment, but if there's one other thing that you could pick as being, like, a really cool thing that you use in your office or that you've seen use for breath, what would it be?
Well, you know what? I'm going to tell you that one that I use, which is finding out.
How strong your exhale muscles are, because again, people always think about breathing as the inhale. You know, they'll yell, breathe, breathe. And the fact is that you should really be yelling, exhale, exhale. Because it's the exhale that's not getting enough attention. And if you feel like you can't catch a breath, it's usually that you haven't exhaled, not really that you haven't inhaled enough. So I look at what's called exhale pulsations, and I actually do have people around the country that are beating each other and trying to get better, you know, and sort of frothing at the mouth when they find out someone else has beat their record. But exhale pulsations come from yoga, a breath called kapalabhati in yoga. But again, this class and what I teach comes from birthing, singing, martial arts, belly dancing, free diving. It comes from everywhere that has breath. So exhale pulsations are a lot like Apollobhati in yoga, where you try to blow out a candle that's across the room, but not only do you blow on the blow, you squeeze your body so your belly button gets closer to Your spine, and that's considered one. So if you were to blow out, blow the candle across the room and your body squeezes, you have to be really careful because a lot of people with will tense their body on the exhale. And the fact is that you should be narrowing it. So you should actually, your belly should be getting closer to your spine. It should be getting concave on the exhale. One of those is an exhale pulsation. So we do them so that you have to see, are you within normal? Are you within normal for an athlete? And then you look at who has the record. So, you know, you can guess. I can tell you what normal is or not, or you can try to do them and let me know. But it sounds like this.
That's what it sounds like. You're blowing out candles and every time you're really squeezing your belly. But like I said, you don't brace it. You narrow it to the point where your belly button is really close to your spine. So when I look at someone to see how many exhale pulsations they can do, if they can do 20 and they're an athlete, that is not good news at all because it means that their exhale muscles are weak. Now, if your muscles that you breathe with are weak, you're going to get tired. And an athlete's worst enemy is something called perceived fatigue. Okay. A lot of people think it's fear, it's doubt, it's not having heart. Your worst enemy as an athlete is actually the fatigue of your breathing muscles, which gives you this sense of fatigue that you can't pinpoint because most breathing muscles don't have nerves. And you don't get really, you don't get that burn that would tell you that your muscles are sore or that you're tired. So exhale pulsations are really great way to see where you are as far as your breathing muscles, specifically your exhale muscles.
Got it. What you just described is actually that isn't that the breath of fire, like those short, sharp exhalations?
Kapalabhati. Yeah, yeah.
So if you were doing, I guess that's kind of like what you'll see in, for example, like the Wim Hof protocol where you'll go through, I think it's like 12 to 16 weeks. I don't remember off the top of my head. And almost every day, in addition to walking around your neighborhood in your underwear and gloves and a beanie in cold weather, you're doing like this power breathing or breath of Fire to train your inspiratory and expiratory muscles. And what you called that, like the clinical term for that is exhale Pulsations.
Exactly.
Okay.
So you have to be careful. A lot of people will do those and only be thinking about the movement and will not have the position of. They won't really understand the musculature and the anatomy well, so they don't do them right. So that actually. And anybody who's teaching breathing, whether it be me or Wim Hof, it always obviously comes from somewhere else because we have not invented breathing in any way. And most exercises have already been talked about in some other. Some other field. Singing has amazing, really difficult breathing exercises. So none of the ones that you're hearing about now are ones that are novel at all. But explaining them to someone, having them be able to understand why they're important, having them be able to have a baseline and get better, that's really what's new about it. Yeah. So making sure.
I'm a huge fan of singing, by the way, especially like. Like the. I think you mentioned in the book about humming, but also like singing in a low voice, like anything that. That vibrates the body and especially some of. Some of the muscles around the throat. Because of the vagus nerve stimulation.
Exactly.
That you get from that. You know, the same as you would get from like Cold Face. So jokes or.
Meditation or yoga. When it comes to vagus nerve stimulation, just like deep low singing and humming and activities that vibrate the throat and the palate and the voice box can be really good for nervous system health.
For nervous system health. But also when I talk about singing, it's really people who. And I've had these folks before who sing either punk rock or heavy metal, where you have to be able to sing really forcefully, very quickly, so your breathing muscles better be strong. And for singers, it's very different. What you work on is very different. You have to be able to take a really big inhale, like astronomically big inhale, fast. And then you have to be able to exhale in a really controlled way to have all that air to get you through the sentence or the song or whatever it is that you're doing. So with singers, the protocol is really different because the inhale you have to take is a huge inhale that's fast and then controlled for the exhale. So the exercises are different, but. But yeah, in general, the exercises for singing, for belly dancing, the exercises that come from martial arts, a lot of the Russian special operations training, the systema stuff is super cool. And it's about bringing it together in a way that makes sense to people. And the exhale pulsation, I see people do them wrong all the time because they're just trying to do them fast and it's, you have to actually do them in a really controlled way and understand why you're doing them, understand what muscles you're using and what you'll feel afterwards. So it's a process, it's an intellectual process. I get a lot of folks who've, who've taken classes elsewhere and they like the extremes. They like, you know, they like interesting, they like being entertained. But I come, you know, from a background where it's really, that change comes. You have to be motivated and really understand your body and understand why you're doing things and feel connected to the lesson personally to be able to make the change of changing your breath to be a good one. So yeah, so if you're going to do the exhale pulsations, just watch. Make sure that every time you exhale your belly is really not even flat against your body, but belly button is close to your spine and you'll watch once you get tired, it wants to do the opposite and you just see what number you're at. Because 50 is the average. 50 is the average. And I have really strong shredded fit people who cannot get to 50 and it's because they have this muscular corset around them and because their breathing muscles are weak week. Do they look amazing and hot? Absolutely. Are their breathing muscles really? Yes. So it's, you know, it's, it's kind of fascinating when you start breaking it down to, you know, how strong are my breathing muscles? Have I worked on them? And, and what are my numbers? Like, like I said, 50, 50 is the average.
So many of these tactics that, that, you know, because I did like a decade of competing in Ironman triathlon and there are so many, I mean from, from, from nutrition to ketosis to meditation to all these fringe things that just make your body and your brain better. I wish I'd known about many of those things when I was doing Ironman, but man breath work, if I would have known about deep nasal breathing and breath hold tactics and exhale pulsations and stuff like that when I was doing such a cardiovascularly intensive sport.
I think I would have been able to perform better by knowing some of these things. I think a lot of athletes just, they don't get taught this stuff. I'm actually very careful. I had a long discussion with this about my kids last night at the dinner table. Because I knew I was interviewing you this morning and your book was there at the table. We had a long chat about the right way to breathe and how to breathe during meditation, how to breathe during exercise. And we did some breath hold chats and we do breath hold competitions out in our hot tub. And I wish my, my parents had, had, had, had tapped into those kind of like breath training tactics because it's so, so powerful.
And how old are your kids?
Because they're eight.
Yeah. So they're right in the middle, keeping them breathing low. I mean, there's going to be times where you change to vertical depending on what you're wearing and how you're feeling, because those are the two things that'll throw you into a vertical breath. But at least don't forget because right now when people come in, I say, yeah, we have to change your breathing. But you used to breathe this way. So somewhere where, like deep in your soul somewhere you've breathed this way and you remember, your body does remember and, and it does want to use its diaphragm. I mean, you start breathing with your diaphragm, it feels completely different and totally odd. But the only reason this damn thing, which is enormous is in the very middle of your body. It's to help you breathe, you know, so starting to get it, you know, get it unlocked and using it again is really, it's really fascinating.
Now one of the things that you talk about in the book that's kind of timely for me because I'm about to launch into. I'm going to do a January detox and a bunch of people are going to join me and we're going to be doing coconut oil pulling and dry skin brushing and weekly saunas and stuff like that. And even a 24 hour fast at the end of each week, a Saturday dinner to Sunday dinner fast. But one of the things you talk about in the book is the link between breath, the lymphatic system and detoxification. Can you delve into that a little bit?
Oh, sure. I mean, it's a topic that, it's hard for people. Again, I'm trying to figure out how to get a baseline for lymphatic systems and that because people don't see lymph, they don't understand it. They don't understand this drainage system in our body. It's very hard to quantify in a way that makes sense to our brains that like numbers and simple solutions. So the fact is that you have this. It's a drainage system in Your body. If you're not breathing well, you're not getting lymph, which is something you want to get, you know, sort of drain out of your body, but you're not giving your body the movement that would get this out. So a lot of the toxicity you have in your body really comes from, and I guess, you know, ancient Chinese medicine says this as well, is that stagnation happens in your body and that's how you get disease. So when you breathe with your entire body, there's movement in your entire body and it helps with blood flow draining, lymph, getting blood everywhere, but it just helps movement in your body and detoxification. So, you know, you might want to Ben, as part of your, whatever you're doing in January is take the 14 days, do baseline on yourself and see how that is. Because as far as doing a health makeover on yourself, using the breath and changing things through the breath is just going to help you get better and support everything else you're doing.
Yeah, I think that's a great idea. And it goes perfectly. Hand in hand with just my increased focus on breath work and deep nasal breathing. And one of my favorite things to do now, especially when I travel and I don't freaking want to go to the gym and pump iron when I'm traveling across the pond and or I'm jet lagged or I'm in a different country or I'm tired.
Well, that's because there's only two weights in the weight room and one broken bicycle that's right.
In the dirty elliptical trainer with the right side that squeaks. But the one thing that I can convince myself to do no matter what is I can either go to a pool and swim and do like light breath hold restriction swimming or I can go on a walk. And my walks these days all I do is I just tell myself, okay, you're going to walk a half hour, all you're gonna do is breathe through your nose. And every time you cross a street, you're gonna hold your breath as long as you can, right? And I call it like my breath hold nasal breathing walk. At least that's the sexiest title I've come up with yet. But it's really amazing. Like you feel as though you've meditated or you've done some kind of a yoga session after you finish just a simple walk or a simple, like, you know, just swim consistently for 20 minutes and breathe every. Do like a 2, 4, 6 breathing, right? Like breathe every two strokes, then breathe every four strokes, then breathe every six strokes. And it's amazing how good you feel afterwards. And it's an interesting point that you make in this book too about how the lymph system doesn't actually have a built in pump and all the circulation of the lymph is stimulated by breathing. And I suppose we could say things like rebounding or maybe infrared waves or things like that seem to be able to move it around a little bit too, from what I understand. But breathing is so important for the lymphatic system and removal of toxins. I hadn't really thought that much about it until you went into it in the book.
When you find that you breathe with your whole body, which is the way you're supposed to breathe, you should be moving, there should be movement in the breath. But right now we're walking around with so much fear and stress and bravado and anxiety that we're stiff and we're holding ourselves in a way that helps us feel safer bracing our bodies, but it's wreaking havoc on the entire system. And I know that, you know, I also often get asked about, and I knew you wanted to ask me about digestive system and peristalsis.
Yeah, exactly, I did.
Yeah. And it's for me, if you're breathing in a way that's moving your limbs, lymph, and you're breathing with your whole body, you're also supporting your digestive system. And like, you know, peristalsis is that sort of massage like wave, like motion that happens with your digestion. And if you're breathing with your diaphragm, which is right above all your digestive organs, then it's supporting that wave like motion. And it's just so simple. I mean I just, every day when I explain this, and I love explaining it, I'm passionate about it, every time I explain it, I always blown away by how easy it is, but how effective it is. So you have acid reflux, constipation, irritable bowel or whatever, even if it's minor. And if you breathe with your diaphragm, which is the muscle that's right above your digestive system, all those things are automatically going to get better because there's a muscle that actually really massages your digestive organs. So are you going to use it or not? And it's just wild how simple it is.
There is a book by John Duyard, who's actually a guy who's really into breathing too. He's ayurvedic practitioner out of Boulder, Colorado. And in his book, he has a new book called Eat Wheat. It's actually really good. It goes into like, you know, why this whole infatuation with like gluten free diets and avoiding wheat might be kind of flawed when we look at wheat from a more ancestral standpoint. But one of the things that he goes into is this concept of, of belly massage where you actually kind of like bend over, you forcefully exhale most of your air and then you kind of reach in underneath your rib cage area and like dig your fingers in there where your diaphragm is and you do like this diaphragmatic massage to assist with peristalsis and gut health. It's almost, almost like you, you stimulate your diaphragm with your hands and something I've been doing. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this actually.
Sure.
Because he mentions this in the book about how you could use like, you know, one of these, these handheld vibration devices, you know, like a Hitachi magic wand or. I, I have one called a, called a Myo buddy. And it's literally like a. You, you could probably use a vibrator too. I, I suppose if you happen to have one handy, ladies or gentlemen. But the idea is that you, you use like a vibratory device to stimulate your diaphragm as you're kind of like bent over in a slightly exhaled position. Have you ever tried anything like that? Like self diaphragmatic massage?
Yeah, well, that particular movement comes from yoga, it's called nauli. And the bending over, it's actually my version of it is called exhale pulsations on retention. So you're doing those same exhale pulsations that we just learned, except for you're doing them on an exhale. And I, you know, now that I feel like I know you better, I can tell that you're going to be doing these whenever you can. But you exhale all the way out and you flutter your belly and it's an incredible massage for everything in the middle of your body. But you're also getting that breath hold and you're getting, you know, your obliques and all your muscles that have to do with, you know, deep core muscles like your pelvic floor are also being stimulated. So I love that particular particular movement where you exhale all the way out. The massage tool that I like is called a deep muscle stimulator. It's sort of the Cadillac of massage instruments. The thing looks like a, you know, it actually looks like a big metal gun. I get stopped at tsa all the time for it. Which actually is good because it does look like a huge gun. But it is this fabulous tool that just vibrates the hell out of you. And I love that one for diaphragm stimulation.
And the reason I see.
Oh, wow.
It's like I just looked it up on Amazon. Is this the one that's like $3,000 on Amazon?
Exactly.
Wow. People who like to own nice things, I suppose because of. Well, the one right underneath, it says deep tissue percussion massager. And it's like 39 bucks. I'm wondering how comparable it is.
Probably not at all. I mean, this thing could really. If you need to use it for home repair, it's really solid. I'm that kind of.
For jackhammering.
Yeah. Yeah. But it's like I don't love. I mean, I don't really love going shopping if like as much as other girls do. I don't know. I love health gadgets. I don't love this. Stuff like that I don't love. You can accumulate and buy more shoes and things like that, but if I can save up and buy this thing like that really just. That just really excites me is like I'm probably.
I look at things like this as an investment, right? It's like, you know, I have this little device that I wear on my collarbone when I sleep called a Delta sleeper. It's like 500 bucks. And people are like, I would never spend that much on something that helps me to sleep. And I'm like, well, a good night of sleep to me is worth about 10, 15. So once I've used this thing like 50 times, it's paid for.
It's paid for health gadgets to me. And this one I saved up for. And I don't regret it for a second. The thing is fantastic, but, you know, I can. Yeah, it's super cool looking. And I would understand that most people are not going to spend $3,000 on a massage tool. But you know, when they come in and I use it on them, they're just happy. They could not get happier. But you mentioned diaphragm stimulation. And the reason why that's so important is that the majority of people have diaphragms that are really restricted. They're locked up. They do in the literature, PT literature. They do talk about them being temporarily paralyzed, but in general, most folks, their diaphragm is not moving at all because they've been bracing and squeezing their middles for so long that that measurement. This actually goes back to the measurement the vital lung capacity that we took in the beginning when we started talking, if you look about where that measurement is, it actually is measuring your diaphragm. So when we measure you hypothetically, you went from 34 to 36. That's how much your diaphragm actually flattens out and expands your body on the inhale and exhale and narrows your body. So we want the diaphragm to be stimulated, to be moving, to be flexible, and to be active every time you inhale and exhale. That's the point.
So that's how you beat constipation. You get a EMS professional deep muscle stimulator massager for $3,000 and you bend over and do these exhale pulsations. You know what's funny is those now, now that you describe it, like bending over, exhaling your, your air and doing these pulsations. I was actually taught that very tactic by my free diving instructor, Ted Hardy, when I went down to Fort Lauderdale and did a week long free diving course. On the last day, he's like, I want to show you the number one stretch that free divers do every day to increase their diaphragmatic strength and their ability to be able to resist the painful diaphragmatic contractions that can occur when you're holding your breath for a long time. And it was that move. You kneel down, you exhale all your air, you bend, bend over, you do the exhale pulsations. And in many cases, he'll do this multiple times in a row. It's like a workout that you do on your knees until you're nearly blue in the face. And you should do that. It's really interesting.
I have people right now the record is 71 for how many pulsations they can do of that sort.
71 is the number to beat.
70 was the number that be beat. But you have to make sure you're not cheating that actually when you, when now this is all on an exhale. So when your, your stomach goes into your body, it really goes in and feels like it goes underneath your diaphragm. And you have to let go in between each squeeze. And if you do it right, you'll get this really odd kind of flopping feeling with your belly. But it's an amazing belly control. Some of the people that have the best core muscles are belly dancers and belly dancers. Dancers don't have six packs. If anything, you look and they have sort of softer middles, but they can do more of these, you know, these particular exercises than you And I could, and you know, most really jacked and ripped people could because their, their muscles, their diaphragms and all their deep ab muscles are really incredibly strong.
Got it. Interesting. Now, one of the things that I wanted to ask you about was in addition to like some of the tools that you use in your office. Office, your thoughts on some of these things that you see people using. And I admittedly use this. I keep a power lung in my glove box, for example, which is this inspiratory, expiratory muscle training device that you breathe in and out of. And when I'm on a long road trip, every time I pass a mile marker, I'll just do 10 seconds in, 10 seconds out, or I even use an elevation training mask. I'll go in the sauna and do some bridging and some crunching and some squats, et cetera, stuff like wearing this training mask. And I guess those are probably the two most popular devices you see out there. Are you into those type of things or do you just go with the good old nose in the mouth and the fancy massage device?
You know what, Ben? The first time I wore a high altitude tank, so it wasn't a mask, it was a tank. It was a serious piece of equipment.
Which is true altitude, not resistance training but, but actual true altitude. You're breathing reduced oxygen in the air that you breathe.
It's brutal. And ran long distance with it. Cross country in 1982.
Wow. You've been doing this for a while.
I've been doing this for a while, yeah. So I have tried and know about every single gadget out there. All of them are interesting and good if they have you focus on your breathing as long as your vital lung capacity is at least 100 and you're breathing horizontally. So the problem with so you don't.
Want to train bad. I wouldn't want to like take my power lung and do a bunch of shallow chest breathing with it.
Exactly. Because what it's going to do is that with all these, the, the get whatever gadget that you're using is that it's going to affect your performance if you're training at the same time. So you're not going to get as good of a workout if you're using this gadget. Well, because first of all, depending on your sport, it could fall out of your mouth or fall off your face. But if it's you're not training good breathing, you're training bad breathing. The only thing it does is make you feel really good about it when you take it off. And you know this. When you take the mask off or whatever, you're just like, oh, thank God that's done. It just feels really good to take it off your body. If you have 100 vital lung capacity and you're breathing horizontally and you're using these things, they're absolutely going to be great for you. But the fact is that most people don't even know how badly they're breathing before they start using the gadget. So to me, it's, first, make sure your vital lung capacity is good. Make sure you've got. With exhale pulsations, do everything without the gadget, max out on everything else, and then use the gadget. And I'm telling you that most people cannot max out on the exercises that I do that I have them do be. Before being able to get to those things.
Okay, okay. Okay. That's really good to know because a lot of people will grab those and like the guy who did the Recent hilarious biohacking YouTube video, or biohacking, I think it was a Facebook video, like, jump up and down on their trampoline wearing their elevation training mask while trying to drink their smoothie full of coffee and butter. And they just do everything wrong. Right. They jump wrong and they drink wrong and they breathe wrong. And so I think that's a good point. Point you make. Like you have to learn probably some of these more basic techniques before you jump into the fancy. Yeah.
And they're not easy. It's not that people go, oh, this is going to be an easy class, because I do have people, you know, who get very lightheaded, who have dry heaves depending on what they're doing. And if it's in a beginner advanced class. But you could just be solidifying your bad breath if you come in and you've been using the power lung, which can be. You know, I like Bas Rutten's gadget as well. That. That one.
I know which one you're talking about. I forget the name of it, but he's. He's like the.
Yeah, it's similar as well.
The. He's an MMA fighter and it's like an oxygen training device. I think it's a little bit different than the power lung in some way. It's called. Called the O2 trainer. The O2 trainer. High altitude training. I think it's funny that a lot of these devices say they're high altitude training devices, though, when you're breathing a normal amount of oxygen. But there's. There's interesting research Research. Right. Like you breathe off CO2 and there's a large amount of CO2 in the dead space that you're breathing back in. And so you're increasing your tolerance to CO2 or you're training your muscles, but you're not really doing like true elevation training.
Well, you know, my brother is a Machu Picchu expert, so he spends his time going back and forth between low and high altitude. And, you know, he's really does true high altitude training because if you don't, you know, you pass out or you get some sick. So he sort of laughs at a lot of these things because they're not true high altitude, you know, measurements. However, again, I have a huge amount of respect for anyone who brings attention to the breath because it's important. But. Oh, yeah, I had people come into class that have used these things and are better breathing than anybody else. No, but would I love to get someone who's gone through my training then uses them? Oh my God, I'm chomping at the bit for that. That would be amazing. Amazing.
Yeah. And, and that's actually, you know, some. Something I've, I've read about before how like the marathoner, the Ethiopian marathoner, like Haley, I always mispronounce his name Jablossi. I think you know who I'm talking about. He'll do, he'll do like breath hold repeats like during his four hundreds or like, you know, Bear Grylls. I know when he was training to like climb mountains, he would do a lot of the type of restricted breath training that I talked about in the pool. Right. Where you go for a long swim, but you only breathe every eight strokes. And it's interesting how a lot of these less complex techniques, such as just like holding your breath during exercise actually does cause a little bit of a bump up in erythropoietin production. The same as you would get if you were free diving at 60ft and had your spleen compressed. So it's kind of interesting how you don't have to get super fancy with some of this stuff. You can just freaking hold your breath or do nasal breathing when you're out doing exercises. And as you just alluded to, to when you're doing these things, breathe more horizontally than vertically.
Yeah. And I mean, the simple ones can be sometimes the hardest. I know Joe Rogan does a breath where he inhales as slow as he can and he exhales as slow as he can. Now that doesn't sound that difficult until you try to take One breath in a minute and one breath in an exhale. So one inhale in a minute and one exhale in a minute. But not just holding. You actually make sure you're inhaling for the entire 60 seconds and then you're exhaling for the entire 60 seconds. So there's a lot of really great exercises you can do. But at least start by seeing are you using the right muscles. Because like I said, I have people come in who are great breath holders, but their breathing muscles are really weak. So again, while I love breath holds for some things, just make sure. Can you do exhale pulsation? Can you. Is your vital lung capacity 100 or 110 or 120? Because I get people that have gone up to almost 200 as far as how much they can expand. That's the important thing. Not really. How much you can hold your breath is how big is the capacity. Are you using all your lungs and are your breathing muscles strong? Those are the things you need to ask yourself.
Yeah, I got myself to be able to do that single inhale, exhale in minute by simply using an app called Pranayama. And, you know, it's. It's basically something Mark Divine, who's like a Navy SEAL commander who's really into breath tactics showed to me. And all it does is just plays a simple chime so that you can do like five seconds in, five seconds hold, five seconds out, five seconds hold. And then every week or so you can. You can add a second. Right. So you get yourself up to like a 10, 10, 10, 10. And eventually before you know, know it, you're taking in one breath over the course of half the minute and then holding it for half the minute and exhaling for half of another minute and holding for half of another minute. And it's just, just like anything, right? You gradually train yourself up to that level.
Yeah, and I actually, I tested Mark about two weeks ago, so.
Oh, really?
Okay.
Cool.
Small world.
Well, this. This is fascinating stuff. We, we've gone into to a ton of resources for folks, so if you're listening in and you want to read Dr. Belisa's. Did I say that right? Belisa.
Perfect.
Yes.
Belisa Vranich's book, Breathe. I will link to it over in the shownotes@bengreenfieldfitness.com breathepodcast and I will also link to everything else that we talked about from.
The acidity testing strips to a recent article that I wrote over at Quick and Dirty Tips that actually goes into Belisa's book to some of these other books I mentioned to even the $3,000 muscle stimulator that you too can get if you want to be just like Belisa and have the best massager.
I suppose it could be like a $3,000 vibrator as well.
I have not tested it out, but.
I guess by looking at the shape, yeah, we won't go down that rabbit hole for now because we've been going on long enough. But just leave a comment in the show notes if that's something that you find out is efficacious for you. And anyway, speaking of the show notes, leave your comments or your questions and I will jump in and reply and try and point you in the right direction. And finally, if you enjoyed this episode, leave us a nice little review in itunes so that we know that you like it. Leave a nice five star review and that always helps the show out a little bit as well.
So.
So that all being said, Belisa, thanks for coming on the show and sharing all this stuff with us.
Thank you so much. This was a blast. Anytime.
Awesome. Well, very cool. So folks, again, BenGreenfieldFitness.com breathe with an E Breathe podcast. And until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Dr. Belisa Vranic signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a healthy week.
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