Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #221 BITESIZE | How to Reduce Stress and Anxiety by Changing the Way You Breathe | Patrick McKeown

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today's Bite Size episode is brought to you by AG1, a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It includes vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut health. It's really tasty and has been in my own life for over five years. Until the end of January, AG1 are giving a limited time offer. Usually they offer my listeners a one-year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel packs to

Starting point is 00:00:51 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better, Live More. Bite size your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 99 of the podcast with Patrick McKeown. Now, Patrick believes that breathing correctly is the secret to better health and well-being. And in this clip, he explains why our emotions, sleep, and our breathing are interlinked and gives some great practical tips to help reduce stress. breathing is fundamental to life right we're all breathing yes so why have you written a book on breathing i was a mouth breather for about 20 years and my asthma was getting progressively

Starting point is 00:01:57 worse my sleep was getting progressively worse i was waking up tired every morning and also my ability to handle stress. And I came across an article in an Irish newspaper, it was back in 1998, and it said two things. It said, breathe through your nose and to breathe lightly. Now, when I read it, it struck a chord because I was constantly caught for breath. People could hear my breathing in the room, my nose was stuffy and I was breathing through an open mouth. And you kind of learn to live with these things. And I took on board what the article was saying. I used an exercise to open up my nose, which was simply

Starting point is 00:02:36 holding the breath. And within two to three days, I felt a tremendous quality of life improvement. I felt a tremendous quality of life improvement. Sleep was better. I was feeling calmer. And my need for rescue medication for asthma had reduced by about 50% in one week. In one week? Yes. Yes. And that was for years. Like progressively my asthma was getting worse. Breathing was a problem. I was breathing fast and shallow. And if you're breathing fast and shallow, what is it doing to oxygen uptake, oxygen delivery, your blood circulation, your sleep, and your emotions? How many people across the population would you say have some element of dysfunctional breathing at the moment? A Cochrane review shows about nine and a half percent of the general population. But if we target specific pockets, individuals with anxiety, panic disorder,

Starting point is 00:03:31 depression, et cetera, it can be as high as 80%. Now, if I was just to take a group of individuals, most of the people who come into me, they have room for improvement. Yeah. Room for improvement, I think it's an interesting concept to think about because, you know, breath is universal. Without breath, there's no life, right? And how well we breathe can really determine in a huge way, the quality of our life, the quality of our performance, the quality of our relationships even. And the more I've been thinking about breathing and, you know, I have a daily breathing practice, which has evolved somewhat, influenced by your work, some of the practice I do for sure. It's amazing to think that breathing correctly and efficiently is something that

Starting point is 00:04:25 Amazing to think that breathing correctly and efficiently is something that I think very few people are doing. And that therefore means with the application of some very simple and cheap techniques, we all stand to gain benefit. Let's take it down to its absolute basics. Why is it so important where you breathe? Well, number one is the mouth performs absolutely zero functions in terms of breathing. If you opened up any medical textbook, and if you look at the function of the mouth, you will never see breathing listed as a function of the mouth, because breathing is not a function of the mouth. Dr. Morris Cottle, he was an ear, nose and throat surgeon from the United States back in

Starting point is 00:05:05 the 1970s. He said the human nose is responsible for 30 functions in the human body. Now, many people will think about the nose and they think, okay, it's a filtration mechanism. It warms the air, it moistens the air. But your nose is doing so much more than this. When you breathe through your nose, you're actively targeting the diaphragm breathing muscle. Your diaphragm breathing muscle is not just the main muscle for respiration. It's also linked with your emotions. When you breathe through the mouth, you're putting yourself more into that fight or flight response. Mouth breathing is shallow breathing. Nose breathing is slower breathing, and you're more likely to be breathing using the diaphragm.

Starting point is 00:05:46 Straight away oxygen uptake in the blood increases. It was discovered back in 1988 that the PO2 which is the pressure of oxygen in the blood it increases by 10% when individuals were forced to continuously breathe through their nose. Not only is the oxygen uptake in the blood improved but oxygen delivery to the cells is increased. The individual is the oxygen uptake in the blood improved, but oxygen delivery to the cells is increased. The individual is more likely to be relaxed. The individual has much more efficient and economical breathing. It's not just enough to get oxygen into our blood. We also need to get oxygen delivered to the cells. How does that happen? And if we are breathing fast and shallow through an open mouth, we are not achieving optimum quality of life in terms of probably the biggest things, the mind. How can you calm the

Starting point is 00:06:33 mind if your body physiological is in the state of fight or flight? If you're breathing fast and shallow, how can you, if you're breathing fast, because that in turn is going to agitate the mind and sleep so the emotions your sleep and your breathing are all interlinked and if one is off it affects the other. If your emotions are off and if you've had a very stressful day you will find when you go to bed that night you cannot sleep because you're twisting and turning. When the mind is agitated, our sleep is hampered. When our sleep is hampered, our mind is agitated. When the mind is stressed, it affects our breathing. When our breathing is fast and shallow, it affects our stress.

Starting point is 00:07:16 When our breathing is fast and shallow, it affects our sleep. That's why we say true. One thing is look at your breath. How do you breathe? Do you breathe through the open mouth? Can you hear your breathing? Are you running out of air? Do you feel that you're not getting enough breath? Do you have nasal congestion? Are you breathing fast? And are you breathing shallow? And if you answer yes to a couple of those questions,

Starting point is 00:07:39 you will get plenty out of putting this into practice. Stress makes people sick. And on the basis that stress makes people sick, relaxation will help to make them better. How can we negate the effects of stress? How do we breathe when we get stressed? We breathe faster. We breathe shallow. We breathe irregular. And this is keeping the body in that state of fight or flight. So what are we doing? I'm saying to people, I need you to breathe through your nose. I need you to gently slow down your breathing. I need you to use your diaphragm and I need you to adopt a cadence of the breath. Because when we're looking at the breathing, we need to consider that it's not just about diaphragmatic breathing, or it's not just about breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth, or it's not just about take a deep breath when you're stressed.

Starting point is 00:08:32 The information, take a deep breath when you're stressed, is absolute nonsense. nothing and it helps nobody because if we have a belief that it's good to be taking in that huge big breath, are we really making any positive change in the body? And what I would say to people is start just gently slowing down your breath, even to the point of a slight air hunger by just relaxing your breathing, breathing through the nose and, you know, just even concentrate on that. Does it change your body temperature? Does it increase the amount of saliva in the mouth? Do you feel different? Yeah. When we breathe, when we are stressed, we sigh more. We breathe faster, we breathe shallow. Instead of sighing, we want to achieve regular breathing. Instead of breathing faster, we want to slow down the breath. Instead of breathing using the chest, we want to breathe

Starting point is 00:09:31 using the diaphragm. And the pillar or the crux or the foundation of this is breathe in and out through your nose. But I'm going to come back to the slow breathing. It's amazing sometimes that science is catching up with this. If you go into Google, and if you type in slow breathing. It's amazing sometimes that science is catching up with this. If you go into Google, and if you type in slow breathing, Stanford Medical School, in March of 2017, researchers, they first identified this structure in the brain of mice. And they said that this structure is different because it's spying on your breathing. And if you breathe fast, it's spying on your breathing. And if you breathe fast, this structure is relaying signals of agitation to the rest of the brain, but it's also more likely to waken you from sleep. And if you breathe slow, this structure is relaying signals of calm to the rest of the brain.

Starting point is 00:10:18 You know, there is such a feedback loop here. Stress and anxiety is causing our breathing to be faster but faster breathing is feeding back into stress and anxiety i mean absolutely uh i mean i always talk to people about this idea that breathing is information right and i say to people that look if you're rushing around if you've got a work deadline if you're trying to get all your emails done and you're not aware almost certainly your breathing deadline, if you're trying to get all your emails done and you're not aware, almost certainly your breathing will change, right? You're going to be breathing faster. You're going to be breathing more from your chest, your upper chest than from your diaphragm. And that's going to send signals to your brain on a very primal level that there is danger in my environment. Things aren't going well, which then the brain will send signals

Starting point is 00:11:05 back down to your breathing and you'll be in this feed forward cycle where you start to breathe faster and faster and faster. But the beautiful thing about that is you can hack that for want of a better term straight away by changing the way you breathe. Because if you change the way you breathe, if you slow it down, if it's more diaphragmatic than from the chest, well, you're sending calm signals up to the brain and the brain is then sending those calm signals back down. So, it's a very simple way for people to understand breathing is information. The way you breathe is the way you live. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. please do spread the love by sharing this episode with your friends and family. And if you want more, why not go back and listen to the full conversation with my guest.

Starting point is 00:11:52 And if you enjoyed this episode, I think you will really enjoy my new bite-sized Friday email. It's called the Friday Five. And each week I share things that I do not share on social media. It contains five short doses of positivity, articles or books that I'm reading, quotes that I'm thinking about, exciting research I've come across, and so much more. I really think you're going to love it.

Starting point is 00:12:17 The goal is for it to be a small, yet powerful dose of feel good to get you ready for the weekend. You can sign up for it at drchastity.com forward slash Friday five. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back next week with my long form conversation on Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.

Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #221 BITESIZE | How to Reduce Stress and Anxiety by Changing the Way You Breathe | Patrick McKeown

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