#366 Asthma and Anxiety Free Naturally with Patrick McKeown

This week on The Less Stressed Life Podcast, we're taking a literal "breath of fresh air"! I sit down with breathing expert Patrick McKeown, who explains how something as simple as changing the way you breathe can completely transform your health. Patrick dives into the Buteyko Method, a powerful technique that targets conditions like asthma, sleep apnea, and anxiety by focusing on nasal breathing and reducing over-breathing. He also reveals why mouth breathing is the sneaky culprit behind many common health problems—and how you can start breathing better today for a calmer, more energized life. Trust me, you'll never think about breathing the same way again! 

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• What is the Buteyko Method?
• Why nasal breathing is life-changing
• How mouth breathing hurts kids' development
• How sleep apnea isn't just an airway problem
• Why "take a deep breath" isn't the best advice for anxiety

ABOUT GUEST:
Patrick McKeown is a world-leading breathing expert with over 20 years of experience coaching thousands to improve their health, focus, and athletic performance. He’s the bestselling author of The Oxygen Advantage, Asthma Free Naturally, and Atomic Focus, and his research has been featured in top journals like the Journal of Clinical Medicine. Founder of the Buteyko Clinic International and creator of the Oxygen Advantage® program, Patrick has trained thousands of breathing instructors worldwide. He’s a TEDx speaker and regularly appears in publications like USA Today, MindBodyGreen, and Men’s Health, advocating for the power of breath therapy in healthcare and sports. 

WHERE TO FIND:
Website: https://oxygenadvantage.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oxygenadvantage/
Website: https://buteykoclinic.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/patrickmckeownofficial/

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Podcast Instagram: @lessstressedlife
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lessstressedlife
Leave a review, submit a questions for the podcast or take one of my quizzes here: ****https://www.christabiegler.com/links

NUTRITION PHILOSOPHY:

• Over restriction is dead
• Whole food is soul food and fed is best
• Sustainable, synergistic nutrition is in (the opposite of whack-a-mole supplementation & supplement graveyards)
• You don’t have to figure it out alone
• Do your best and leave the rest

RETREAT INFO:

Transcript

[00:00:00] Patrick McKeown: Breathing has a role to play there, not just cognitive behavioral therapy, not just sedatives, because we have to think about breathing as the 1 direct route of being able to influence the autonomic nervous system.

[00:00:12] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm your host, Christa Biegler, and I'm going to guess we have at least one thing in common that we're both in pursuit of a less stressed life. On this show, I'll be interviewing experts and sharing clinical pearls from my years of practice to support high performing health savvy women in pursuit of abundance and a less stressed life.

[00:00:42] Christa Biegler, RD: One of my beliefs is that we always have options for getting the results we want. So let's see what's out there together.

[00:01:00] Christa Biegler, RD: Today on The Less Stressed Life, I have Patrick McKeown, who is one of the world's leading experts on breathing. Over the last 20 years, he's coached thousands of people to breathe better, to improve their health, mental focus, and sports performance. I was just joking with him that he's really an author.

[00:01:15] Christa Biegler, RD: Because he's has so many best selling books, including Asthma Free Naturally, Close Your Mouth, The Oxygen Advantage, The Breathing Cure, most recently Atomic Focus, and a new one coming out, which will probably be out by the time this episode airs, which is Mouth Breather. He can correct me if I'm wrong.

[00:01:33] Christa Biegler, RD: And even another in the new year about sleep, which is. will be another very attractive topic. His research is published in journals, including the Journal of Clinical Medicine. He's also the founder of the Buteko Clinic International, which is maybe where you've heard of him, the largest Buteko breathing clinic in the world.

[00:01:50] Christa Biegler, RD: He's also founded his own science backed breathwork training program, Oxygen Advantage. And if I recall, he has a great app. By the same name, I think which has trained thousands of breathing instructors. He's a regular guest at speaking events on popular health and fitness podcasts. He's been featured at TEDx.

[00:02:08] Christa Biegler, RD: I love the title of his old TEDx talk shut your mouth and change your life. So we'll talk a little bit about that. Welcome to the show, Patrick McKeown. It's 

[00:02:17] Patrick McKeown: a pleasure. Thanks very much, Tristan. 

[00:02:19] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. All right. So I am always on a mission. To make breath more sexy to people who are like, yeah, sure, whatever.

[00:02:28] Christa Biegler, RD: I always think we always take a lot of things for granted until we can't do them or things are very severe. It's a very common human condition. For example, I give this example a lot. We don't really care about our air quality or breath until we can't breathe. In 1 and I think forest fires are a very good example.

[00:02:44] Christa Biegler, RD: Even where I live. I'm very affected by Canadian forest fires. The last few summers. Yeah, Until that happens, it seems like you don't think about it, but not for you. You've been on this train for well over 20 years because one of your first books came out a little over 20 years ago, which we'll talk about today, which I think is a very sexy title, which is Asthma Free Naturally.

[00:03:05] Christa Biegler, RD: So before we even dive into kind of the meat and all the pieces and some of the directions that life has taken you, I'd like to know how in the hell did this happen? For you, 

[00:03:16] Patrick McKeown: it's like everything else. 

[00:03:17] Patrick McKeown: I think you answered it in your question. You said we only think about breathing, but it's not going well for us.

[00:03:22] Patrick McKeown: And for me, breathing wasn't going well because as a kid growing up with asthma and as a teenager with asthma and also into my early twenties, and the funny thing about asthma, Chris, is it affects about 8 to 10 percent of the population, but you don't just have asthma. You're more likely to have a stuffy nose.

[00:03:39] Patrick McKeown: And you're more likely to have poor sleep quality. You're more likely to have cognitive dysfunction and that doesn't necessarily get talked about. So I had poor concentration because my stuffy nose, I was a chronic mouth breather and because of chronic mouth breathing, I was breathing faster in upper chest and that increases sympathetic drive.

[00:04:01] Patrick McKeown: So you're more in a stress response. So now your body and mind is in distress response. Your sleep is impacted. Poor sleep is feeding into the stress response. But you know what, you get on with things and it's only when you come across something and you start putting it into your own life. And when I came across breathing, it was different to any sort of breathing that was being taught.

[00:04:24] Patrick McKeown: Because I had practiced full breathing, I had practiced what is typically taught in yoga. It did nothing for me. In actual fact, I did it before the exam one day, and I went into the exam completely lightheaded, but it was when I practiced a particular breathing, because not all breathing exercises are the same, and it's very important to say that.

[00:04:46] Patrick McKeown: I felt In the first week, my wheezing reduced by about 50%. I started taping my mouth closed, but 25 years ago, I know that sounds so strange to people. Now it's going viral. But when I was doing it back in the day, and I remember talking to a medical doctor who was involved with asthma and sleep, and he used the word.

[00:05:06] Patrick McKeown: Barbaric. And I was saying to him, what was barbaric in my life was the fact that I had my mouth open for 20 plus years and nobody said, Patrick, read through your nose. So that's where it's at. And now we're here. 

[00:05:21] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, that is wild. Who, I believe that the type of breathing that you did for your asthma was Buteyko method, I think, right?

[00:05:30] Christa Biegler, RD: So how are you introduced to Buteyko method? And you very quickly piqued people's interest. So please define, tell us about Buteyko method also, after you let us know how you encountered it for the first time. 

[00:05:42] Patrick McKeown: I came across it in a newspaper article. There was an article written about his work.

[00:05:47] Patrick McKeown: He's a Ukrainian doctor and he discovered the importance of a couple of things in terms of breathing. Now, he first notices that his patients who were quite unwell, they typically breathed faster, harder, heavier breathing, upper chest breathing. Mouth breathing would be part of that. And he asked the question, he said, is it their sickness that is causing them to breathe this way, or is it their breathing this way, which is feeding back into their sickness?

[00:06:18] Patrick McKeown: And it resonated with me because as a kid with asthma and teenager having a stuffy nose, I was mouth breathing. I was breathing faster, I was breathing harder, and I was breathing up her chest. And he said two things. He said, breathe in and out through your nose. That was news to me. When I first switched from mouth to nose breathing, I felt that I wasn't getting enough air, but there are exercises in the Buteyko method to decongest the nose.

[00:06:44] Patrick McKeown: Which work in about five minutes and even quicker, like you could teach somebody a breathing exercise and they can decongestant knows and feel a difference in about 30 seconds to a minute. And I practiced his nose decongestant exercise. It helped. I started breathing less air. Which was the complete opposite to what I was practicing traditionally, and by breathing less air, I felt that I was not getting enough air and it was the first time that the temperature of my hands increased.

[00:07:13] Patrick McKeown: I always had cold hands, cold feet. I had brain fog, poor concentration, which is normal. So it's not that I'm in any way unique, but my breathing pattern was feeding into my symptoms that I didn't realize at the time. So I changed my breathing. I did the opposite to how I was breathing. I was breathing out, fast, shallow, hard.

[00:07:35] Patrick McKeown: I learned how to breathe nose, light, slow, deep. So we use the acronym LSD so that people can remember it. 

[00:07:45] Christa Biegler, RD: I love this so much. And what I really heard there was Dr. Buteyko, the Ukrainian doctor who created this. He basically just, I think that life is really a result of the questions we ask ourselves. And so he asked such a beautiful question.

[00:08:00] Christa Biegler, RD: What's the real cause or effect here? Which you also thought, Oh, I'd never even thought about it that way. We become often an identity of what our condition is, but so beautiful. Would you remind us of the acronym one more time? So 

[00:08:15] Patrick McKeown: LSD is it, yeah, so anybody who's had a wild teenage years they'll have no problem remembering that one and, it's because I suppose breathing is a little bit more complex, in terms of the dimensions, like everything else, everything about the human body is just that bit more complex that we could take, that we give consideration to and breathing is simple and complex at the same time.

[00:08:37] Patrick McKeown: But the beauty about it is. Yeah. If we can tailor breathing exercises, according to the specific needs of the individual, we will get so much more out of it. And it comes to beg the question. I think you touched on this at the start. Why don't people do breathing exercises? How come it is taken up till now for people to start realizing that there's something in breathing?

[00:09:00] Patrick McKeown: And I will tell you straight out, Christa, it was taught pretty badly and it was taught And all it did was put people off and I'm not left afield at all. And if I'm teaching something in terms of breathing, I would put it into practice myself first. It has to get a result and to try and support it with science as much as possible.

[00:09:22] Patrick McKeown: And that's where it's at, 

[00:09:23] Christa Biegler, RD: that's evident. That's basically evidence based medicine right there. You're 

[00:09:26] Patrick McKeown: as much as you can get it. 

[00:09:27] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, exactly. Results. We're wired similarly. Because I love things that may yield fast results and I personally think that results are our best.

[00:09:36] Christa Biegler, RD: Educators, and so you can learn about something you can read about it all day long, but when you get results you said, you were 50 percent you're wheezing reduced 50 percent in 1 week. That was the real education right there. And at that point. It probably, you probably could not get enough. So what happened next?

[00:09:55] Christa Biegler, RD: You had the wheezing reduced in a week and what happened to the rest how did the rest of it unfold for your health journey at the beginning? So the wheezing reduced in a week and then what? 

[00:10:04] Patrick McKeown: But it was an even bigger one was my sleep because, I was again, the kid in school and I was lucky enough.

[00:10:11] Patrick McKeown: I did get the points to get into university. I studied harder. It wasn't easy. I was looking at the teacher, maybe looking at what the teacher was saying on the board. My eyes were looking at the teacher, but my attention was elsewhere and the end of the day, I'd probably come out of school and I'd learned absolutely nothing, even though I wasn't disruptive.

[00:10:30] Patrick McKeown: Nowadays, you'd call it attention deficit disorder. I just didn't have the hyperactivity part of it. So the 1st day I breathed through my nose the entire time, it felt a bit uncomfortable. I kept doing it. That night I taped my mouth closed using paper tape and I used a nasal dilator to make sure my nose was open.

[00:10:50] Patrick McKeown: The following morning, I don't make, I don't feel much of a difference, but I did it again. I kept breathing the second day through my nose. And then I take my clothes down that second night and I woke up the second morning and I couldn't believe honestly, the concentration levels, my energy levels was totally different.

[00:11:08] Patrick McKeown: See, this is, it wasn't just my wheezing. It was also my sleep and it was my state of mind. And for me, if anybody was to ask, what was the biggest thing that I got out of this over the last 25 years, It was my ability to hold my attention on one thing. It was my ability to put the critical thinking mind out of the way.

[00:11:27] Patrick McKeown: It was my ability to self regulate because it's a tremendous capacity and skill set to have. And I don't think it's accessible to people with poor breathing patterns, or at least, it's not accessible so readily if you've got a poor breathing pattern and if you have poor sleep quality. And if we were to break down the figures with this, the figures are enormous.

[00:11:48] Patrick McKeown: 75 percent of the anxiety population have poor breathing patterns. So just as Ukrainian Dr. Buteko asked, was it the sick people? Was it their heavy breathing? Were they breathing heavy because of their sickness or was their heavy breathing causing and contributing to their sickness? The same goes for anxiety.

[00:12:08] Patrick McKeown: So you can imagine somebody genetically predisposed to anxiety. They can be more vulnerable to, taking. It more seriously, if things go wrong. So if challenges happen, it often can empower them, or at least that they will, it will have a bigger impact on it than say, somebody who's quite calm and can take things in their strides.

[00:12:31] Patrick McKeown: A person with anxiety or predisposition towards it, if they have a stressful event, their breathing changes, their breathing becomes faster, harder, upper chest, just as we all breathe that way, if we get stress. But if we have chronic stress. Then our breathing pattern changes that way more permanently.

[00:12:50] Patrick McKeown: So now we are breathing faster, harder upper chest. We're feeling that we're not getting an affair and it's this breathing pattern that is feeding back into our anxiety. So 75 percent of that population have poor breathing. They go to their psychotherapist, they go to their psychologist or their psychiatrist and nobody.

[00:13:09] Patrick McKeown: Or at least very few people is looking at their breathing, and if they are looking at their breathing, they are telling them to take a deep breath, which could be the worst thing that you could tell this group of individuals. Our state of mind is 1, our sleep. I wrote a scientific paper looking at how our everyday breathing.

[00:13:26] Patrick McKeown: Impacts our sleep. So we're talking about insomnia, which is dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system, increased stress response, overstimulation of the mind and an autonomic nervous system that is in that increased sympathetic driving, increased stress response. Breathing has a role to play there, not just cognitive behavioral therapy, not just sedatives, because we have to think about breathing as the 1 direct route of being able to influence the autonomic nervous system.

[00:13:55] Patrick McKeown: But snoring, people who mouthbreed are more likely to snore. They're waking up with a dry mouth in the morning. There's increased turbulence, obstructive sleep apnea. It affects 936 million people on this planet. And how we breathe during sleep is influenced by how we breathe during wakefulness. So when I look at breathing, I'm looking at the connection to our breathing from a multi dimensional point of view.

[00:14:20] Patrick McKeown: And without making it too complicated, we have to look at breathing from what's it doing to the blood gases, whether we are breathing high or low, and what's it doing to mind body connection. And that's what any researcher looking at the breath. They look at breathing from a biochemical point of view. a biomechanical point of view, and a psychophysiological point of view.

[00:14:39] Patrick McKeown: Then, if I'm working with a client, or if I'm writing a book, I also want to break breathing down in those three same veins. And what's more, have practiced breathing exercises to improve breathing from those specific dimensions. 

[00:14:55] Christa Biegler, RD: That would be a great direction to go, but I'm going to pull apart some of these conditions because I think that I think people only care about what affects them because we're just humans.

[00:15:02] Christa Biegler, RD: And so I'll start with even though it's not a condition necessarily, but the concept of shut your mouth and change your life. And that's just the name of your eight rule Ted talk. But one of my first breathwork coaches who I was introduced to through a client, that was one of his first.

[00:15:16] Christa Biegler, RD: Tips was just walk around with your breath, with your mouth closed for a couple of days. And as you're listing off some of the conditions that are affected, I think that mouth breathers would be susceptible to more illness, right? Because there's an antimicrobial impact. And I might not be saying it perfectly.

[00:15:30] Christa Biegler, RD: There might be a better way to say that when breathing through your nose. You better believe when I'm trying to take a nap on an airplane, I am taping my mouth shut and breathing through my nose. And my experience has been with that. I went from maybe 30 minutes to deep sleep to 2 hours, but I want to share.

[00:15:45] Christa Biegler, RD: I want to talk about some of the pushback that I get from being in the trenches of clients. It's really quite funny. And I've been, I've had some of those too. So people will first be afraid. that their nose is congested. So they're afraid to tape their mouth. Other things I've heard, this one is the most comical thing that people say.

[00:16:03] Christa Biegler, RD: They say, I think I breathe with my mouth closed. I think I sleep with my mouth closed. I'm like, that is really hilarious. How do you know that you sleep with your mouth closed? There are ways to find out ask someone else maybe what to watch you sleep. But I think that's a really funny thing people say.

[00:16:19] Christa Biegler, RD: And finally The type of tape now, 20 years ago, you just took to some tape. I personally, I know you have a special tape and maybe we could talk about, like, why you have that. But when I 1st tried other tapes, anything that touched the outside of my mouth or tickled the hair on my face, I ripped off in the middle of the night as well.

[00:16:35] Christa Biegler, RD: And so to your point, your story is the 1st night. I noticed nothing. And I will tell you that there's a very large percentage of the population that will give up right there, right? They will try something 1 day and be like, that didn't work for me. So I just gave up, and I always tell my clients, never make a conclusion from one experience unless it's like a anaphylactic reaction, right?

[00:16:57] Christa Biegler, RD: A deadly reaction. But otherwise, pretty much, I can't think of a very good example. Don't make a conclusion from one time, because it is probably not. And to your point, right? Your story is Exceptional, right? Or it's I got these amazing results in 2 days, but it's also not exceptional with breath, isn't it?

[00:17:13] Christa Biegler, RD: It's it's actually normal because breath is amazing. I'd love to hear 1st of all, when you hear I know I want to talk about conditions, but when you hear these pushbacks, what are some of the things you might say? And I know you've already disclosed some of them like there's nasal decongestant breathing, right?

[00:17:27] Christa Biegler, RD: Simple. Yeah. So what are some of the other things you might offer to people who have these very common pushbacks that I hear from clients? 

[00:17:35] Patrick McKeown: I suppose the first one is what does your nose do that your mouth doesn't, your mouth does nothing for breathing. And it's very easy. All you have to do is look into your mouth, ask yourself what's in your mouth, your teeth, your heart palette, your soft palate, your gums, your tongue, and do any of those things do anything for your breathing?

[00:17:53] Patrick McKeown: It's easy to surmise that. Your mouth is for eating, your mouth is for drinking, your mouth is for speaking, for social bonding, but it's certainly not for breathing because if it was for breathing, it would be one, there would be something in the mouth that does something for the breath.

[00:18:10] Patrick McKeown: There's nothing there. So when we breathe through the mouth, air is literally going into the mouth and straight down the throat. The second aspect is that when we breathe through the mouth, we tend to breathe more upper chest. And when we breathe through the mouth, we breathe faster and harder. That's a stress response.

[00:18:28] Patrick McKeown: You said that mouth breathers are not as healthy as nose breathers. I would totally agree with you. Mouth breathing is a stress to the human body. It impacts your sleep, but it's also tipping the autonomic nervous system into that increased stress response. Your nose has a minimum of 30 functions. It increases oxygen transfer from the lungs to the blood.

[00:18:50] Patrick McKeown: When you do physical exercise with your mouth closed, your muscles are getting more oxygen. Your nose is protecting the airways. Your nose is harnessing nasal nitric oxide to help open up the airways and also helping to to be antiviral. If, for example, even during COVID, it made much more sense to breathe through the nose versus breathe through the mouth.

[00:19:08] Patrick McKeown: Your nose is a better recruitment of the diaphragm. I can't, the number of people who've said it to me over the years, that they had suffered from sore ribs or lower back pain. And the only thing that they did was switch to nose breathing. for listening. And by breathing through the nose, you naturally have a better recruitment of the diaphragm, especially during physical exercise and movement.

[00:19:28] Patrick McKeown: And the diaphragm breathing muscle isn't just for respiration, but it's there to provide stabilization and support for the spine. Now, the interesting thing about the diaphragm is that when we breathe as well with good recruitment of the diaphragm, it increases blood flow back to the heart. It's important for cardiovascular health.

[00:19:45] Patrick McKeown: It helps to strengthen the baroreflex to bring balance to the autonomic nervous system. It helps to stimulate the vagus nerve. And there is a connection between the diaphragm and the emotions. So there is a link there. So when we look at, when we break it down in terms of the nose does a lot that the mouth simply does not do.

[00:20:05] Patrick McKeown: And even during physical exercise, I would say to people, listen, do all of your physical exercise with your mouth closed. You're less likely to overtrain, but you're getting quality. And initially, when you switch from mouth to nose breathing, the air hunger is a little bit stronger. But this is a load that you're putting on your body.

[00:20:22] Patrick McKeown: And the way I see it is, when I do my physical exercise, I only do 30 minutes per day. That's all. I do it on a cross trainer. I ramp it up to my heart rate is up to about 135, 140 beats per minute. But I do 30 minutes every single day. I just do it consistently, but I don't do much, just 30 minutes. When I'm on the cross trainer, it's also training for my breathing.

[00:20:45] Patrick McKeown: My mouth is closed, I pay attention to the breath, and I change my breathing patterns because it's not just about the air that's coming into the body that counts. It's about the transfer of gas from the lungs into the blood. It's about the transfer of oxygen from the blood to the tissues and organs. I can influence blood flow to my brain by having my mat closed while I'm on the cross trainer.

[00:21:08] Patrick McKeown: And if we think of the human brain as an organ, it's about 2% of our body weight. It's about 20%. It consumes 20% of our oxygen. And if I breathe too hard and too fast, I'm reducing blood flow and oxygen delivery to the brain if I breach through my nose during physical exercise. or if I breathe light while sitting down.

[00:21:29] Patrick McKeown: So say for example, sitting down, if I take a very soft breath in through my nose and a really relaxed, slow, gentle breath out to the point that I breathe less air so that I feel a sensation of air hunger or breathlessness. That in turn signifies the carbon dioxide is increased in the lungs and blood.

[00:21:47] Patrick McKeown: And as carbon dioxide increases in the blood, I have improved blood flow to the brain and improved oxygen delivery to the brain. So if we want to increase oxygen delivery throughout the body, including the brain, it's not about breathing more air, it's about breathing less air. So that's the first part of your question, Christa.

[00:22:06] Patrick McKeown: The second is if your nose is stuffy, you can easily decongest your nose by holding the breath. There's three ways to decongest the nose. Holding the breath on an exhale. Number two is do your physical exercise with the mouth closed. And number three is sex. And those are the 3 ways of decongesting the nose.

[00:22:24] Patrick McKeown: The 1st way, the holding of the breath on the exhalation was discovered back in 1923. And what I would say to people, don't do it if you're pregnant. Or if you have a susceptibility to panic disorder, you have to go easy enough. It's very easy to do. You take a normal breath in and out through your nose.

[00:22:43] Patrick McKeown: You pinch your nose with your fingers to stop breathing and you just gently nod your head up and down for a period of maybe 10 or 15 head nods while holding the breath. Then you let go, you breathe in. That would take you 30 seconds to practice. And I would say that 80 percent of people will feel easier breathing through the nose, even if they just do that one time.

[00:23:05] Patrick McKeown: But we would say do it five or six times. With about a minute's rest in between each, then the more you breathe through your nose, the better your nose works. The nose is a wonderful organ and it really does respond when we use it. But if we don't use it, it gets more congested. Yeah, people do. I suppose the mouth taping is another thing.

[00:23:27] Patrick McKeown: I think it's imperative that. If we are waking up with a dry mouth in the morning, which is a sign that we have been mouth breathing during sleep. Now, sometimes people might have their mouth open during the night, but when they wake up, their mouth is closed and then they are not sure. But then I would ask them the question, do you have to bring a glass of water to bed with you?

[00:23:49] Patrick McKeown: Do you have to get up to go to the bathroom during the middle of the night? I had a client here about a couple of days ago in the 70s. He's getting up to go to the bathroom twice each night. There's two times that his sleep is disrupted to the point that he's waking up. And once you get sleep disruption, it means that you're taking out of deep sleep and you're spending more time in lighter sleep and you're not likely to wake up feeling as refreshed.

[00:24:15] Patrick McKeown: And of course, if you're not waking up feeling refreshed, your mood is affected your cognitive function is affected. So it's such a simple thing as breathing through the nose. Now, why did I bring out the tape that we brought out? Because I work with children for 22 years and children who have their mouth open, and it's pretty common.

[00:24:33] Patrick McKeown: 25 to 50 percent of studied children persistently breathe through the mouth. The problem with mouth breathing during childhood. It orders craniofacial development. I have a face that is conducive to years of mouth breathing. My nose is crooked. My top jaw, my maxilla is set back. My lower jaw is set back.

[00:24:53] Patrick McKeown: My airway is compromised. I have a high palate. My nasal cavity is in fringe. Anatomically, I am not a good example of ideal facial development. And that is because of years of having my mouth open. But this goes on today and many men now are wearing beards and the reason that they love to wear a beard is because The beard hides the fact that their chin isn't strong enough and their chin isn't strong enough because the chin hasn't Developed the way it should have developed.

[00:25:24] Patrick McKeown: The mandible isn't far forward enough and the problem with that is that the airway is compromised So a child who has their mouth open for a period of time during childhood It can result in alterations to the shape of the face and those alterations are lifelong. And a simple observation would be that children with crooked teeth, it's not that the teeth are too big.

[00:25:48] Patrick McKeown: The problem is that the jaws are too small and the jaws aren't big enough to house the teeth. And I wrote a book back in 2010 on this called Buteyko meets Dr. Mew. I went over to London over and back. Over one year, and I sat in with an orthodontist here called Dr. John Mew, and I sat in as he worked with his patients, and for 50 years, he has been telling his orthodontic students, his patients, breathe in and out through your nose with your tongue resting in the roof of the mouth.

[00:26:18] Patrick McKeown: And even if he does orthodontic treatment, he, it's absolutely imperative that his patients breathe through their nose following the treatment. Otherwise, there's a relapse. Our tongue supports the growth of the face, and it also supports the shape of the top jaw. And of course, the lower jaw follows the top jaw.

[00:26:39] Patrick McKeown: I think there's a lot in this but that answers a couple of your questions. 

[00:26:43] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. So about what you're saying right now, our tongue is supposed to have a resting position on the roof of your mouth, right? With your tongue just meeting the top of your back teeth. So I'm actually experiencing this with my 12 year old right now, who's got a couple of teeth growing in.

[00:26:56] Christa Biegler, RD: And I'm like, Please put your tongue on the top of the roof of your mouth. I'm gently trying to remind her because I can see literally the way the teeth are going in. If you would just put your tongue there, these teeth will correct the two that are growing in and coming, setting back a little bit.

[00:27:11] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm like, I know this will resolve this. So this is becoming, like you said, more popular. All these little concepts are becoming more popular, but almost as an offshoot, just very often we go about things from the condition. Instead of the root source. And you were talking about the root source.

[00:27:25] Christa Biegler, RD: That's your entire platform. But I love where you're bringing all these pieces together. An area that I hear also a lot a little less now, but people will always talk about how I have a deviated septum and that's why I cannot breathe. And my experience, I've had A handful of clients have surgery, nasal surgery during the time we were working together and my experience has been.

[00:27:50] Christa Biegler, RD: So I'm just curious about yours and your opinion where breathing fits in here and your thoughts on that. My experience has been, they'll go have a clear nose for a week and then go back toward where they were, because there's some root causes not being addressed. What's your experience or thoughts about concept of deviated symptom and nasal surgery. 

[00:28:11] Patrick McKeown: septum is very common. One would have to ask, why might you have a deviated septum? Mouth breathing can contribute to it. Say for example, if the child has the mouth open, the tongue isn't resting on the roof of the mouth, the palate is high, and if the palate is high, so if the roof of the mouth is high, it's going to infringe the nasal cavity, and that's going to cause the deviated, the septum to be deviated.

[00:28:35] Patrick McKeown: It's not just about trauma that might be experienced if a child falls off a bike or. playing sports or something like that, a deviated septum is pretty common. And it's when the line that divides one side of the nose to the other is crooked. If somebody comes in to me and they say they have a deviated septum, I will have them do the nose and black.

[00:28:54] Patrick McKeown: But first of all, I asked them to do a or a fogging test. And a fogging test is simply get your mobile phone. You place the glass underneath your nose, breathe onto it, and then look at the size of the halo. And from that, then you can say one side of the nose is more congested than the other. And now that's normal.

[00:29:15] Patrick McKeown: It's a nasal cycle. But when the septum is deviated, they don't tend to change. For most people, the left side is congested for a while, while the right side is open. And then 90 minutes later, they switch. And that's part of the autonomic nervous system, keeping it in balance. Because the left side, by breathing through the left, it's more relaxation, it's lowering blood pressure, stimulating the vagus nerve, increasing heart rate variability, and when you breathe through the right, it's more enlivening.

[00:29:43] Patrick McKeown: So you've got one side balancing the other. So coming back to the individual coming in with a deviated septum. For example, he thinks that he's not able to breathe through the nose. I will have him do the nose and blocking exercise and if that helps, great. I know then that his nasal congestion is not just due to a deviated septum because we don't just have a deviated septum.

[00:30:07] Patrick McKeown: We can have a stuffy nose. The blood vessels in the nose have swollen. There can be increased mucus there. Which is contributing to the sensation that we are not getting an affair. So it's not just a septum deviation. If a person feels that even though they do the nose and blocking exercise, that they feel very uncomfortable breathing through the nose.

[00:30:27] Patrick McKeown: Then a referral to back to their doctor to go to an ear, nose and throat doctor is important because ultimately our goal is to establish and to ensure that the individual switches to nose breathing. That's the number 1 goal. How that is done is secondary. Ideally, of course, we can do it with breathing exercises because they are noninvasive.

[00:30:48] Patrick McKeown: And there is no risk. But if we have to, in terms of ENT, then that's the way to go there. The only issue is, when a person typically goes to their ear, nose and throat doctor, whether a child or an adult, the doctor is treating the obstruction. But the doctor will not change the mouth breathing behavior.

[00:31:07] Patrick McKeown: Any person, or at least most people who go to their ear, nose and throat doctor, they are going for a reason, because their nose feels congested. And because their nose feels congested, they are less likely to be breathing through their nose. So for months and possibly years, leading up to their visit to the ENT, they have been breathing through an open mouth.

[00:31:29] Patrick McKeown: They don't just have a stuffy nose. They also have a breathing pattern disorder or more likely they get their nose treated, but their breathing pattern disorder isn't addressed and very few ear nose and throat doctors actually encourage their patients to breathe through the nose post surgery and even with children with enlarged adenoids, enlarged tonsils, the child, and it's not a walk in the park, this procedure, it is an operation, the child's adenoids and tonsils are removed.

[00:32:01] Patrick McKeown: Thank you very much. But nobody says anything to the child or encourages the child or helps the child to change the behavior of mouth breathing. And the problem with this is that there is a within 3 years, there is a 68 percent worsening in their sleep unless nasal breathing is restored, but nasal breathing is not being restored.

[00:32:22] Patrick McKeown: So removal of the adenoids and removal of the tonsils as invasive as it is. Is only short term, and the reason being is because doctors are not doing respiratory rehabilitation post surgery, we can't just expect that if you fix the nose, the people are going to breathe through it. We have to change the behavior. 

[00:32:44] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, about children. I love that you worked with children for 22 years. Actually, I'd love to know how that. Was why you were working with children for 22 years, because my very curious nature is always wants to know the backstory of something. So tell us that, but also tell us about why you developed the type of hate that you developed.

[00:33:03] Christa Biegler, RD: That doesn't it's the only tape that doesn't actually cover the mouth and why it's the perfect fit for kids. 

[00:33:09] Patrick McKeown: I was working with children. I suppose I was a kid with asthma and I knew how it impacted me. And when I started teaching breathing, I only worked with people with asthma. That was it. It was only until 2006 and seven that I started working also with people with sleep apnea and snoring and insomnia.

[00:33:29] Patrick McKeown: And it was only in 2010 that I actually started working with anxiety and panic disorder. So for the first five years, I only worked with asthma and I worked with many children over four or five years of age. I wrote a children's book back in 2004 called always breathe correctly. It's still up on Amazon.

[00:33:47] Patrick McKeown: I wrote, and the reason that I wrote books as well early on was I felt nobody wants to listen to me and I knew there was merit in the breathing exercises and I figured that the best way to get these breathing exercises out there for me was to write them in a book, the book is sold for 10 or 15.

[00:34:04] Patrick McKeown: People buy the book, they put it into practice and they realized there was something in it and the work took off from that, so children, I really feel that children have been let down here. And I don't know, I don't have the answer. Why has the medical profession overlooked this? Why in the main has the dental profession overlooked it?

[00:34:23] Patrick McKeown: My breeding children, they're more likely to have dental cavities, inflammation of the gums. Overcrowding of teeth, like it's, this isn't just some innocuous habit mouth breathing and these kids, Karen Bonnock is a researcher from New York, and she did research with 11, 049 children in Stratford Upon Avon in the United Kingdom, and she observed children from 57 months old.

[00:34:50] Patrick McKeown: To, I think it was 2 or 3 years of age. I can't exactly remember it, but her conclusion was that if children were mouth breathing, snoring, or stopping breathing by age 5, if untreated, they had a 40 percent increased risk of special education needs by age 8. Okay, that's shocking to hear. How could your sleep quality during the formative years in childhood be so important?

[00:35:15] Patrick McKeown: And the reason 

[00:35:15] Patrick McKeown: being is because the brain is developing during deep sleep. But if these children are mouth breathing, or if they're snoring, or if they're breathing heavy, or if they're stopping breathing, it takes them out of deep sleep. So they don't get adequate brain development. And in her paper, which is published in the Journal of Pediatrics in 2012.

[00:35:35] Patrick McKeown: So put in Karen Bonnock, B O N U C K, and it's a longitudinal study. I can send the paper on to you anyway. It's fairly easily found. That we have a cohort of children and she talks about 3, 000, 000 children in the United States, 3, 000, 000 kids. Now, they're aged between 6 and 21 years of age, and she said that they have conditions associated with poor sleep, ADD, ADHD.

[00:36:02] Patrick McKeown: A lot of these kids are put on Ritalin. And the issue could have been their sleep, but she also talks about, it's not just ADD and ADHD, kids with autism also are more likely to have poor sleep. There has to be a conversation had here, 

[00:36:15] Patrick McKeown: I think it's just that it's too simple, Christa. 

[00:36:18] Christa Biegler, RD: I know. 

[00:36:19] Patrick McKeown: It's too simple. 

[00:36:19] Christa Biegler, RD: It's 

[00:36:20] Christa Biegler, RD: funny though, because it is funny because sometimes I think We thrive on simplicity. For example, some examples I give are, if someone is deficient in vitamin D, they give, then they say the answer is vitamin D. To me, There's a cause of that, right? Or if you're deficient in vitamin B12, you just take that.

[00:36:41] Christa Biegler, RD: To me, there's a physiological cause that you have that. It's simple, but then there's a deeper meaning, just like in breath, right? There's a simple answer. And then if you want to know more, There's a lot of direction and it's this beautiful ocean of knowledge and we're so perfectly made.

[00:36:58] Christa Biegler, RD: We were born, so it's funny, right? We were born with his nose. As you described, there's nothing in the mouth that can help with breathing. It's like when we remove the spleen, right? It's Oh, okay. We're perfectly made, it's funny that we are just going to remove adenoids and tonsils and the spleen and pretend that we're not perfectly made and that each body part does not have this very intentional purpose.

[00:37:19] Christa Biegler, RD: So simple. And also, I think we ultimately discount what's free, whether we like that or not. It's a very human thing. So we just discount what is readily accessible to us, unless our life is transformed. Then, before you know it, you've written 10 books.

[00:37:36] Christa Biegler, RD: With the myotape for children, because it's around the outside of the mouth it's like kinesiology tape, right? Where it's it's a placebo effect almost, right? Where it's like coaching the, the whole purpose of the tape is to draw attention to the area, not to actually change the structure, right?

[00:37:54] Christa Biegler, RD: Is that kind of the same concept with the tape? Maybe I'm getting this wrong, but that's how I understand it. 

[00:37:59] Patrick McKeown: A little bit more. So it is based in kinesio tape. We had to alter the glue and it took quite a long time to get it to the right. And it was a lot of trial and error there. But basically, when you apply it, it has to be stretched about 30 percent and it's worn surrounding the mouth.

[00:38:16] Patrick McKeown: So it's not actually touching the mouth, but it's surrounding the lips. And because it's elasticated and you stretch it, when you wear it, then there's an elastication, elasticated tension. Which is pulling the lips together, but the premise there is it's also stimulating the orbicular source muscle. So it is actually stimulating the muscle there to have changed the muscle to adapt to nasal breathing.

[00:38:40] Patrick McKeown: Now, the reason that I brought it up for kids was because I always felt uneasy with younger children, having them to use paper tape during sleep. I always felt there was going to be a problem with it, but I couldn't figure it out. I was using paper tape down around the mouth or one strip coming down, the kids would be popping it off, things like that.

[00:39:00] Patrick McKeown: And then, working with children as well, I would work with a child and the child, going through all of the exercise, I would have the child running with the mouth closed. I know the child is able to breathe through the nose because I always wanted to find out, why is the child having the mouth open?

[00:39:15] Patrick McKeown: Okay. Is it because of nose obstruction? Is it because they have rhinitis? Or could it be that they have enlarged adenoids? So I need to try and find out, can I get this child breathing through their nose comfortably? So we do the exercises first, and then I have the child breathing through the nose during rest, and then during walking, and then during jogging.

[00:39:36] Patrick McKeown: If the child can jog within my clothes, I'm comfortable then that the child's nasal airway is adequate enough that they can breathe through their nose. That's one thing. For The second thing is changing the behavior. So I'd work with the child, they come back in a week later and the mouth is hanging open.

[00:39:51] Patrick McKeown: I'd work with them again, come back in a week later, the mouth is hanging open. 3rd or 4th or 5th week, I'm saying, Oh my God, what's happening here. I need to change the behavior. So then I'd say to the mom or dad, I'd say, listen, when the child is distracted, because that's often when the mouth falls open, when they're watching television, if they're on, they weren't on iPhone back then, but, if they were playing games or toys or anything like that, have the child wear a piece of paper tape, just pulling the lips together, just across the lips to ensure that the child is breathing through the nose, because that's what we're I want the nose and the brain to be connecting with each other, and we want to train the habit there.

[00:40:30] Patrick McKeown: So I started doing that and it really worked. It really started changing it because then I was focusing on not just the breathing pattern disorder, not just decongesting the nose, but also changing the behavior. But of course, where paper tape, kids won't be pulling it off. And then I was thinking, okay, we need something that's coming around the mouth.

[00:40:51] Patrick McKeown: The child can talk with the tape on. The child can drink water with the tape on. So the child can do their normal everyday activity with the tape on. But if they forget to breathe through their nose, and if their mouth opens, the tape will automatically pull their lips together, and it's telling their brain, breathe through your nose.

[00:41:09] Patrick McKeown: So it was that constant reminder of which the tape was doing, that the parents didn't have to do. Because parents will come in to me and they'd say. It's, I'm like a broken record. I'm constantly, every time I look at my child, the mouth is open. I'm saying, breathe through the nose, lips together. But at least with the mouth tape, the myotape is taking, it's taking some of the work away from the parents that the tape itself is doing the job.

[00:41:33] Patrick McKeown: And then of course during sleep, so it's a safe alternative. To wearing a tape so for children, I think it was really important because I'd love to see this go mainstream and I don't think it would ever go mainstream because doctors would never agree to wearing a tape. And, that's fair enough.

[00:41:52] Patrick McKeown: But at the same time, doctors have never looked at any solution in terms of getting the child's mouth closed. In actual fact, doctors have completely overlooked this full stop. I think doctors do have a responsibility that to pay attention to the children's breathing. The children who are coming in their doors and the dentists, they also need to pay attention to this as well.

[00:42:15] Patrick McKeown: Now, Christa, it is changing. And, I speak at the Academy the American Academy of physiological medicine and dentistry in, in Reno in about 3 weeks time. And I have 2 talks there and there will be 2, 3000 doctors there. Dentists, there will be sleep doctors, there will be all profession dental hygienists, mild functional therapists, et cetera.

[00:42:41] Patrick McKeown: And I've spoken there a number of times. It's changing. It really is. I think it's tremendous. Yeah, myotape is just to help it just become more mainstream. There were papers then that come out in 2020, looking at individuals with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea. They wore tape.

[00:43:01] Patrick McKeown: In the main, it improved their sleep apnea, their AHI reduced, but some of them got worse. And the tape that they had worn in that study was a tape that was covering them out. And the tape that was covering them out prevented my puffing. So when these individuals needed to mouthpuff, but they couldn't because the tape was covering their mouth, it made your sleep apnea worse.

[00:43:24] Patrick McKeown: And it was just by chance, the myotape allows my puffing. So we can say then to somebody with mild, moderate, or severe obstructive sleep apnea, Use a nasal breathing support to bring your lips together. It will also improve your compliance in the CPAP. It also improves the efficacy if you're wearing mandibular advancement devices, more important than that, it's not going to worsen your sleep apnea.

[00:43:48] Patrick McKeown: It's going to, for those people who it's going to help, it's going to make better, but there's no risk that way. 

[00:43:54] Christa Biegler, RD: So there are two conditions I want to cover before we wrap up, and you just half covered sleep apnea, which I feel like is the most natural one to talk about. Is there anything else that you want people with sleep apnea to know about what's possible for them? 

[00:44:07] Patrick McKeown: Oh, I think, listen, I think this is a condition that often gets so little attention despite the impact that it's having on everyday life and cognitive function and also on health, inflammation, all the work that you do as well, start breathing through your nose during the day. Start changing your breathing patterns, start breathing light, softening and slowing down your breath.

[00:44:27] Patrick McKeown: Sleep apnea has moved on a lot in the last 11 years. There 

[00:44:31] Christa Biegler, RD: it's really blown up, but do you mean it's moved on? 

[00:44:34] Patrick McKeown: It's moved on a lot because traditionally obstructive sleep apnea was seen primarily as an anatomical issue. The airway was too narrow and the airway was collapsing because the airway was too narrow.

[00:44:45] Patrick McKeown: And if the airway collapses during sleep, the person stops breathing. Oxygen can't get in, carbon dioxide can't get out, and it increases sympathetic drive. And it also takes the person out of deep sleep into lighter sleep. Now there's a recognition that the airway anatomy is only one factor that's contributing to sleep apnea.

[00:45:03] Patrick McKeown: That 70 percent of people with obstructive sleep apnea are predisposed to non anatomical issues. So they would include muscle recruitment. And myofunctional therapy is the best therapy to help improve the muscle recruitment. Loop gain, if individuals have high loop gain, it means their breathing is unstable.

[00:45:23] Patrick McKeown: Breathing exercises are very important. And I would probably say are the main route to help individuals with high loop gain. So high loop gain can be assessed using breath hold time. And that's according to a paper that was commissioned or that was overseen by doctors from Harvard. Messina is the surname. 

[00:45:43] Christa Biegler, RD: What is this word loop gain? 

[00:45:45] Patrick McKeown: So it's an engineering term. So the best way to describe it is that if an individual stops breathing during sleep, as they stop breathing, there's an accumulation of the gas carbon dioxide in the lungs and blood because they have stopped breathing and carbon dioxide cannot leave the body.

[00:46:01] Patrick McKeown: But individuals with high loop gain are very sensitive to the accumulation of carbon dioxide. So when they resume breathing with such exaggerated ventilation. So to observe this person's breathing, they would stop breathing. There's not a sound off them. But when they resume breathing.

[00:46:20] Patrick McKeown: They resume breathing with large gasps of breath. So they're going from nothing to everything. And their breathing is very unstable and that's feeding back into the sleep apnea. And the issue is that they are too sensitive to the accumulation of carbon dioxide. There's exaggerated ventilation to minimal increases in CO2.

[00:46:42] Patrick McKeown: Now, can you have to improve their sensitivity to carbon dioxide? You can, by practicing breathing exercises during wakefulness. There's 2 aspects in terms of which breathing comes in here. One is you can identify loop gain, high loop gain by measuring the individual's breath hold time.

[00:46:59] Patrick McKeown: And number 2 is you can have to change it. 30% of people with sleep apnea have high loop gain. My temporal advancement devices don't work. If you have high loop gain 

[00:47:10] Christa Biegler, RD: can I use this word with interchangeably with CO2 tolerance? Can I use that interchangeably? 

[00:47:15] Patrick McKeown: Yes. Okay. Yes 

[00:47:16] Patrick McKeown: you can. Maybe that's what people would identify a little bit more with it.

[00:47:20] Patrick McKeown: And there's another phenotype, it's called arousal threshold. And lower as a threshold is when you wake up quite easily during sleep. Say, for example, if the person stops breathing during sleep, carbon dioxide increases, oxygen drops. There's an increased drive to breed, but people with low arousal threshold wake up very easily.

[00:47:41] Patrick McKeown: So they wake up too quickly and it doesn't give enough time for the upper airway to the later muscles to do their job. But the problem then is that they're having constant sleep fragmentation. So low arousal threshold is fitting with insomnia. And then we have to ask the question, but how might we help with low arousal threshold?

[00:48:01] Patrick McKeown: Nose breathing has always been shown that you have deeper sleep. Any studies that you look when there's a comparison between nose breathing and mouth breathing. Mouth breathers tend to spend more time in light sleep. and less time in deep sleep. Nose breeders tend to spend more time in deep sleep. So we can have to reduce or we can have to improve arousal threshold so that it's harder for the person to wake up because you don't want the person waking up at the slightest interruption to their breathing during sleep.

[00:48:34] Patrick McKeown: Now you don't want that it's so difficult to wake up, but normally the root there are sedatives and that's the problem with sedatives. They're using a sedative They're knocked out. Now they stop breathing, but they're not going to wake up so easily because the sedative is keeping them asleep, but they can have prolonged apneas as a result. 

[00:48:53] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, easy awakening or frequent awakening in the night. I often see correlated with adrenal dysfunction, which is. Just high stress, which is what you've been talking about, right? That's what creates that. And this is an amazing segue to the conversation around anxiety. And I wanted to make sure we highlighted the statement.

[00:49:09] Christa Biegler, RD: You've literally just been talking about it, but I wanted to highlight because people who heard this were like, what? Why is taking a deep breath the worst thing for anxiety? Because they have a low CO2 tolerance. So when they inhale, it sends this stress response to the brain. And I see this all the time.

[00:49:25] Christa Biegler, RD: And what I think is a really valuable conversation right here, because I Do breath work with my clients and we talk about it and just yesterday, someone said, my tools for stress don't work when I'm in this very stressed state. And I was like, yes, I know you have not built any muscle capacity. And then you're out trying to lift heavy weights one day, right?

[00:49:44] Christa Biegler, RD: During this very stressful time. That's how I describe it. I'd love to know if you have, or anything you want to say about anxiety this statement, this is something I hear often. It's Oh, this doesn't work in this panic attack. No kidding. We've actually got to do it every day. 

[00:50:01] Patrick McKeown: I think that's a good point.

[00:50:02] Patrick McKeown: Sometimes you ask the question, how does the person actually take the deep breath? A lot of people, when they're told to take a deep breath, to take a full breath, it could be through the mouth. It could be a shallow breath. It could be a big breath. But a big breath is not going to help. A shallow breath is not going to help.

[00:50:18] Patrick McKeown: And a mouth breath is not going to help. In actual fact, it could worsen things. Now, the other aspect is That people, when they practice slow breathing, they may feel lightheaded or dizzy as a result of it. And the reason being is because, yes, they are slowing down the respiratory rate, but in the process, the volume of air that they are taking in with each practice too big.

[00:50:37] Patrick McKeown: In actual fact, they're increasing the volume of air that they breathe, which would be hyperventilation. It's causing a lowering of carbon dioxide from the lungs and blood, and this in turn is reducing blood flow to the brain. So if anybody asks me, what's the easiest way to tell my brain that I am safe?

[00:50:55] Patrick McKeown: And all I give is a simple instruction, tune in on your breathing, take a softer breath in through your nose than what you normally do. So in other words, you're taking a soft, gentle breath in through your nose. And then have a really relaxed and slow, gentle breath out, and you don't need to time it. All you're doing is changing your breathing to how you were already breathing.

[00:51:18] Patrick McKeown: That would be the simplest tool for the body to tell the brain that we are safe. We're taking a gentle, soft breath in through our nose, almost that our breath in is undetectable, and then having a really relaxed and a slow, gentle breath out. By slowing down the speed of the exhalation, We're able to stimulate the vagus nerve and in doing so, the heart rate slows down and the brain interprets that the body is safe.

[00:51:43] Patrick McKeown: Okay, you could go more deeper than that. That's a slow breath. What? It's slow relative to the how the person is breathing. I don't give the instruction. Breathe in for four, hold for seven out for eight. Breathe in for four, out for six, in for five. Out for five because a lot of my clients are breathing with 20 breaths per minute.

[00:52:02] Patrick McKeown: I know that they can't go from 20 breaths per minute down to 6 breaths per minute. So I want them to breathe slower relative to how they breathe. Then we talk about breathing low or talk about breathing deep. And the best example of a deep breath is what your cat breathe or what your dog breathe.

[00:52:20] Patrick McKeown: Because they're not thinking about their breathing. They're not exaggerating their breathing. They are just breathing mainly through the nose. Okay, a dog has to have the mouth open if it's a very hot day to regulate body temperature. Okay. But normally the cash, especially as breathing in and out through the nose, and you will see that the primary mode of breathing is that they are breathing with good recruitment of the diaphragm.

[00:52:43] Patrick McKeown: They are breathing low and to die from is a wonderful breathing muscle. Now, it is active in every breath that we take, but the question to ask is how much is it active? In other words, are we breathing high using the upper chest or are we breathing low with good recruitment of the diaphragm? Christa, I think in terms of breathing.

[00:53:05] Patrick McKeown: We have a tremendous capacity to tell the brain that we are safe. It's so important for the body and brain number one, and we can do it through the breath. And I'm not saying that this is a cure all, but it is a direct route into the autonomic nervous system. And even if people start thinking about breathing through the nose in and out, even if they start.

[00:53:28] Patrick McKeown: Whenever they start to feel that you're a little bit on edged or a little bit on nerves, take a soft breath in through the nose and a really relaxed and slow, gentle breath out and bring a feeling of relaxation to the body as you're doing. Or you could breathe low as well. But if you're breathing low, we put up your hands, either side of your lower ribs.

[00:53:48] Patrick McKeown: And as you're breathing in, you're just feeling the lateral ribs, just gently expanding. And as you breathe out, the lower ribs are coming back in. Okay. You don't have to cure your breathing. We don't have to take full, big breaths to oxygenate the body better. In actual fact, it doesn't. I also wrote a book called Breathing for Yoga.

[00:54:07] Patrick McKeown: Now, it might sound strange why I had to write such a book. Yoga breathing was all about light breathing, about conservation of the breath. It was about subtle breath. It was about breathing less air, up until 1880. And in 1880 in Central Europe, a group called the Hygienic Movement Got the idea that because tuberculosis was rampant in Europe at the time, that if you breathe deep and full breaths, it prevented germs from spreading throughout the body.

[00:54:39] Patrick McKeown: The idea took hold in Europe and spread throughout the world. And there were a few people who helped in that spread, such as Walter Atkinson. So he was a yogi. He was an American individual, and he put that idea out there as well. We have to ask them, how did the original yogis breathe?

[00:54:58] Patrick McKeown: They didn't take the full deep breaths that's carried on in yoga studios today. Now, I'm not going to say that all yoga instructors teach that way, but I will say that probably 7 out of 10 do. If we're teaching breathing exercises, we should know what is each breathing exercise doing. What are we targeting?

[00:55:19] Patrick McKeown: Is it getting, is it the ideal breathing for the person that we're working with? And ultimately then the ideas about breath work or breath training will spread. I think people have to get something out of it and they have to get results relatively quickly. Yes. Then people understand that yes, there's something powerful in this. 

[00:55:39] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, I agree. So if people don't know you by your name, Patrick McKeown, they might know you by the Buteko method or the promotion you do have that or oxygen advantage. And where would you like people to find you online? I'm my hope as we're Concluding this conversation is, I would like this name and kind of your message to become as trendy and sexy and bigger than the Wim Hof movement.

[00:56:01] Christa Biegler, RD: So where can people find you online? 

[00:56:03] Patrick McKeown: Thanks very much. That would be amazing. 

[00:56:04] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, 

[00:56:05] Patrick McKeown: I think we have a bit to go. I had to catch up with Wim Hof, but we're not even trying. So we don't have to, we're working with a different. A different, tangent or a different aspect of it for health.

[00:56:17] Patrick McKeown: I would say to people go to butakehoclinic. com. So that's people with asthma, people with anxiety and panic disorder, people with sleep disorder, breathing and for mental and physical performance. It's oxygenadvantage. com and there's social media channels in as well. And we have an app as well. We have 2 apps.

[00:56:37] Patrick McKeown: 1 is butake with clinic, which is pretty good. And even for children, because it comes back to, I ran out of time. Then working with clients and I wasn't able to have the reach that I wanted to have. So I, my daughter was 9 years of age at the time. She's now 14. And I recorded all of the Buteyko method with her, teaching her, and it's free online.

[00:56:58] Patrick McKeown: So it's free in the Buteyko Clinic app, but it's also free in the Oxygen Advantage app. And the Buteyko method is so simple for children, Christa. It's only six exercises and it goes through the importance of nose breathing and, a child, a mother or a father can sit down with their child, watch a simple five minute video to show the child how to decongest the nose.

[00:57:22] Patrick McKeown: A simple five minute video to show the child how to slow down their breathing, which is very important in terms of if the child's little worries and things like that, switching to those breathing. What does the nose do? All of that. It's all there. So yeah, but all of the exercise for adults are available free too.

[00:57:41] Patrick McKeown: And that's what the oxygen advantage shop, which is free, so we try and put it out there. 

[00:57:46] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Patrick McKeown, thank you so much for coming on today. I fully enjoy talking about natural remedies for asthma crooked teeth, sleep apnea, anxiety, and many more conditions. So I appreciate your work so much.

[00:58:02] Patrick McKeown: Pleasure. Thanks so much, Christa.