The Oxygen Advantage: A Book Report

The Oxygen Advantage - Patrick McKeown

My initial reaction to the book: 

This book. The science. The KNOWLEDGE. The power. The inability to write a succinct review that makes sense… 

The most important messages:

We’re bad at breathing. We have messed up our own lives (society/humans generally). We’ve added too much stress to our bodies that really aren’t anatomically designed to cope with it. Why have we done this to ourselves?! Our bodies were made for frolicking and foraging and functional breathing and just existing within our little communities.

My main takeaways:

Much of this book has made me ponder everything about how we breathe and how we’ve got quite bad at it. I hadn’t realised how breathing can affect pretty much everything about our health, including weight loss, fitness, respiratory conditions (maybe more obvious) and our physical facial anatomy?! I will try to summarise a few of these below: 

Mouth breathing and anatomy:

If you breathe through your mouth, your tongue is likely to be relaxed and not in contact with the upper mouth, so the upper jaw/palate does not develop as it should, leading to a physically longer face and a much smaller space in which your teeth can grow - as such, mouth breathing can lead to overcrowding/crooked teeth! It also determines jaw shape (think about a strong, square jaw vs a more set-back, rounded chin/jaw. Development of the jaw continues until approx 18 years old. You can simply encourage your child to breathe through their nose as early as possible, e.g. commenting how a cartoon character breathes through their nose, and praising them when you notice they are breathing through their nose. 

Mouth breathing and weight management:

When it comes to weight management, there is a chicken and egg situation between obesity and bad breathing habits. It all relates to the pH of the blood. Homeostasis (balanced life, equilibrium) is achieved when blood pH is 7.35-7.45. 

It no longer surprises me to learn that we, as a species, have a tendency to breathe through our mouths and that this is becoming more and more typical, and increasingly more of a problem. What did surprise me is that, because mouth breathing leads to ‘over breathing’ (that is, expelling too much carbon dioxide, which is acidic), pH will increase (become more alkaline) and the body will thus crave processed or acid forming foods in a quest to bring the pH level back down to homeostasis. However, if the blood pH goes too far the over way (i.e. too acidic), maybe by eating too much of such foods, then the body will try to correct this by instilling over breathing in an attempt to expel more carbon dioxide (which is acidic). Thus, it becomes a self perpetuating problem.

Now, I have seen millions of pieces of content talking about weight loss, calories, exercise etc. But never have I seen ANYTHING mention the potential for breathing patterns to be linked. Food for thought for sure! 

The Bohr Effect:

The Bohr effect describes how CO2 is the catalyst for the release of oxygen from the red blood cells to be metabolised by the body.

Increasing blood saturation (amount of oxygen) is virtually impossible in healthy people since usually they’re around 95-99% (that means 99% oxygen carrying red blood cells aka haemoglobin molecules which contain oxygen). However, the problem is that, in the case of over breathing, the oxygen is not being released into the organs around the body, including the brain, because CO2 is needed to let this happen. By over breathing, we are expelling too much of the CO2 which really needs to be retained. 

How it could be improved:

Honestly, I don’t know - because I don’t know what I don’t know? I thought this book was great in explaining complicated stuff in an accessible way. I wonder if some sections were maybe a bit too /meaty/ at times and my attention did dwindle a little when there were lots of big words! 

How it will inform my practice as a Breathwork Facilitator:

Some people access breathwork sessions for calm, exploration, relaxation. Others are more interested in the science and the functional aspects of breathing. I love knowing I have this knowledge to be able to relay when my more science-interested clients ask me exactly how it all works. Whilst I’m mostly interested in Conscious Connected Breathwork, it’s good to know I could potentially help people in a more medical model, too.