Deep breathing myth: "CO2 is a toxic, waste, and poisonous gas"
Most people believe in benefits of deep breathing. They assume that deep breathing pattern (24/7) provides us with more oxygen. Many people search for deep breathing exercises for heart failure patients. Others are looking for deep breathing to fight fatigue. Some medical doctors, nurses, and physiotherapists demonstrate deep breathing or lumbar deep breathing to their patients. These medical professionals encourage coughing and deep breathing postoperatively or deep breathing for patients with pneumonia fantasizing that deep abdominal breathing improves everybody's health. Most alternative health leaders are in the same state of confusion about exact parameters of breathing for ideal health. Very few of them can answer a simple but most important question: "Which unconscious breathing pattern provides us with maximum body oxygenation?"
Medical research studies and physiological science could not find any deep breathing benefits. There is not a single study that have proven or shown that we need to get rid of as much carbon dioxide as possible or that there are some mysterious benefits of deep breathing. In fact, a human being will die within minutes if carbon dioxide level drops to a quarter or fifth of the physiological norm. [Deep breathing during correctly done pranayama only looks deep for naive people. In fact, the goal of pranayama is to accumulate more CO2 due to reduced minute ventilation. Hatha yoga masters should have only 1 breath per minute pr even less during this yoga practice.]
At the same time, thousands of professional medical and physiological studies
and experiments have proven the adverse effects of acute and chronic
overbreathing (hyperventilation) on cells, tissues, organs and systems of the human
organism. Many professional publications and available scientific evidence confirm importance of normal carbon
dioxide concentrations for various organs and systems in the human body. This
website has hundreds of research papers that have proven that carbon
dioxide is a regulator of numerous vital processes, including:
*
Breathing control: CO2 is the key
chemical that controls breathing
* Vasodilation:
CO2 expands arteries and arterioles facilitating perfusion or blood supply
to all vital organs
*
The Bohr effect: CO2 is the main chemical that regulate release of
oxygen in tissues by red blood cells
* Nerve cells stabilization:
CO2 is the stabilizer of the cells of the nervous system)
* Muscle relaxation: CO2 is a
natural relaxant of muscle cells
*
Bronchodilation: CO2 dilates airways or bronchi and bronchioles
* Blood pH: CO2
regulates blood pH and respiratory blood gas abnormalities are leading
immediate causes of most deaths due to chronic diseases
* Regulator of other chemical reactions: CO2
is necessary for its fixation, natural glutamine production, and other
chemical processes
Hence, belief in the usefulness and benefits of deep breathing (or hyperventilation) is one of the greatest superstitions that exists among the general population in the West. Deep breathing myth is also common among modern yoga teachers and can be found on their websites, articles and books.
Therefore, it is suggested that patients with asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia, COPD, cystic fibrosis, and other respiratory problems must not practice coughing out their mucus and deep breathing postoperatively. If they breathe less, their bodies will produce less mucus and cilia will work better to remove any existing mucus (since cilia also require more oxygen and blood supply for better work). Any deep abdominal breathing should be done as slowly as possible, only as an exercise, with the purpose to increase CO2 in the body and breathe slower and less later. Patients with pneumonia should follow the same rules, if they want to improve their health. Deep breathing can fight fatigue and heart failure only if these patients accumulate more CO2 during exercise and breathe less afterwards or, even better, 24/7.
Historical roots of the CO2 myth (“toxic, waste, and poisonous” gas)
In the 1780s, French scientist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier determined the composition of air. He also discovered the mechanism of gas exchange during respiration. Oxygen is consumed for the production of energy and carbon dioxide is expelled as an end product. In his classical experiments, mice died in a closed glass jar in an atmosphere containing large quantities of carbon dioxide and almost no oxygen. A candle also quickly expired in this air.
That was probably the time when a superficial understanding of respiration produced the idea that carbon dioxide was “toxic, waste, and poisonous” gas while oxygen brought life and vigor. “Take deep breath”, “Breathe more air, it is good for your health”, “Breathe deeper, get more air in your lungs, we need oxygen”, etc. became popular phrases for which there is no scientific basis. Even now, some scientific publications contain such misleading sentences, as “Respiration is the process of oxygen delivery.”
Yale University Professor Yandell Henderson (1873-1944), the father of cardiorespiratory physiology, the author of the first physiological textbooks gave the following explanation of this ignorance,
“Likeness of Life to Fire. - Lavoisier's supreme contribution to science and particularly to physiology was the demonstration that, in their broad outlines, combustion in a fire and respiratory metabolism in an animal are identical. Both consist in the union of oxygen from the air with carbonaceous material: and both result in the liberation of heat and the production of carbon dioxide…
The human mind is inherently inclined to take moralistic view of nature. Prior to the modern scientific era, which only goes back a generation or two, if indeed it can be said as yet even to have begun in popular thought, nearly every problem was viewed as an alternative between good and evil, righteousness and sin, God and the Devil. This superstitious slant still distorts the conceptions of health and disease; indeed, it is mainly derived from the experience of physical suffering. Lavoisier contributed unintentionally to this conception when he defined the life supporting character of oxygen and the suffocating power of carbon dioxide. Accordingly, for more than a century after his death, and even now in the field of respiration and related functions, oxygen typifies the Good and carbon dioxide is still regarded as a spirit of Evil. There could scarcely be a greater misconception of the true biological relations of these gases…
PHYSIOLOGY. -----Relations of Carbon Dioxide and Oxygen in the Body. ---- Carbon dioxide is, in fact, a more fundamental component of living matter than is oxygen. Life probably existed on earth for millions of years prior to the carboniferous era, in an atmosphere containing a much larger amount of carbon dioxide than at present. There may even have been a time when there was no free oxygen available in the air. Even now, such animals as ascaris will live and be active in an atmosphere of hydrogen and entirely without oxygen” Henderson Y, Carbon dioxide, in Cyclopedia of Medicine, ed. by HH Young, Philadelphia, FA Davis, 1940.