How Exercise Helps with Chronic Diseases
Physical exercise was the main factor that made breathing and oxygenation parameters of our predecessors much better. They were exercising up to 8-12 hours per day (including walking, gardening, and all type of activities when the whole body moves). With advance of industrial revolution (last 100 years), the amount of average exercise for modern people has declined down to 10-60 min per day.
What are the effects of exercise on breathing and body oxygenation? When our metabolic rate increases, for example, 10 times, due to light exercise, minute ventilation, O2 consumption, and CO2 production all increase about 10 times as well. The effects of exercise then will depend on one factor: the route of breathing. If we breathe through the nose (and 100 years ago even competing athletes were breathing through the nose), body CO2 content gets higher during exercise. People feel and become much calmer since CO2 performs many crucial regulatory functions in the human body, including vasodilation, normalized or enhanced Bohr effect, and increased stability of the nervous system. This leads to improved cellular oxygenation and higher CP.
Warning. It is not correct to expect that after rigorous exercise the CP will immediately increase. For most people, physical exercise with strictly nasal breathing does not produce any significant CP improvement during the same day. However, the next morning CP will be higher. This is how the student should evaluate the effect of physical exercise: by analyzing the next morning CP - the key parameter of health.
Modern people, unfortunately, breathe through the mouth while exercising and can get … heart attacks, epilepsy attacks, exercise-induced asthma attacks, etc. due to exercise. From being a health factor, physical exercise became a hazard since these adverse effects are virtually impossible with strictly nasal breathing (in and out).
Meanwhile, sick people usually cannot exercise (e.g., jogging) with nasal breathing only. Why? When body oxygenation is less than 20 s, Krebb cycle or citric acid cycle get reversed causing anaerobic energy production metabolism in cells and elevated lactic acid in blood at rest. Hence, when the sick try intensive or rigorous exercise their lactate further rises (no oxygen in cells at the start of exercise means more anaerobic reactions in mitochondria) and the breathing centre, since it also controls blood pH at 7.4, starts to remove carbonic acid (or CO2) to compensate for lactic acid rise. Hence, their breathing gets un-proportionally heavy causing increased hypoxia and worsening of symptoms. This is exactly what we see in sick people: heavy panting even during light exercise.
However, if they try walking with 100% nasal breathing, then they do improve their oxygen stores. Such exercise is safe and results in feeling better and stronger after it. Moreover, when the CP gets higher it is much easier and more pleasant to exercise. Most students who get up to 50-60 s CP claim that they enjoy and even crave physical exercise.
“Physical work, sport, and exertion increase CO2 production. Its level increases in the blood, while oxygen decreases. The higher the intensity, the stronger the excitement of the breathing centre and the deeper the breathing, but it is only deeper formally. Breathing becomes not deeper, but shallower: it is less in relation to metabolism. This is the reasoning behind the usefulness of exercise and sport! During prolonged intensive exercise the receptors, which control breathing, adapt to increased CO2. If the person regularly works and toils, then he practically follows our method: he is decreasing his breathing using exercise” Dr. Buteyko lecture in the Moscow State University on 9 December 1969
Russian medical professionals from the Buteyko Clinic in Moscow, as well as other Russian Buteyko doctors, currently believe that a lack of physical activity is the main cause of carbon dioxide deficiency in modern people (for more details one may visit their website www.buteykoclinic.ru). During his interview, doctor Andrey Novozshilov, the chief doctor of the Buteyko Clinic in Moscow, was asked,
“Q: Why does hyperventilation form, since nobody specially practices deep breathing…?
A: The main cause is the lack of physical exercise, low level of body metabolism in general. We must work out for at least 4 hours per day, with heavy perspiration. Then you get high level of metabolism. The Buteyko method should be practiced until the level of CO2 is stabilized and reached the level when the attacks [of diseases] are impossible. It is practically impossible to remain in this state without physical exercise. If an individual, due to some reasons, cannot do physical exercises, they should do the breathing exercises. There is nothing wrong with this, since the [Buteyko breathing] exercises are not hard to learn and they can be performed practically in any situation” (Novozshilov, 2003a).
Physical exercise, according to Dr. Buteyko, is the main factor that defines the long-term success of the student during breathing retraining. It is particularly beneficial, when it is accompanied by perspiration (sweating) and prolonged shaking (mechanical vibrations of the body), as it takes place during jogging. Since lack of physical exercise is the main cause of hyperventilation in modern man, it is normal that daily duration of physical activity has a correlation with personal morning CP. Indeed, Buteyko and his colleagues found that when their students achieved high CPs (e.g., up to 60 s) and stopped doing breathing exercises, the CPs of these students will depend on the amount of daily physical exercise, even in cases, when these students continued to control their breath, while involved in other activities.
Below is a table that is based on writings of Dr. K. Buteyko and my own observations of students. This table established a link between the duration of daily physical activity and maximum expected MCP (morning CP) for experienced students. (Note that in order to recover from chronic diseases, one generally require more physical exercise than suggested here).
|
Total duration of physical exercise per day |
Maximum morning CP expected |
|
0 min |
15 s |
|
30 min |
20 s |
|
60 min |
25 s |
|
1 hour of devoted PE + 1 hour others |
30 s |
|
1.5 hour of devoted PE + 1 hour others |
35 s |
|
2 hours of devoted PE + 1 hour others |
Up to 2-3 min |
Table note. “1.5 hour of devoted PE + 1 hour others” means that the person spends, for example, 1.5 hour for devoted PE (physical exercise) (e.g., 2 daily jogging sessions 45 min each) and also gets 1 hour of walking here and there throughout the day.
Many sick people, especially city dwellers, often have less than 20 min of physical exercise per day. (These 20 minutes include walking within the house, to the car, while shopping, etc.). Their MCP is, at best, according to this table, less than 20 seconds.
If a person with over 20 second CP devotes 1 hour to rigorous physical exercise with strictly nasal breathing, they can finally get stabilized, over a period of some days, at the level of 25 seconds MCP. Usually such people also naturally get about 30 min of light exercise throughout the day (e.g., walking here and there).
Having more than 2 hours of daily physical exercise is generally sufficient to get or maintain any CP.
Elderly people often require less physical exercise than suggested by the Table above, while teenagers and young people in their 20s and 30s sometimes may require more physical activity to achieve the CP numbers provided by the Table. Other factors, including breath-work, diet, chewing, supplements, daily work, and sleep conditions, also influence the achieved CP level.
More detail about effects of exercise can be found in several articles (Section More).