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By Dr. Artour Rakhimov, Buteyko breathing teacher and educator

Breathing education

The digestive system is a sophisticated conveyor more complicated than any modern chemical factory. It has its own brain (the enteric nervous system), various organs, special chemical messengers for communication, and dozens of digestive enzymes. When we are hungry, the system is ready to accept and process food. Eating without real hunger results in biochemical stress for some organs and the whole system in general. (According to recent surveys, over 60% of American women eat or have a snack when they feel stressed.) Stress, in its turn, leads to hyperventilation.

According to Russian studies, when our breathing gets slightly heavier and aCO2 concentrations decrease, glucose is driven from the blood into fat cells since CO2 influences permeability of membranes of fat cells in relation to blood glucose. Hence, most people, in condition of chronic hyperventilation, gradually accumulate extra-weight. Eating more, on the other hand, is the stress for organs of digestion. Therefore, breathing becomes heavier at the end of the digestive process.

The amplitude of these changes is proportional to the caloric value and type of meal eaten. Therefore, with larger meals, especially ones with fats and proteins, these effects are more significant. As Doctor Buteyko suggested, when digested substances are in the blood, they are to be used or metabolised by body cells. This cellular consumption means “inner breathing”. Thus, the respiration of cells (this term is normally used by certain microbiologists), especially in case of overeating, is intensified. That causes increased ventilation in the human organism (Buteyko, 1977). Overeating, according to Doctor Buteyko, has the worst possible consequences for respiration.

Doctor Buteyko also found that meals rich in proteins (especially when they are quick absorbing animal proteins) and, to a lesser degree, fats considerably intensify breathing, while fresh fruits and vegetables produce the least impact on ventilation. Why? One reason is due to varying availability of digestive enzymes. Fresh fruits, for example, often have their own enzymes for self-digestion making their digestion easy. Cooked meats and fats are hard to digest. Second, the amino acids cause blood acidification. Therefore, the CO2 removal (or over-breathing) is required to restore the blood’s normal pH. Third, some essential amino acids can directly affect the breathing centre and intensify respiration (chapter 8).

An old study by Haselbalch (1912) revealed that after following a vegetarian meal, aCO2 decreased to 43.3 mm Hg (the initial value was about 45 mm Hg); while a meal with meat resulted in 38.9 mm Hg. Such a difference means that a BHT after a meat meal can be about 12 s less, than after a vegetarian one. Explaining this finding in his textbook on respiration, Professor Haldane suggested, that "a meat diet, which causes an increase of sulphuric and phosphoric acids in blood, is acid-forming as compared to a vegetable diet, which contains less protein and relative abundance of salts yielding carbonates"(p.183, Haldane, 1922). Thus, the breathing centre compensates for the additional acids (amino acids) in the blood and the resulting blood acidification by reducing carbonic acid and CO2 stores. While with the vegetarian meal, the presence of additional alkaline salts in the blood requires extra acids for blood pH preservation. Among all acids in the blood, carbonic acid is the main component and its concentration can be changed by respiration.

These ideas provide some explanation why alkaline diets are considered to be healthy in the management of various health problems (fruits and vegetables yield alkaline residues in the blood, when they are consumed), while acidic diets (that include meats, fish, eggs, dairy products, most grains, legumes and nuts) less so.

In addition to the immediate effects on respiration, a lack of normally occurring food substances in the diet such as vitamins and minerals can gradually cause chronic hyperventilation. For example, carbohydrates require for their digestion adequate amounts of B vitamins. These vitamins are naturally present in cereals, whole grains and root vegetables and almost absent in sugar, white bread and white rice. Thus, eating these refined products diminishes the B vitamin content in nervous cells gradually leading to chronic hyperventilation (Buteyko, 1977). Doctor Buteyko and his colleagues particularly emphasized the dangers of sugar and refined products. The lack of some minerals (especially Mg, Zn, and Ca) or their biochemical unavailability is another cause of chronic over-breathing.

Therefore, the typical western diets, which are often full of refined products and lack fresh fruits and vegetables, has negative effects on breathing. Most of all, overeating, so prevalent nowadays, is one of the major causes of chronic hyperventilation.

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