Life expectancy and the way we breathe

- Updated on August 3, 2019

During my workshops and, sometimes, during courses, students often ask me the following questions: How breathing and breathing retraining influence the life expectancy of people? Am I going to increase my lifespan if I get a higher morning CP (the body oxygen test result)? These or similar questions were also asked in comments on pages of NormalBreathing.com. There are clear answers to these queries regardless of the race, country, and other factors.

First of all, if someone is going to die from a heart attack, stroke, seizures due to epilepsy, asthma exacerbation, or some other acute exacerbation, they can prevent these acute episodes with breathing exercises. Therefore, it is normal then that the Buteyko technique, Frolov breathing device, and other breathing methods already saved the lives of thousands of breathing students and often increased their expected lifespan by many years or decades. These topics were already partly covered in the past on other pages of this website:
– What time of the day has the highest mortality rates and the highest chances of acute exacerbation or attacks? See an overview of clinical studies that explain heavy breathing during sleep that was scientifically proven for heart disease, stroke, asthma, COPD, diabetes, epilepsy and some other health conditions
Breathing patterns when dying or why and how overbreathing is a crucial factor in deaths due to severe illnesses
Why singers die early?

Can these people with serious health problems expect increased life expectancy? Yes, if these breathing students make permanent changes in their unconscious breathing patterns (manifested in higher morning CP), then they usually have better chances to live longer depending on how far they progressed in the Buteyko Table of Health Zones.

Can these people and other folks with severe chronic health concerns expect a normal life expectancy? Yes, even people with early metastatic cancer or very serious long-term condition (including diabetes, emphysema, and HIV-AIDS) can enjoy healthy aging and have normally expected lifespan with serious breathing retraining (up to 50-60 seconds for the morning CP test). For the list of diseases that are based on low body oxygen content and reduced CO2 levels in the lungs, see this page: diseases linked to overbreathing.

It is true that most medical doctors and official medicine would not agree with these strong statements. For example, average life expectancy in people with cystic fibrosis is in the 40s. It increased dramatically during the last 70-100 years. But normal breathing helps them to have a nearly normal lifespan. If you still do not believe this, check out this video trailer about life expectancy in cystic fibrosis.

Expected lifespan for normal people with reduced body oxygen

What about many other groups of people if they cannot get 50-60 s for the morning CP, but if they still increased their morning CPs up to 20, 25, or 30 s?

Getting up to 50+ s for the body oxygen test 24/7 is a serious challenge since only a few percents of all breathing students get this excellent result that is also manifested in very high energy levels, natural desire or craving for physical exercise, natural nose breathing during physical activity of any intensity. amazing focus and concentration, naturally short sleep (less than 5 hours), and so forth. This result allows protection from any chronic, or degenerative, or inflammatory health problem.

As for people with lower CP results but reasonably good health (normals), their main achievement, due to easier breathing and more O2 in body cells, is a better quality of life. As we discussed before, contemporary people have nearly the same life expectancy as people living one hundred years ago (see this page: lifespan and mortality now vs. past). However, a large number of old or very old modern people have miserable lives with various symptoms, poor sleep, low energy, poor digestion, taking medication, and many other concerns.

Would have morning CP 20, 25 or 30 seconds make a difference in life expectancy of a person? Apart from better life quality, probably, higher CP would still help here too. It would be easier to get up to 80 or 90 years while being in good physical and mental health. At the same time, diet, stress-reduction methods, genetics, and other factors and techniques can also influence the expected number of years to live.

Or go back to: Chronic diseases