- Updated on August 3, 2019
By Dr. Artour Rakhimov, Alternative Health Educator and Author
After testing thousands of overweight people, over 600 Russian MDs found that virtually all of these patients have low body oxygenation caused by … too deep/fast breathing. These doctors suggested that millions of people can’t lose weight due to one main reason: their low body oxygenation caused by abnormally heavy breathing regardless of the state of their thyroidal gland and blood thyroxin levels. These people cannot lose weight no matter what due to poor circulation and oxygenation regardless of their thyroid state and other factors.
In this video below, two breathing practitioners Volker Schmitz (Hamburg, Germany) and Dr. Artour (Toronto, Canada) share their unique experience about how their Buteyko breathing students lost their weight naturally without trying just using and focusing on breathing retraining.
Heavy or labored breathing of overweight people is easy to notice and hear at rest or during their sleep and exercise. Clinical studies testify that modern people breathe almost 3 times more air than people living a century ago.
Hyperventilation cannot increase blood oxygenation to any significant degree, but it reduces CO2 levels in the blood and other body cells. Therefore, you are not losing weight due to too fast and deep breathing. It causes a lack of CO2 that is crucial for oxygen transport and normal blood circulation no matter what.
CO2 is the most potent dilator of blood vessels. In addition, low CO2 levels in the brain make nerve cells irritable and overexcited (see links to medical studies below).
The chart below provides a mechanism that answers this question: Why am I not losing weight? You breathe more than the tiny medical norm. As a result, you have reduced blood flow (perfusion) of all vital organs. In other words, the whole system is in the state of stagnation, delivery of O2 and nutrients, including glucose, is slow. As a result, you suffer from chronic fatigue and hunger. This causes more stress and overeating, which further intensify your breathing.
Why can you not lose weight?
With less than 20 seconds for the simple body oxygen test, most people will complain about chronic fatigue and will be unable to lose weight naturally. (The normal value for body O2 is about 40 seconds.) I have seen this in hundreds of my students. Blood sugar levels often become abnormally low, and this causes constant hunger and eating more.
These Russian doctors teaching the Buteyko method found that when overweight people start to slow down their breathing back to the medical norm, they feel less hungry but more energetic, and lose weight naturally, as a side effect of breathing normalization. My experience completely agrees with this clinical observation.
Natural lifestyle choices before and after breathing retraining
| Lifestyle factor: | Body oxygen < 30 s | Body oxygen > 50 s |
| Energy level | Medium, low, or very low | High |
| Desire to exercise | Not strong, but possible | Craving and joy of exercise |
| Intensive exercise with nose breathing | Hard or impossible | Easy and effortless |
| Typical mind states | Confusion, anxiety, depression | Focus, concentration, clarity |
| Craving for sugar and junk foods | Present | Absent |
| Addictions to smoking, alcohol, and drugs | Possible | Absent |
| Desire to eat raw foods | Weak and rare | Very common and natural |
| Correct posture | Rare and requires efforts | Natural and automatic |
| Sleep | Often of poor quality; > 7 hours | Excellent quality; < 5 hours naturally |
