Over 80% of modern people use their upper chest for breathing at rest. It is easy to observe this phenomenon in public transport, restaurants, waiting rooms and many other places. Medical studies suggest that overwhelming majority of people with asthma, bronchitis, COPD, cystic fibrosis, terminal cancer, severe heart disease, and many other conditions are chest breathers.
At the same time, it is known that advance of many chronic diseases is always accompanied by lowered amount of oxygen in the brain and body cells. Furthermore, severely sick and acutely ill patients often require supplemental oxygen, regardless of the details of their chronic disease (heart disease, epilepsy seizures, respiratory disorders, neurological, hormonal, and so forth). Whatever their health condition, critically low brain and heart oxygen levels are most likely causes of possible deaths.
What are the health effects of thoracic breathing on oxygen transport? Oxygen delivery cascade is very sensitive to any abnormalities that can appear on the way from outer air to body cells. In health, as medical books suggest, we use mainly the diaphragm for breathing at rest: it does up to 80-90% of the work of breathing. Moreover, since the diaphragm stretches the whole lungs in the vertical direction, all alveoli in the lungs get fresh air supply and vital oxygen. Therefore, the diaphragm provides hemoglobin in the arterial blood with up to 98-99% of oxygen saturation.
Chest breathing means taking in air with your ribs and chest muscles. Obviously, chest breathing brings a lot of oxygen to upper portions of the lungs. What about the lower portions of the lungs? Are they important? Dr John West in his medical textbook Respiratory Physiology claims that the upper 7% of the human lung delivers 4 ml of oxygen every minute, while the lower 13% of the lung delivers in 60 ml of oxygen per minute.
Therefore, lower portions of the human lungs are about 6-7 times more effective in oxygen transport. This phenomenon is probably due to the effect of the gravitational force: more blood flows at the bottom of the lungs than at the top of the lungs. Chest breathing drastically reduces oxygenation of the blood.
Furthermore, chest breathing is a normal result of chronic hyperventilation. Consider the medical facts. People with normal breathing breathe very slowly and little: only about 10-12 breaths per minute with 500 ml for one breath. In contrast, chest breathing is larger and deeper: often more than 18 breaths per minute at rest with up to 700-900 ml for tidal volume in moderate heart disease, diabetes, bronchitis and other conditions.
For some poorly understood reasons, when we start to hyperventilate (chronic overbreathing), we breathe more with the chest muscles. Hence, it may look like a total paradox, but during large thoracic breathing (deep and fast), blood oxygen levels are reduced due to inhomogeneous gas exchange. In addition, this large breathing reduces CO2 levels in the arterial blood causing another health disaster that is called hypocapnia. (Low blood CO2 also contributes to reduced brain oxygenation due to vasoconstrictive effects.)
Therefore, it is normal that chest breathing can greatly contribute to hypoxemia (low levels of oxygen in the arterial blood) and the development of emphysema, asthma, bronchitis, cystic fibrosis, heart disease, diabetes, cancer tumor growth, and other pathologies.
Clinical experience of Soviet and Russian medical doctors practicing the Buteyko breathing technique suggests that people make a natural transition to diaphragmatic breathing when they slow down their automatic (unconscious) breathing back to the medical norm and their body oxygen levels is about 40 seconds.
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