Comments on: Increase Your Endurance and Reduce Stress With One Simple Technique http://sethigherstandards.com/2006/12/04/increase-your-endurance-and-reduce-stress-with-one-simple-technique/ Ramblings from a 30-something ultra-marathoning yogi with a day job. Fri, 11 May 2012 04:03:41 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Mukesh Agarwal http://sethigherstandards.com/2006/12/04/increase-your-endurance-and-reduce-stress-with-one-simple-technique/#comment-3276 Mon, 12 Mar 2012 03:57:29 +0000 http://www.sethigherstandards.com/increase-your-endurance-and-reduce-stress-with-one-simple-technique/#comment-3276 Dear Ravi,

I am 52 and started running about two years ago.Slowly I have been making progress. I like your posts and read them regularly.

You have discussed about breathing thru the nose, mostly about inhaling. What about exhaling? When I am running I find that I inhale thru my nose but use both my nose and the mouth for exhaling.

Could you please respond what good/ bad this will do me.

Cheers !!!

]]> By: James Scholfield http://sethigherstandards.com/2006/12/04/increase-your-endurance-and-reduce-stress-with-one-simple-technique/#comment-3272 Tue, 06 Mar 2012 16:23:23 +0000 http://www.sethigherstandards.com/increase-your-endurance-and-reduce-stress-with-one-simple-technique/#comment-3272 Hi John,

I also suffer from Chronic hyperventilation and am keen to start breathing just through my nose. Did you find it uncomfortable at first?

My email address is jamesascholfield@googlemail.com. Would be really grateful for advice/tips!

Cheers mate,

James

]]> By: Srinath http://sethigherstandards.com/2006/12/04/increase-your-endurance-and-reduce-stress-with-one-simple-technique/#comment-3267 Wed, 29 Feb 2012 16:20:55 +0000 http://www.sethigherstandards.com/increase-your-endurance-and-reduce-stress-with-one-simple-technique/#comment-3267 Yes, I do practise Nasal Flushing, which is known as Neti Kriyas in Yoga. I do both water in from one nostril and letting it out through other nostrel and inserting a rubber catheter through one nostril and bring that out through mouth and rub the passage by pulling ends one after the other. It gives a tremendous health benefits!
I carry out this exercise once a week

]]> By: David Friedman http://sethigherstandards.com/2006/12/04/increase-your-endurance-and-reduce-stress-with-one-simple-technique/#comment-3252 Fri, 10 Feb 2012 06:15:53 +0000 http://www.sethigherstandards.com/increase-your-endurance-and-reduce-stress-with-one-simple-technique/#comment-3252 Fascinating. I’ve been thinking about whether I could train myself to even do hard interval sessions with only nasal breathing. What you say makes sense to me. I’ll have to experiment with that. Thanks!

]]> By: Anders Olsson http://sethigherstandards.com/2006/12/04/increase-your-endurance-and-reduce-stress-with-one-simple-technique/#comment-3251 Fri, 10 Feb 2012 05:23:29 +0000 http://www.sethigherstandards.com/increase-your-endurance-and-reduce-stress-with-one-simple-technique/#comment-3251 Looking forward to hear more about your experience.

My experience with nose-breathing when doing intense work is that a lot of it is mental – that we think we cannot do it because we just need all that air. When I finally tried high intentsity, before long I was able to do interval-training with 100% nose-breathing.

I believe that we with nose-breathing replaces quantity with quality, so that the body more efficiently can use the oxygen inhaled. Thereby we can reduce the amount of air we’re breathing.

When we inhale through the mouth the airways get filled with cold, dry air filled with bacteria. This leads to inflammation and more mucus in the airways which makes the airways smaller. The smooth muscles in the airways also gets constricted. Nose-breathing prepares the air for the airways by moisturizing and warming the air. The nose also cleanses out many bacteria. If the airways are reduced by 50%, which can easily happen during exercise and vast amount of air is taken in through the mouth, it takes 16 times more energy to move the air in and out through the lungs.

Further, narrow airways leads to an increase of the stress-hormones adrenalin and cortisol. Adrenalin has the effect of opening up the airways, and cortisol is anti-inflammatory. But if we’re exercising with high levels of stress-hormones, our endurance will decrease. One of the reasons is that the body switches to more anaerobic exercise, because during stress we need energy fast. Producing energy anaerobically (without oxygen) is up to 6 times faster than producing energy aerobically (with oxygen). The downside though is that anaerobically only yields 2 ATP per glucosemolecule (plus lactate), whereas oxygen is much more efficient in converting nutrients to energy and yields up to 38 ATP from the same glucomsemolecule.

/Cheers

]]> By: David Friedman http://sethigherstandards.com/2006/12/04/increase-your-endurance-and-reduce-stress-with-one-simple-technique/#comment-3246 Sat, 04 Feb 2012 23:31:50 +0000 http://www.sethigherstandards.com/increase-your-endurance-and-reduce-stress-with-one-simple-technique/#comment-3246 I am a 50-year old distance runner who has been running for 37 years. Over the past couple of years, I’ve experimented quite a bit with nasal breathing, with great success. Today, I do all of my runs (other than track workouts or shorter races) exclusively breathing through my nose. I run just as fast, and probably faster than I would have breathing through my nose, so I don’t seen any diminished performance at all. I feel much more comfortable, and stay much more relaxed, physically and psychologically. In fact, since I sometimes struggle with asthma, the nose breathing helps me to open up my airways and keep them more relaxed.

I took a little while to get used to this, but not too long, and is certainly well worth the effort. At this point, it’s second nature for me. When I do an intense track workout, I have a sense that I need all the oxygen I can get, so I begin to employ mouth breathing. I’m curious, though, to test this more and see if, in fact, I can actually do a fast intense workout only breathing through my nose. I’ll post here with the results as I experiment.

]]> By: InSearchOfBrilliance http://sethigherstandards.com/2006/12/04/increase-your-endurance-and-reduce-stress-with-one-simple-technique/#comment-3178 Tue, 03 Jan 2012 11:20:05 +0000 http://www.sethigherstandards.com/increase-your-endurance-and-reduce-stress-with-one-simple-technique/#comment-3178 Thanks Ravi. How often do you use the Neti pot? Ive also just read your blog on training and I too have over exerted myself for the last 20 years consistently training in the anerobic zone. I would highly recommend people buy a heart rate monitor and a quality reference book and build a good aerobic base as you suggest.

]]> By: YogiRavi http://sethigherstandards.com/2006/12/04/increase-your-endurance-and-reduce-stress-with-one-simple-technique/#comment-3172 Mon, 02 Jan 2012 23:09:06 +0000 http://www.sethigherstandards.com/increase-your-endurance-and-reduce-stress-with-one-simple-technique/#comment-3172 Yes, I use a Neti Pot and it is very helpful.

If you have allergies or a stuffed nose it can help to ease the symptoms and make nose breathing far easier.

]]> By: InSearchOfBrilliance http://sethigherstandards.com/2006/12/04/increase-your-endurance-and-reduce-stress-with-one-simple-technique/#comment-3165 Sun, 01 Jan 2012 08:32:12 +0000 http://www.sethigherstandards.com/increase-your-endurance-and-reduce-stress-with-one-simple-technique/#comment-3165 Fantastic thread. And something I am going to commit to. I have challenges with my sinuses and I will report back after 30 days. Would be interesting to know if anybody uses nasal flushing (I believe it is part of yoga teachings) to help with sinuses problems?

]]> By: Anders Olsson http://sethigherstandards.com/2006/12/04/increase-your-endurance-and-reduce-stress-with-one-simple-technique/#comment-3090 Sat, 03 Dec 2011 08:40:54 +0000 http://www.sethigherstandards.com/increase-your-endurance-and-reduce-stress-with-one-simple-technique/#comment-3090 Hi !

Thanks for a great article, I fully agree with nose-breathing being superior! I’ve been doing it for the last 2½ years and it has really lowered my stress considerably.

I am a trained Buteyko-instructor and have also read John Douillards book. After being in touch with dr Douillard, I decided to do my own study on the benefits of nosebreathing, 10 people, here in Sweden, biked as fast as they could on two occasions. First they had their nose taped and breathed only through their mouth. A week later they biked with their mouth taped, breathing only through their nose. Before the tests they had a minimum of three weeks training where they performed 30 minutes or more of physical activity 3 times a week. They also used the Relaxator breathing-trainer (similiar to the Frolov device, but much easier to use) for 15 minutes a day.

The results were interesting in that:
* Lactic acid was lowered by 11% with nosebreathing (from 9,0 mmol/L to 8,0 mmol/L)
* The breathing-rate was lowered by 22% with nosebreathing (from 40 breaths/minute to 32 breaths/minute)
* 4 out of 10 participants managed to bike at a higher load when nosebreathing, 4 could do the same load. 2 participants only managed to bike at a lower load when nosebreathing.

Although this is great, the most interesting outcome of the study I think is the fact that all the 10 participants were so thrilled about the effects that they will continue with nose-breathing as much as possible both during exercise and in their daily lives.

It was a mixed group of people where some was very fit and some not so fit. One of the participants is extremely fit. He is a triathlete and his record is 8 hours 15 minutes on the Ironman-distance. He was one of the 2 that could not perform with the same load while nose-breathing. But when we compared his maximal load when nose-breathing, 295 watt, with mouth-breathing his pulse was 10% lower – going down from 155 to 139 and his lactate was 38% lower – down from 3,4 mmol/L with nose-breathing compared to 5,5 mmol/L with mouth-breathing. Also, 6 months after the initial study this triathlete has now increased his capacity when nosebreathing. During the test he could only go with a pulse of 139 and 6 month later, after mostly doing nose-breathing while exercising he can go with a pulse of 162.

Kind regards

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