We can live without food or water for days, but air for just a brief few minutes.
While we spend a great deal of time and attention on what we eat and drink, we pay practically no attention to the air we breathe.
It is common knowledge that our daily consumption of food and water must be of a certain quality or quantity. Too much spells trouble. We also recognise the importance of breathing good quality air- but what about the quantity? How much air should we breathe for optimum health? Wouldn’t it be fair to surmise that air, even more important than food or water for human survival, must also meet basic requirements?
The quantity of the air you breathe has the potential to transform everything you thought you knew about your body, your health, and your performance, whether you’re just trying to get off the couch , a weekend warrior doing 5-10K, or a professional athlete in need of some game changing edge over your competition.
You may wonder what I mean by quantity, after all, air isn’t exactly something you can binge on at the kitchen table late at night or take too many swigs of over the weekend. But what if, in a certain sense it was!? What if healthy breathing habits were just as important as healthy eating habits in maximising fitness-or, in fact, even more so?
There is a fundamental relationship between oxygen and your body. Improving fitness depends on enhancing the release of oxygen to your muscles, organs and tissues. Increased oxygenation is not only healthy, it also enables greater exercise intensity with reduced breathlessness. In short, you will be able to discover better health as well as better fitness and performance.
CHRONIC OVER BREATHING
Scientific research has shown the vital importance of learning how to breathe correctly. The problem is that correct breathing, which should be everyone’s birth right, has become extremely challenging in our modern society. We assume that the body reflexively knows how much air it needs at all times, but unfortunately this is not the case.
Over the centuries we have altered our environment so dramatically that most of us have forgotten our innate way of breathing. The process of breathing has been warped by chronic stress, sedentary lifestyle, unhealthy eating habits, over heated homes and lack of fitness. All of these contribute to lethargy, weight gain, sleeping problems, respiratory conditions, and heart disease.
