The influence of breathing on your daytime energy level

Good breathing is beneficial for several things, including your energy level during the day, as well as your sleep quality at night. How does this work - and what is actually meant by "good breathing"? We asked Dick Kuiper, Buteyko therapist and founder of the Buteyko Institute Netherlands.

For those unfamiliar with the term "Buteyko," the Buteyko Method is a method developed to develop natural, calm breathing. Cooper: "Konstatin Buteyko discovered years ago that many people were breathing 'incorrectly.' For many years he searched for the best ways to cure this. After experimenting with all kinds of devices, he eventually kept coming back to some breathing exercises."

Asthma due to incorrect breathing

Kuiper explains that Buteyko and breathing are really nothing more than reprogramming your breathing center. But how exactly does that work? "In your brain stem there are old functions that used to be there. Among other things, your smell and heart are registered and supported there, but also your breathing. Are you breathing too much? Then that causes problems," says Kuiper, who himself suffered from asthma for a time. "In retrospect, I now know that my asthma was caused by incorrect breathing."

At the time Kuiper developed asthma, he was living with his family in New Zealand. "Especially sports made me stuffy. Sometimes I used some Ventolin and one time I took a shot of Prednisone, after a week of being stuffy and barely sleeping."

Kuiper kept going that way for a while, until someone pointed him to the Buteyko Method. "I didn't hesitate for long and decided to take a course with Jennifer Stark: her son was severely asthmatic and he had gotten rid of his asthma thanks to the Buteyko Method. My asthma also went away after the course and in the process I felt a lot fitter and more energetic."

Retrained as a Buteyko therapist

In New Zealand, Kuiper retrained as a Buteyko Therapist. Once back in the Netherlands, he founded the Buteyko Institute Netherlands, where he now teaches group and individual Buteyko courses. "Incorrect breathing can lead to asthma, as well as hay fever, sleep apnea and other problems. The Buteyko method can help anyone achieve greatly improved health."

Breathing incorrectly can have far-reaching consequences. "Breathing incorrectly" refers to a person breathing too much, or breathing more heavily than is actually desirable. This is also called 'hyperventilation,' literally translated: breathing too much. in hyperventilation, the CO₂ concentration decreases in the lungs, in the blood and eventually in the body's cells."

Functions of breathing

Dropping CO₂ concentration is not good, according to Kuiper. "Breathing has two very important functions: to supply the body with oxygen and to remove CO₂, or 'carbon dioxide.' Oxygen is converted into energy, water and carbon dioxide in your cells. This carbon dioxide is essential for processes in our body. If you breathe too much, you lose too much carbon dioxide gas and can have all kinds of problems."

If you are hyperventilating for an extended period of time, your body intervenes. "For example, by making lactic acid in the muscles and bringing it to your blood. Actually, you don't want this to happen because it causes fatigue and cramping in your muscles, among other things," said Kuiper, who warns against chronic hyperventilation. "With this comes unpleasant symptoms in your overall health, but specifically also in sleeping."

Effects of chronic hyperventilation on sleep:

• Snoring
• Unable to fall asleep
• Poor sleep and/or interrupted sleep
• Bedwetting or having to urinate frequently at night
• Getting up tired in the morning

And generally:

• Cold hands and/or feet
• Swollen abdomen and/or belching
• Listlessness
• Quickly tired/or overall feeling of sluggishness and fatigue
• Mental fatigue

Cause hyperventilation

So plenty of reasons to prefer not to get chronic hyperventilation. But why do we hyperventilate in the first place - and how can we get rid of it? Kuiper: "Hyperventilation can have several causes. You can get it because your mother hyperventilated, because you have the idea that deep breathing is good, because you eat certain foods, exercise too fanatically, exercise too little, talk incorrectly, breathe incorrectly, or because of the biggest culprit: stress."

"When we are under stress, our body shoots into the so-called fight-flight response. This is an ancient reaction from the time when we were not only hunters but also prey. All sorts of things happen in our bodies. For example, digestion slows down, your blood flows to large muscle groups and your adrenaline production goes up, but most damagingly, you also start breathing more heavily."

Fight-flight response

Because you start breathing more heavily, your body thinks it's wise to exhale a lot of carbon dioxide in advance so it can make room for the carbon dioxide that will soon be produced in your muscles. "But the fight-flight response is basically meant only for moments when there is acute danger, for example, when life or death is at stake. In us humans, this reaction takes place at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons: we think too much and worry about what is going on and could possibly happen, so we keep walking around with the stress."

If a stress period lasts a long time, then your respiratory center gets used to the lower carbon dioxide level in your blood and continues to breathe deeply. The problem is, the respiratory center does not recover on its own. "If you want to get your carbon dioxide levels back up, you have to take action, such as doing special breathing exercises to reprogram your breathing center and get it used to a higher carbon dioxide level in your blood step by step."