Brian Mackenzie
You do it 23,000 times a day but never give it a single thought. Well maybe it's time you did.
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[00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of super human radio, you know, I am a little bit late to the whole breathing phenomenon. It's not that I haven't thought about it. Those of you who've listened to the show over the past 13 years. Now, I've talked about almost hyperventilating in between sets to kind of recover faster and how I found that very effective and then I know there's people out there that do a lot in this this [00:01:00] category.
[00:01:00] It's not been a. Mainstay of mine until I went to Los Angeles and hung out with Ron Penna for a while and he was into breathing and a lot of different analysis that he was looking at in buteyko and all this other stuff and. I discovered. I've always been a nose breather no matter what even when I was young, man and.
[00:01:24] You know and jogging was all the rage and I always breathe through my nose and I didn't have to do it consciously apparently is a lot of people have to who mouth breathe. But I have learned the significance of nose breathing. So I wanted to have somebody on the show that is really an expert in this category and Kirkland more letter.
[00:01:44] You found my next guest Brian Mackenzie and probably lots of you have heard of him already. So like I said, I'm a little late to the party here, but nevertheless still a very important discussion. Of course, I [00:02:00] have to thank our title sponsor. In pharmaceutical and EFX sports right now, you get six of their top-selling products absolutely free by going to superhuman radio down that clicking EFX Sports Banner ad and entering your name and address.
[00:02:12] You will pay five dollars and change for shipping, but that's truly the shipping cost. You'll get 20 or 30 dollars worth of free product. Everybody loves the product they get and that's because dr. Jeff Golini believes that no one should buy anything until they've tried it first and he puts his money where his mouth is Brian Mackenzie.
[00:02:28] Welcome to the show. How are. Good crawl. Thanks for having me again. Yeah my phone while wait you've been on already I think so in 2012. I'm sorry, Brian. I just turned 60 so I'm going to blame it on that but for 13 years I've been doing for five shows a week. I had to look up the date. So don't feel bad.
[00:02:48] I'm like I could have sworn I've done a show before but you know, here we are six years later. Yeah. Well at least you and I as we have we have staying power at least right? Yes, we do. So, [00:03:00] okay. So real quick, like let's start at the beginning for the audience and give some of the newcomers an opportunity to understand that the.
[00:03:08] To serve your interest in end and breathing and it's and how it affects health and performance. Where did it all start for you? Yeah, it's simple I was making fun of. What a lot of people have made fun of it's called the training mask. It's called an elevation training mask, right and a buddy of mine handed it to me when I was in Hawaii close to six years ago.
[00:03:33] It was probably very shortly after I did this interview because it was near winter. I think when I did the interview and I usually in Hawaii in the winter and. II kind of booked it at it because it said elevation based on what I understand with elevation. It's a pressurization change. It's not an oxygen change its you know, all this stuff that being said.
[00:03:55] I was I laughed the math that it couldn't do that. But [00:04:00] nonetheless, I knew that if I hadn't tried something and I'm making fun of it that you know, that's kind of the definition of ignorance that literally is and so I put the mask on and I instantly change my position in order to breathe through this mask because it provided resistance, which if I'm providing resistance to something I'm going to go to the default or strongest thing to actually help me breathe.
[00:04:23] Freely you that being. My diaphragm, right. And so in order to be in a good position, he's like your diaphragm is connected to your mechanics to a large degree and position. So if I'm in a poor position, I'm not going to breathe correctly. I'm just going to use compensatory or I'm going to use smaller muscles that may be involved with respiration, but then become dominant and it becomes a compensatory reaction nonetheless.
[00:04:49] It instantly flipped my lid and I was like, this is a great tool to use with athletes who won't listen or can't understand the motor control aspect of [00:05:00] stabilizing correctly while moving or doing things. So they're in lied the first layer of what we were doing on now. This was this was so really you weren't looking at it as for its Aretha poetic effects.
[00:05:14] You were looking at it almost as a progressive resistance training program for the muscles responsible for breathing at first. Yeah. Yes, but this has the you know has a Compound Effect. Right? So if I change mechanics I changed physiology. I become more efficient physiologically right? Thus I then can become my mental state.
[00:05:38] Therefore can be affected as well. But without going down that road too early what we started to see was that if we applied this in a warm-up scenario we. We're missing we were missing that Gap where once training [00:06:00] started or competition started where somebody started to feel really good which meant we were really figured out that that area where.
[00:06:10] People warm up, but we're really good at warming up the cardio cardiovascular system and the muscular system. We are terrible at it understanding the respiratory system and how to warm that up. And that's that place where 20 minutes into a workout or 20 minutes into a run or 20 minutes and to whatever you're doing or 15 minutes.
[00:06:30] You start to feel really good. Right and this happens at the highest levels in the lowest levels and then my wife would tell me that you know, 20 minutes into it a heavy-duty piece that she was doing for rowing which you know, she said she was an Olympic rower. She's on the national team for almost a decade that that's when she started to feel good and that's where that pulmonary system caught up to things.
[00:06:52] So we're starting to see that take effect then we started looking at well, what about. What was [00:07:00] this thing? Like? Why was he why has Yoga been talked about for almost, you know, maybe five to ten thousand years. Why is the martial arts been talking about breathing for you know a couple thousand years the free diving Community.
[00:07:14] Why are these guys so efficient? Aerobically or oxygen and such and what's the limitations on our ability to be CO2 tolerance, right? Like how much CO2 can we actually tolerate in order to maximize our ability to be efficient with oxygen and that has a very specific relationship. So we started really looking at these things in.
[00:07:42] In detail and what the missing parts were? Okay. So wait, I want to I want to jump off at this stop for a second. We get back on the train in the second. You know, this is something that has become very interesting to me over the past couple years. Thanks to Ron Penna and the whole buteyko thing and you know, [00:08:00] I so I've even learned from Derek Trombetta, who is a firefighter [00:08:05] And obviously skilled at EMS and all that sort of stuff EMT in that that they look at carbon dioxide levels in the blood as a greater indicator that the person has passed then oxygen or even heartbeat. Yeah, so carbon dioxide used to be thought of as a waste gas and now we're starting to understand that carbon dioxide facilitates the ability for the oxygen to do its job and just and you use the word tolerate and we know that intolerance can be adjusted through practice.
[00:08:42] And so what role does learning to tolerate high levels of CO2 have in both health and performance. Massive and we now CO2 is a waste product. But it is [00:09:00] it's our direct link to what's really going on metabolically and what's happening from a stress point right? Because when I have somebody who's high stress or dealing with high stress, I have somebody who's very intolerant of CO2 or sensitive.
[00:09:15] To CO2 and so when we can actually alter the sensitivity and the tolerance to CO2, those are two different things by the way, they can they alter how they're reacting to something but the importance of oxygen. Is if we look at red blood cells most of us understand red blood cells is oxygen-carrying cells that transport oxygen right?
[00:09:42] Well hemoglobin is protein that kind of acts like a magnet for oxygen to red blood cells, but it in order for that magnetic per se process to let go [00:10:00] of the oxygen to make it bioavailable. You've got to have a specific amount of carbon dioxide or carbonic acid at that moment because it's in the blood it present in the blood and I.
[00:10:15] Doesn't mean you're not going to have oxygen that's not going to kick off but how much oxygen can I get to kick off how much oxygen can I get to utilize and that is dependent upon how much carbon dioxide you can get in the blood and there are detrimental side. That's right. That can be overdone.
[00:10:35] But from what we're seeing that is a very difficult thing to do and look take a look at the free diving world is an example of the big wave surfing Community is an example of that, right? They develop very high levels of CO2 tolerance to hold their breath for very long periods of time that inevitably most of us would never even get a third of the way in.
[00:10:57] And this is where we start to see. [00:11:00] Oh, well, what could we do inside of training to maximize this well respiration control learning how to train and use respiration control and the easiest way to get to in what we've done is we've. Catapult a lot of them you take oh work along with I think dr.
[00:11:20] Patrick Ewing has done a very phenomenal job at really explaining what to be taking method was because it was just this archaic kind of Russian method. That was like when I when I stumbled on that be take own method it was I had to buy like basically VHS tapes and these you know things. Like workbooks that were almost in Russian that were transcribed terribly it like I was like, what is this?
[00:11:48] Right Ron and he really broke that down and broke down what it means what the Bohr effect really means and something anybody who has an exercise science degree or even a medical degree [00:12:00] understands the Bohr effect to a little to a large degree, but it was really blown. We really blew past it.
[00:12:06] In understanding, okay, if we're talking about VO2 max, that's great. But how much of that is actually exchanging what's really going on. Where is your efficiency? And so the blanket way of actually getting people to understand this is just shut your mouth and train with your mouth shut rice. See how efficient you actually are.
[00:12:27] And this could not only this is going to raise CO2 because you're not able to expel it quickly because when you mouth breather, that's the large that's the biggest issue right if you are able to unload or offload a ton. Of see carbon dioxide. So on the way all the way in on the way into the studio this morning, I was thinking of other species and you know, first thing you got to do that you got to think about other species that actually perspire through their skin because mouth-breathing is seen in some species because.
[00:12:58] That's how actually [00:13:00] how they perspire. Yeah, so I as a young man, I worked on the racetrack with Thoroughbred racehorses and you never ever see a racehorse breathe through their mouth. They come they come they you're a brat blow their heart out and come to the end of the line. Their eyes are literally so bulged out that they're going to come out ahead.
[00:13:17] They never open their mouth and their nostrils open up and they breathe through their nose and they recover through their nose and I thought you know and Native American. Do this because they taught their babies to breathe through their mouth when the baby was breathing through its mouth and nose that would baby would breathe through their mouth and hold their hand over their mouth today people would say that's child abuse, but they forced the baby to learn to breathe through their nose because back then the tribal wisdom.
[00:13:44] They knew that breathing through the nose was important. Yeah, they didn't want the black man. Is that what they call the black mouth? Yeah, that's the indigenous cultures back in the 1800's called the Civilized World. They [00:14:00] the key name for what they gave people was black mouth because their mouths were rotten.
[00:14:10] Yeah, the teeth the wicked. Yeah. Yeah, so, you know, you don't you don't you know what you just said made me think of something so, you know, I get my teeth cleaned twice a year. And my teeth, I've been told that like the pockets I had are gone. I have not even not even a molecule of blood when I brush my teeth vigorously with my Sonicare toothbrush anymore.
[00:14:33] But I've also been taping my mouth and sleeping with my mouth shut at night for at least the past year and a half now. Yeah, what saliva do its work man? This is that, you know, I never like that together. I never put that to mmm. That's the part of this thing. That's the you know, the nose was designed with the respiratory system in mind.
[00:14:53] The mouth was designed with communication and digestion and that first phase of digestion is saliva and [00:15:00] chewing your food, right? So if you've got actually remnants of food in there, you've got saliva to kind of break that down. I'm not saying that's going to solve all your problems you're eating sugar, but you're going to get that mouth shut.
[00:15:13] Is actually part of you utilizing oxygen more efficiently when you sleep so that that's part of the conundrum. So that's the easy plays just shut your mouth as much as you can there's a time and a place open your mouth. Yeah, but that's when you're you know, maximal effort type stuff. We've actually developed a system around this a gearing system.
[00:15:35] And you know that mouth open that mouth breathing is fifth year and that's that top. And yes, let's let very limited on let's do this. I want to take a break when we come back. I want to talk about the difference between sensitivity and tolerance and then let's get into the role that the nose plays in the process of breathing because I I kind of been saying the nose is like your carburetor if you bypassing it you losing all the [00:16:00] value of telling your brain what to.
[00:16:02] Physiologically, so let's do this. Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll be right back with more Brian Mackenzie. Welcome back. We're talking with Brian Mackenzie Brian. Do me a favor plug your website where people can find you and all the good information that you're actually promoting now about breathing.
[00:16:19] Yeah Power speed endurance.com. And anything they want to understand a get on the breathing stuff. Especially the stuff we're talking about is under our learn tab under breathing resources. We've got a lot of information for free. So there's a lot of science out there that tells us that our nostrils do a lot of different things aside from just turbinating incoming are adding a little moisture to it.
[00:16:47] But also it remains a channel when we exhale we're some of the exhaled gases stay and seems to produce some nitric oxide when we inhale that [00:17:00] portion of already breathe. Gas is but also there have been discoveries about nerve bundles that go right from the nostrils to the brain that actually kind of like your O2 sensor tells the engine how to adjust the fuel mixture based on the quality of the air coming in and when you don't breathe through your nose, you don't give your brain that opportunity.
[00:17:23] To make those physiological modifications and in fact, a lot of people who don't know the breed tend to report anxiety more often, which is one of the things that seems to precipitate when you fail to breathe through your nose. I know I threw a lot of stuff at you there, but talk about the complexity of nose breathing and why it's so important.
[00:17:47] well. Like yeah, like I was I was talking about earlier is that the nose was designed with the respiratory system in mind, right? And literally it was and based on that and what you [00:18:00] just talked about to add to that. You have a filter system that starts at the base of your nose with hair right that system collects particles so that they don't actually shoot down into your lungs you then have mucus.
[00:18:17] Which is the first line of defense for your immune system, right? So you've got something that's actually going to collect anything that gets by there in order to stop that from progressing. Then you have sinus cavities which are responsible for the are kind of spinning and humidifying. And it changes the structure of the air and this is all part of how you kind of absorb the air as well.
[00:18:45] And then you actually pull the air into the lungs to wear when you actually use your nose. You're using your diaphragm more. It's not that you're not you. It's not the people aren't using their diaphragm. It's how much they're actually yeah, [00:19:00] there's some reason there's a little bit of resistance there, right?
[00:19:02] There's a little resistance as you got it. Yeah, and that's when we really started, you know, figured out the you know, you know, the training mask is great. But like I don't actually need that. I don't actually need a resistance breathing device. I've got one on my face. It was designed. I'm literally designed to use this thing but from a biological perspective and I'm set up to use it with my body and it's a shock for most people at first because of that CO2 intolerance.
[00:19:35] They may be experiencing to that and then having a sensitivity to that. And I have to correct myself. I said that I've been taping my mouth for about a year and a half. I've been sleeping with the chin strap for a year-and-a-half in an attempt to keep my mouth shut at night, but I was still puffing through my lips.
[00:19:52] It wasn't until Ron Penna told me try taping your lips, which I started probably about eight months ago. And [00:20:00] when I track my sleep I get into more I get into deeper sleep sooner and I stay there longer throughout the night. It's undeniable because once in a while the salmon if I use the salmon to fix trips that we have a sponsor once in a while.
[00:20:15] I don't know why but one corner of it opens up. I think I push my tongue against it at night or something like that and I do start breathing through my mouth a little bit. And I always know because I can see where my sleep becomes less deep. It's I start to come out so taping my mouth at night has been I would have never I didn't believe it.
[00:20:35] I didn't when Ron told me about I don't look I'm already sleeping with a chin strap to keep my mouth shut he goes no just try it. He goes cause you're still puffing you're still breathing through your lips from time to time. He was right it changed my school Sleep Quality. Immediately the first night.
[00:20:51] I woke up the next morning and I stretched and I thought wow. I feel like I got a restful night sleep last night. Yeah, [00:21:00] yep. I mean you're just changing your relationship of oxygen and you know, we look at not that we shouldn't be looking at nutrition or hydration or working out but those are all.
[00:21:14] As I look at them secondary at this point compared to like we don't like everybody should be oxygen efficient. It doesn't matter if you're a world-class cyclist in the Tour de France or you're a mom or a dad. Right? Each of these human beings should be oxygen efficient. You know, your aerobic capacity is something very different.
[00:21:38] But at rest or even moving around you should still be efficient at mobilizing and moving oxygen and you can even you can connect this to any type of stressor or if we look at disease you literally see within the construct of every disease a higher respiration rate. Yeah, a [00:22:00] larger volume of air that is being moved because it's stress.
[00:22:03] And what happens when you get stressed you start to hyperventilate, right? And so we over breathe a lot. And this is where the buteyko method really came in. But this is also where you look at things like yoga and it's like, oh we move from position to position in inhale and then exhale into the next position and you know, this is actually.
[00:22:24] Training CO2 tolerance to a large degree in itself and actually forcing the body to be more oxygen deficient and no wonder why people feel so good that do yoga, even though yoga is a very difficult practice if done correctly. So what is the difference between sensitivity and tolerance and. What do we need to know about altering one of them obviously tops.
[00:22:48] So you're taught your tolerance is largely. It largely has to do with what's going on in your lungs. So we're now well aware of the fact that there are dedicated areas in the [00:23:00] brain that are set up for respiration. These are set up these receptor these receptors in the brain are set up with things called chemoreceptors that it's sense CO2 in the blood right or CO2 in the.
[00:23:14] In the lungs and when we are intolerant in the lungs, you take a breath you we don't breathe because of oxygen you breathe because of CO2 telling you to breathe and you become acidic. So you become it becomes a kind of a pain to some degree and holding your breath. Will be the first indicator of that but CO2 tolerances in the lungs.
[00:23:40] And so most of our day being 90 plus percent of it unconscious. We're in this autopilot or Auden our autonomic nervous system, right and that's part of our respiration where your brain just picks up a pattern to breathe based on that tolerance level right in your lungs sensitivity [00:24:00] is. Where in your brain you've connected a response to that?
[00:24:07] To that to CO2 and so think about being held underwater. Right? Like if I held your arm and I held you underwater that would be a very different story of how quickly you would need to breathe. And if I just hold your arm, and we are outside of water and you were sitting down and I said hold your breath as long as you can and I'm gonna hold your arm.
[00:24:28] You're going to hold your breath probably two or three times longer outside of the water versus inside of the water now, Free diver isn't going to do that then probably it's probably going to be the same in either case right except for maybe the mammalian dive reflex. Other than that because there's a connection to the brain and how sensitive I am to a reaction and when I say that I'm talking about people who deal with higher levels of stress or more anxiety have a higher sensitivity in this is research shown.
[00:25:00] [00:25:00] To CO2 and that's interesting because I was just going to say I remember reading my first study about the role of CO2 blood levels of CO2 and anxiety probably 15 years ago, and it wasn't and so what we know now is it's not the presence of the CO2 that begins the anxiety. It's the person's ability to tolerate that.
[00:25:22] Yes, it's their reaction. It's their memory to that. It's that click. It's that neuronal connectivity that's happening as a result of what's going with went what happens when that CO2 goes up, you know, we've got billions of connections going on, right but it's the ones that are connecting to this thing that's happening and I'm going into this reactive state where I get either angry or fearful or whatever and this creates a coupling.
[00:25:52] Right and that's more or less what's going on in society today anxiety and well and I was just going to say [00:26:00] so many of us watch things like the news we hear stories about horrible things happening way far away from us that really don't have a direct impact on us, but we drive around in our cars literally wound tight.
[00:26:17] With stress we tend to start to breathe shallow, right? Our ribcage doesn't want to open up a diaphragm pulls and pushes pulls and pushes rapidly. And when you start to pay attention to your breathing throughout the day just becoming mindful of your breathing without even with any without any intention of changing it.
[00:26:35] What you will find is that you most people breathe very shallow and very rapidly. Very few people breathe deeply or even breathe slowly and I studied great apes. We I actually talked about this on the show probably about five or six months ago. When you watch great apes when they're relaxed, they're just chilling.
[00:27:00] [00:27:00] They pause longer than they breathe. You know, it's like they inhale exhale and they don't just inhale right away. They're just like the done with that one breath. And then they inhale and the exhale and that pause is where the heartbeat changes that pause is where the anxiety goes away that pauses where the body is actually for a moment at a time incomplete neutral, you know, and but yeah, most of us don't breathe that way we breathe to end to end in out in out in out in out and when you realize that that's how you breathe without any conscious decision of changing.
[00:27:38] You'll start to understand the state of mind that you spend most of your time. And when you stop paying you'll be like man. I'm really always tense. I'm really always stressed. Look at the way I breathe all day long. Yeah, we call that sympathetic dominant. That is a day spent. [00:28:00] And sympathetic dominance and it's no wonder why people have trouble sleeping that the tissue doesn't respond that I've got stiff tissue or painful tissue.
[00:28:12] I have back pain, you know, and I don't think breathing is going to solve is the answer to these things but breathing sure as hell. Plays a role in this and can help alleviate things and there's a lot that people don't really understand. I mean from just using that diaphragm alone. You're actually moving organs around in massaging the organs and doing things that aren't necessarily being done.
[00:28:42] Right? These are all huge things that play a role in this and but you know on the larger scale, it's. We're looking at we're on the verge of where I mean essentially mental disease is actually the biggest killer because in the top 10, you know, roughly in the top 10 things. I believe that top five of those [00:29:00] things have to do with some level of mental disease, right and we're literally on the verge where we're going to shift from we're going to have mental disease being the top thing in the next probably five or seven years right as to the biggest problem we have.
[00:29:17] And it's not going anywhere and if we don't start to address these things and you know, breathing actually is part of playing a part in this it becomes the physiological interception for the reactions for the chemical processes that are occurring as to the thinking that may be going on. So it provides this buffer.
[00:29:38] In in place and this is why it's so important or critical inside things like meditation. Right? Like there's always breathing inside of meditation or breathing alone can be looked at as its own form of meditation. And I think the distinction of the problem has been that the language barrier of hippie-dippie or esoteric [00:30:00] practices that have gotten, you know, gotten their hands or.
[00:30:04] On in people who continue to you know, it's not very attractive for everybody else right like three-quarters of the population and it going oh, I really want to get involved in that really goofy Thing versus. Hey, let's make this language a little bit more accessible to people so that they can understand it and get it.
[00:30:23] And you know, that doesn't mean you can't have your you know, your esoteric practice like go for it like that. That's great. But let's use let's start using language around this that allows people to really we start shutting down barriers that are actually or walls that are getting created by people not having an attraction to something right and even in the medical community, you know, we start to get these people up to speed with things like this so that they can really understand.
[00:30:51] I want to take a break and when we come back I want to talk about so there's whim Huff on one side. Right that's like the hyperventilation approach [00:31:00] to breathing and then there's buteyko on the other side and they coexist and do they have benefits that play off of each other and then I want you to explain to people the approach to breathing that you espouse, you know in health so long exhale for so long pause for so long.
[00:31:19] So that they can start to practice it on their own stay tuned. We'll be right back with more Brian Mackenzie. Welcome back. We're talking with Brian Mackenzie. There's not enough time in the show to cover all the great things that Brian teaches people about you really got to go to his website power speed endurance.com.
[00:31:38] Apparently there's even a section about heat and cold exposure which my audience knows. I'm a huge fan of. Going right from a 200-degree sauna to a nice cold shower. I do it every morning. I do it because I figure if I don't have a stroke or a heart attack, I'm good for the rest of the day, but I'm sure there's a lot of benefits that I'm ignoring their.
[00:31:57] So let's talk about [00:32:00] this whole Whim Hoff like a hyperventilation approach, right? They you breathe you breathe you breathe you breathe and you try to. With oxygen and buteyko is really the other side where you're holding your breath in your learning to tolerate high levels of carbon. Dioxide is one right is one wrong or do they coexist?
[00:32:19] Well, I don't believe in wrong or necessarily right? I think there's ways of doing things. I think a whim Hoff is probably the most important thing that ever happened to breeding and based on. The timing of what he figured out and what he's been able to bring to the world. So he's been able to touch or more people than any other methodology or idea centered around breathing ever has that being said if you take own method, you [00:33:00] know, it is a great time.
[00:33:02] Look, it was something that was instilled in the Russian medical system to deal with asthma. It was the first line of defense for asthma. You didn't get a prescription for a steroid. In order to open up your lungs. You actually learn to deal with CO2 and you more than likely would cure your problems to Asthma as a result of that.
[00:33:26] There are hundreds. Of methodologies out there. There are things in there pranayamas. There are you know, which are in yoga there are they're very similar techniques in yoga that are similar to both of these methodologies. So yoga is arguably been around the longest. It's been around and has the ideas or the methods that have existed in any method that are it is out there.
[00:33:57] The martial arts has instilled these things, [00:34:00] you know with him has brought also the cold aspect to things which is a form of tummo meditation where you learn how to this is what Buddhist monks do they use respiration in order to control their body heat? And this is part of what he's kind of, you know learned how to hack or bring to the world as well.
[00:34:21] I think these are all very important. They all have their place what we teach is principles. And so we took things from let's say what whim ha for holotropic breathing or a Breath of Fire In Yoga does which is a hyperventilation technique or you take things like do you take a method where you can control or slow down the breathing in order to stimulate higher rise in CO2?
[00:34:44] Think whims method is something that is great for understanding the depth of things that you can go to essentially they're both doing the same thing at the end of the day because with whims method you're actually holding your breath as long as you can which allows CO2 levels to [00:35:00] rise, but you also on the flip side of this tube you take a method is teaching you how to control air so that you actually are limiting your respiration so that you're actually utilizing oxygen.
[00:35:13] With carbon dioxide throughout the day, right? So they all have their place right stuff. We actually use and what we figured out is that and this is something I even learned and running around, you know places with Wim Hof because I spent a lot of time with him was that not everybody reacts the same way to the same thing.
[00:35:35] Yeah, and if you take spend enough time, Looking at the brain or look, you know, investigating psychology and things like that you start to see that people deal with emotions and things very differently. And when we start to look at the research based on respiration and crossing paths with emotions stress work, etc.
[00:35:56] You start to understand that. Not everything should fit the [00:36:00] specific way. Like if I've got a specific tolerance to CO2. I'm not going to I'm not going to respond or handle the same breathing protocol that you're going to week that sets. That should be a variable adjustment to like let's get Marky Lee who's a big wave surfer free diver who can hold his breath for five minutes at about a hundred feet under the under the water and hunt fish and me.
[00:36:26] He's going to respond differently to a pattern than I am because his CO2 tolerance is way higher so we could actually put more stress or more a longer respiration Rhythm on him than we could with me. And this is where we you know, we're involved in a research project at Stanford. We're starting some research projects with firefighters.
[00:36:52] We're going to be doing some research along the lines of nasal breathing specific breathing patterns. And all of this is to [00:37:00] extrapolate and show that there are going to be ways that we can kind of. Deal with people or get people a rhythm and this is more or less what we do on the website as well.
[00:37:09] We do a breath assessment that kind of buckets you into specific patterns that work for specific groups of people and how they deal with stress and then based on the CO2 tolerance test. We actually can narrow that down to pay what how long of a breath cycle can this person handle and what type of breathing pattern fits with this type of fits with the stress pattern that this person has.
[00:37:34] See that but the thing that I want make sure my audience doesn't miss from what you just talked about. Is that the same way that we train to acquire greater strength, you can train to acquire greater CO2 tolerance and reap the benefits. So the analogy you gave about the free. And yeah, really the things that separate him and you is the time he has spent [00:38:00] training his body for that specific task that you have not yet.
[00:38:04] You could if you wanted to and so I want to make sure that the audience understands that that free diver has no special innate endowed qualifications that you don't have except they have spent a lifetime freedom. Correct. It's like power lifting right you don't go squat a thousand pounds in three to five years after first starting to powerlift.
[00:38:29] That's that that that's a career. Right? Right. That's a that's a long time or getting on the stage at the Olympia. That's a long time spent in bodybuilding. Yeah, like you don't become a world, you know Usain Bolt overnight. That becomes a process that is a career and us. Don't like you can actually start to train these things without even having some form of informal breathing practice if you're [00:39:00] actually aware even in your own training of your breathing.
[00:39:04] And training your breathing inside of what you're doing that can be a breath practice and there's no reason that cannot be right that that can be if I'm limiting my respiration or I'm using hypoxic training inside of my training. I'm actually doing both. Right. I'm actually stimulating both things, but you will see that the person who actually has a formal breathing practice will start to accelerate past the person who does not and that is because it's more training so it doesn't need to be all day long.
[00:39:37] But so another point that I want to make here is that there's lots of really good research done by reliable University. That show that fatigue starts in the brain. It's not peripheral. It's you know, your brain has governors in it that it designed to keep you from hurting yourself and it takes data from all different places, including your heart and so on [00:40:00] and these Governors are designed to keep you from pushing yourself and killing yourself.
[00:40:04] Let's say running a marathon or even running a Sprint and I have to believe knowing what we know that fatigue starts in the brain. That for sprinters especially and I'm sure long distance Runners as well that training their tolerance to CO2 probably makes them better athletes because I have to believe that when it given it everything they got that nanosecond where they think this is all I've got is push way far out when the brain can tolerate more CO2.
[00:40:39] Correct. Yeah, we wholeheartedly. That's a part of our on what we teach with inside the art of breath is it's a three-part. It's a three tiered program, right it respiration affects mechanics. It affects physiology and it affects state or our [00:41:00] psychology. Okay, it affects all three things and that in essence.
[00:41:06] Is how important it can be and starting with the brain is actually the brain everything in the body is working for the brain everything. The brain is just trying to sense what's going on behind that outside that skull and it's managing what's going on internally. All the things going on internally are working for that brain, including your breathing right and how to optimize that and when that get when the brain gets off everything else.
[00:41:36] Yeah, it's off. I want to take a last commercial break when we come back. We're going to wrap up the interview stay tuned. We're talking with Brian Mackenzie will be right back. If any of this discussion is intriguing to you and it should be because you know why you don't think about it, but you breathe you take a breath over 23,000 times a day named anything else you do.
[00:42:00] [00:42:01] Maybe your heart beats. I don't know if you I guess if you're breathing. One breath every 60 seconds. I mean, let's see here. If it's one a second now your heart probably beats more than that, but the bottom line is you do you do breathe 23,000 times a day. It's something that you commit a lot of energy to.
[00:42:19] a lot of your nervous system controls it and so you should be thinking about it and you should want to learn more and the place to learn more as power speed endurance.com. There's so much good stuff here. I'm just looking through it now. I just signed up for the newsletter to. So I recommend everybody do that.
[00:42:35] So in summary If people could learn one thing. Can you teach them the breathing Cadence that you espouse and then can you also apply that to like training if you're doing cardio. Do you does it change? Yeah, so, you know, I mean we use several different. [00:43:00] Rhythms, right and you can get those for free you can actually go play around with us for free and we encourage people to do that because like I was like I talked about earlier right?
[00:43:10] Not everybody responds the same way to same thing like the gentleman Who The Purge Dr. Andrew Huberman who I'm working with a Stanford the protocol that I use in the morning that kind of puts me into an alert ready to go Place puts him to sleep. And vice versa uses to go to yeah, and so we've got several different protocols whether they're apnea based or their Cadence based meaning they're using a full breath cycle.
[00:43:36] Like inhale hold exhale hold, you know, I you can plug in a CO2 tolerance test. We encourage you to do the test, which is very simple. It's just an exhale test. It's all on there then it'll spit out numbers for each of those. Different rhythms you can play with to see where you fit in and that's free.
[00:43:55] Right and you can use that. So that's why is that all in the breathing resources link? [00:44:00] Yeah. Yeah and the breathing resources. It will have Brett Cecil have breath calculator have all that stuff. Yep. I'm looking right in order to get the actual life. Hey, what are the protocols that are work going to work for me?
[00:44:11] You got to do the breath assessment but does cops the money right now. But once if you become a subscriber you actually can get the breathing at our actual power speed endurance app, which has a breathing timer on it which you can plug in all of those numbers and play with now when you go to train if you're looking to do cardio and you want to be more efficient with oxygen one of the easiest things that we do in play with is.
[00:44:36] We get like one of the one of the blanket things I'll do with a lot of athletes is they get one breath every five seconds. That's a 12 breaths a minute cycle. That is a very that that is a low breath cycle. Even for your everyday person just normally right but we train people to work to the highest level.
[00:44:57] They can let's say on a stationary bike [00:45:00] using one breath every five seconds. So an inhale in and exhale every five seconds. And they can work as hard as they want. As long as they can maintain that forget about heart rate. Don't worry about that. Just worry about what you can do for work start with 10 or 15 minutes and get that up to about 45 minutes and you're going to see you are going to see changes aerobically that you've never seen before really now so one breath every five seconds.
[00:45:27] So is that like I mean two and a half seconds inhale two and a half seconds exhale. I mean, it's roughly. Yes, roughly. Yes. Yeah, and I used I use something more towards one breath every six seconds, which is one breath every you know, that's to Second inhale to Second exhale two second pause to Second and he'll take two second exhale two second pause.
[00:45:49] I do three and three out but also usually use a brief pause on the ends to a large degree dependent upon. How hard I'm actually going because like I was alluding to [00:46:00] very early earlier is there's a gearing system and respiration is literally our direct link to intensity and what's going on.
[00:46:11] Because the body the brain knows like know you want to do things that we don't have the capacity to bring air in and out right now fast enough, but as you like when you talked about where your wife she's when she Rose but I think you said for an hour and then all of a sudden she comes into her own.
[00:46:27] She's like now I'm ready and that there's a lot of things that happen in the body to get to that point vascular density changes. You know the muscles tight, they loosen up blood flow changes blood viscosity changes heart the. You know, we think about the heart pumping that it's a muscle that squeezes but it also is a muscle that has to open up like a Bellows so that both of those will work all that stuff has to happen and it all happens at different rates.
[00:46:56] So some people are like, wow, you know, I [00:47:00] remember that when I was a runner. I remember when I would run it was about 30 35 minutes and all of a sudden I felt like, you know, you know what it's like, have you ever been on a boat? Yeah, okay. See, you know, when you're at a dead stop and you and you throttle up the engine and the boat comes out of the water and the transom dips down and you're fighting against the water and then all of a sudden you reach our RPM with a boat levels out and it's just gliding along the water effortlessly.
[00:47:28] That's the that's the analogy I would use it's like you're working against it all of a sudden you feel like everything is working with you when you just Glide away that that takes time for all that to happen. Correct. Interesting. This is it's a great analogy and that's exactly how this starts to work.
[00:47:45] We see changes with you know, you know, I mean, I've had athletes who started off they the highest heart rate they could have when they, you know were nasal breathing was about what was just under 140 be 140 beats per minute within six weeks. [00:48:00] They were at a hundred and seventy and they felt like they could just go forever.
[00:48:03] Everywhere those chains. Yeah, this is where those changes really start to help because you're not the moment you open your mouth. You're blowing off CO2 more which we went over right but this puts you into a more sympathetic dominant place and from an energy standpoint. Guess what you're burning more sugar.
[00:48:22] So you're burning up more glycogen. So you're eating through your more Anna wrote you're using more that anaerobic stuff. That is limited. Versus I'm staying more aerobic or oxygen efficient in what I'm doing. I love it. This is great stuff. And this is stuff. You're everybody out. There's already breathing.
[00:48:43] It's not like he's always saying. Oh you got to do this other thing now put more you already breathing. Just learn how to breathe differently and explore what is waiting for you at the other end go to the website power speed endurance.com and check this. I mean, I'm looking at it. Now. I'm going to be [00:49:00] spending time after the show today on here.
[00:49:01] This is really cool stuff. And I'm sorry, I forgot you were on the show before but it's happened and it's going to happen again. I just can't I just can't remember anymore. It's been 13 years. November's 13 years. I've been doing. Show 5 days a week so, you know, congratulations. Listen. Thanks for being here today.
[00:49:18] You got it. Take care Brian and that's it for today because I'm off the air tomorrow. So I will see you Monday with another great episode of superhuman radio. Thank you [00:49:33] for [00:49:37] listening [00:50:00] today.
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