We often advise people here that slow deep breathing using diaphragm not shoulders and slowing your breathing down to less than six breaths a minute is great for stopping ectopic clusters.
When I was using the trick a lot I easily brought my breaths per minute down to under four though since I haven't needed to for some time I would probably struggle to match that these days.
Then this evening I was watching TV about two local free divers who regularly held their breath for seven minutes whilst diving with seals off the coast.
Hells bells and buckets of blood I thought SEVEN MINUTES!
That took me to google to see what is the world record for such feats. Turns out there are two classes, one, unaided by any preparation and one after purging CO2 by breathing pure oxygen for up to 30 minutes prior to the hold.
The world record unaided is over 18 minutes and after purging in excess of 22 minutes. Yes you read the right!
Bet they never have ectopics.
The footnote to the article I found was that brain scans of record free divers had shown some anomalies so don't try this at home.
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BobD
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A very good friend of mine free dives, she’s not very good but insists that it has helped her improve her health. She goes wild swimming daily and diving weekly. She started aged 62. She spends hours practising her breathing techniques and invited me to one of her Zoom masterclasses - fascinating!
Meanwhile I am re-reading James Nester’s ‘Breath’ and realising just what I still don’t know about breathing. Just watched Raducanu have to retire (very sad for her) because of a medical problem. The symptoms she exhibited are described exactly in the book as someone who may be over breathing and then suffering oxygen toxicity. I notice she is also a mouth breather.
We spend so much time worrying about exercise and nutrition, sleep and stress but forget about breath - AND WE DON’T KNOW HOW TO BREATH PROPERLY.
Breath through your nose, keep slow, steady, diaphragmatic breathing at ideal 51/2 breaths per minute - practice every day for 10 mins. 51/2 breaths per minute is incidentally shared by so many religious practises in meditation and prayer - no coincidence that when researched all the mantras have this length of out breath - out breath is more important than in breath.
Strongly recommend the book which explains exactly why CO2 is more important than O2 and how breathing less increases performance and prevents excessive lactic acid build up in the muscles - or of course we could all train as free divers?
I can remember swimming the length of Worthing swimming pool underwater as a youth.
No chance of being able to do that now. However, I do find slow breathing coupled with meditation music very useful if I get lots of ectopics or fast heart rate episodes.
I find 6 per minute difficult but the general principle works quite often.
It takes practice and everyone feels that especially at the start and that’s a really good sign. There are SO many reasons why shallow breathing and mouth breathing leads to ill health and the importance of which the medics mostly ignored.
Creating air hunger sounds counterintuitive - until you look at the science and the evidence of how our physiology has evolved over millennia, sacrificing our ability to take in and use oxygen effectively to develop a much bigger brain which has led to all sorts of illness, especially respiratory.
Go slow and gradual, it’s not a comfortable process but a hugely rewarding one!
Try holding your hands in front of your stomach and feel them being touched as you breathe in. Then as you breathe out feel the space between hands and stomach.
For those interested in free diving James Nestor has written a book 'Deep' and for AFers he has written another 'Breath', the latter I found very useful. Here's the link mrjamesnestor.com
I watched this as well Bob. I certainly started to hold my breath as I watched them go through that tunnel! I use slow diaphragm breathing as I sing and also meditate. It does help, but sometimes it’s difficult to overcome the panic……
Thank you BobD for mentioning James Nestor's "Breath, The New Science of a Lost Art". I read this book some time ago and have been practicing the slow breathing since then. It is how I fall asleep at night. I also find myself doing slow breathing while walking or climbing stairs. It certainly takes practice and you will find you may need to work yourself up to 5 1/2 breathes per minute.
I didn’t watch the programme but according to James Nestor - As humans developed large oxygen hungry brains our respiratory structures were sacrificed so the brain could expand into the sinus cavities - then our faces changed and all our breathing difficulties started. What we can affect by learning to breath correctly is our physiology correcting to some extent the changes that happen if you mouth breath and our response to stress.
I've been wondering how to equate my walking breathing rate to 5.5 breaths a minute? I take a breath every 20 strides with a heart rate of 98 bpm and a speed of 5kph. Can anyone analyse that for me?
When I cycle with a heart rate of 145bpm my breaths per minute rise to 42 breaths per minute according to my Garmin.
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