subject: Sick vs Healthy People: Body Oxygen Content and Breath Control Drives [print this page] Many people think that breath control take place due to our desire for O2. Nevertheless, carbon dioxide maintains breath control in healthy humans. This breathing regulation is maintained through monitoring CO2 amount in the arterial blood and brain using certain chemoreceptors. People's desire for O2 is many hundred times lower. For example, if the oxygen percentage in the ambient air is raised two-five times or by 20-80%, our breathing pattern will stay the same. Conversely, if CO2 percentage in the atmospheric air is boosted only by one tenth %, our breath rate will instantaneously raise. As a result, the human organism is many ten times more perceptive to CO2 changes.
In addition, apart from breathing control, CO2 executes innumerable duties in the human organism. Some of the examples are: stability of the nerve cells, control of blood sugar, regulation of pulse, blood pressure maintenance, release of O2 in capillaries (the Bohr effect), dilation of bronchi and bronchioles, relaxation of muscle cells, normal immunity, regulation of blood pH, sleep control, repair of alveoli in lungs, dilation of arteries and arterioles and some other main biochemical processes.
Nevertheless, vast numbers of contemporary individuals promote the ignorant idea that CO2 is a toxic substance. They also insist that deep unconscious breathing (or hyperventilation) enhances body oxygen levels. Hundreds of physiological studies have found that hyperventilation REDUCES oxygen in tissues.
The situation with breathing regulation is different in ill patients. As it was noticed by Russian principal physiologist KP Buteyko, sick individuals breathe much more than the medical standard. There are indeed tens of medical studies that have suggested this result. He also realized that in sick people, when they become sicker, the O2 drive becomes stronger in breathing regulation.
The core reason of this abnormality in the sick is their low body oxygen due to over-breathing. This is a rule of physiology: the slower we breathe, the more O2 our bodies obtain.
Dr. KP Buteyko also invented the Buteyko respiratory reconditioning method. The core goal of the Buteyko method is to decrease our inhalation activities using breath reconditioning exercises and by dealing with unnatural lifestyle factors.
Sick vs Healthy People: Body Oxygen Content and Breath Control Drives
