Morning Insight - Breathing

Have you ever wondered how optimal breathing works beyond inhaling and exhaling air? In this morning insight, I walk you through all the parts of breathing mechanics that happen after inhalation and exhalation that are important for optimizing breath.

If you like this track, the morning meditation - breath awareness will be a nice follow up.

Transcript

Good morning.

Today's morning insight is about how we use carbon dioxide to optimize oxygen uptake by our body's tissues.

My name is Inga and it is my mission to bring you science based insights on everything between psychology,

Yoga and meditation that I find essential to living a curious,

Healthy and connected life.

Breath work,

Although a central part of ancient practices,

Has only recently gained increased attention from the scientific community and they are discovering wonderful things that add to the ancient wisdom of breath practice.

One of those discoveries is the vital importance of carbon dioxide.

While most of us are aware that oxygen is our life force and that without it we die,

We see carbon dioxide mostly as a waste product.

Something we need to get rid of,

Both in our atmosphere and in our bodies.

Yet it plays a vital function in our ability to burn oxygen in our cells.

Without carbon dioxide,

Oxygen would be useless.

Tissues would starve,

Even if oxygen would be readily available in the blood.

A little over a century ago,

In 1904,

Christian Bohr,

A Danish biochemist based in Copenhagen,

Discovered that carbon dioxide facilitates the release of oxygen to the cells.

In experimental trials he discovered that blood with high concentrations of carbon dioxide facilitated the release of oxygen from the oxygen carrier in the blood,

The hemoglobin.

Let's paint a picture of how that works.

Imagine that your artery network is like an underground train network with stations,

Platforms,

Tracks,

Trains and passengers.

This train network belongs to a huge company where employees need to work around the clock.

And that means that there are different workers depending on whether they work day or night shifts.

At central station on each platform a train with many carriages awaits the day shift workers in red overalls to be transported to their designated departments.

Their team leaders await them in the carriages.

And they are responsible for managing the transit to the designated departments.

At these departments night shift workers in blue overalls are finishing their preparatory work for the day shift.

When the day shift train with the red team arrives,

The team leader helps the day shift relieve the night shift and the blue team is taken back to central station on the same train.

This is how respiration works in a nutshell.

Now let's attach some terms to the parts of this organization so that you can understand their functions and interactions better.

Your body is the company.

Your lungs are central station.

The platforms on the station are the alveoli from which the day shift workers,

Which are oxygen molecules,

Embark the train.

The train tracks are your arteries.

The trains are your blood.

The train carriages are red blood cells waiting to carry the oxygen day shift towards their designated departments,

Muscles and organs.

Oxygen workers put on their red overalls when they embark the train.

So when blood is oxygenated,

It is a bright color red.

The team leaders are called the hemoglobin and they await the oxygen day shift in the carriages.

It is the task of the hemoglobin to make sure that oxygen can be absorbed by the cells that need it most.

These leaders are in charge of managing the exchange between the day shift and the night shift at the designated departments.

The night shift workers are carbon dioxide molecules.

Their job is to prepare the workday for the day shift of oxygen.

The more night shift workers are present in a department,

The better prepared the day shift will start.

Therefore,

The team leaders lead most oxygen to the departments where the night shift has best prepared.

When the day shift is released,

The night shift hops on the train and carbon dioxide is being transported back to central station where it leaves the body via central station's platforms,

The alveoli.

So let's paint a picture.

With your inhale,

The day shift workers of oxygen overcrowd the platforms,

The alveoli.

From there they board the carriages to meet their hemoglobin team leaders and they get to their designated department stations,

Muscles and organs.

The trains are only carried to the departments where most oxygen workers are needed.

It's a supply on demand system.

At the exchange,

One thing is very important.

Each team of four oxygen workers has one hemoglobin leader.

This leader is all about efficiency.

She only allows the oxygen team to disembark the train when enough carbon dioxide workers have been added all night to properly prepare the work for the day shift.

If only one carbon dioxide worker has prepped during the night,

Only two oxygen workers disembark to continue the work.

The night shift day shift ratio is one to two.

So the less carbon dioxide is present,

The less oxygen is released from the train.

In summary,

Carbon dioxide molecules help to free up oxygen molecules from the hemoglobin.

Carbon dioxide then hops in their place to journey back to the lungs.

This means that to properly oxygenate our body,

We need to have sufficient levels of carbon dioxide in our tissues.

You may wonder why this matters and how it affects you.

Well,

Night shift workers do not come in via central station.

They arrive in the system through the smaller department stations.

When muscles and organs are more active,

They produce more carbon dioxide.

So departments of muscles or organs that are temporarily important for the organization will have more night shift workers preparing for the day shift,

Automatically attracting more oxygen to those departments that need it most.

It's a beautifully balanced system,

But there's one catch in this beautifully balanced process.

When the red day shift train comes,

The night shift always gets on the train because it needs to recover from its shift.

When there are little night shift workers in the department stations,

For example,

Because there's little movement in the body and there's no night shift workers are called to their stations.

What little carbon dioxide is present will leave the body on the night shift train.

The faster we breathe,

The more day shift trains arrive,

But the more night shift trains will also leave the body up until the point that there is too little carbon dioxide to prepare for the next oxygen team.

And the hemoglobin leaders will stop oxygen from disembarking at the department stations.

Apart from offloading vital carbon dioxide,

Another issue with fast breathing is that we are not efficiently using all the available oxygen.

From each inhale we take,

Part of the oxygen will never reach the alveoli platforms.

You can imagine in rush hour,

They are stuck in the hallways of Central Station because it simply takes time to push all day shift workers through the gates onto the platforms.

Following Bohr's research,

Yandel Henderson at Yale University showed that breathing too fast would cause carbon dioxide levels to drop,

Subjects to suffocate,

Heart rates to spike,

And anxiety and panic to rise fast.

Whenever you would lower respiratory rate,

Carbon dioxide levels would rise and panic would naturally dissolve.

Fast breathing is thus problematic for two reasons.

It offloads carbon dioxide too quickly,

Making it impossible for oxygen to reach the cells,

Even if it is in the blood.

And it doesn't allow all available oxygen to be taken up by the alveoli,

Making breathing very inefficient.

If we want our body to function optimally,

Slow and steady breathing is the way to go.

Every now and then,

It is useful to power test the organization by holding the trains through breath holds,

As this optimizes how the workers do their jobs,

And also to push it for speed by breathing deep and fast,

So the system adjusts to pressure.

But generally,

As a baseline,

We want our regular breathing to be slow,

Steady,

And efficient.

Thank you for listening to this morning inside.

If you enjoyed listening,

You may also enjoy the morning meditation,

Breathing,

Which will help you to breathe slowly and optimally.

Have a lovely morning!

Reviews

I learned a lot from this talk—thank you! The analogy of the workers, leaders, trains, and company departments is memorable and fun. I’ll be doing my best to support my workers from now on. 👭👷‍♀️🫁🫀💪

🙏🏼Thank you Inge for freely sharing this insightful analogy. It was a pleasure to hear your voice again.