Reverse Sleep Apnea with the Buteyko Method.
Reverse Sleep Apnea. Patrick McKeown is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin. In 2002, Patrick completed his clinical training in the Buteyko Breathing Method at the Buteyko Clinic, in Moscow, Russia.
This training was accredited by Professor Konstantin Buteyko. Having suffered from asthma, rhinitis, and sleep-disordered breathing for over 20 years, Patrick is able to offer both theoretical knowledge and his own experiences to help clients to overcome similar challenges.
To date, Patrick has written seven books and produced two DVD sets on the Buteyko Method, including three Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk bestsellers: Close Your Mouth, Asthma-Free Naturally, and Anxiety Free: Stop Worrying and Quieten Your Mind.
The Buteyko self-help manual Close Your Mouth has been translated into ten different languages including French, German, Italian, Spanish, Norwegian, and Russian.
His latest book is titled “The Oxygen Advantage” and improves sports performance by addressing dysfunctional breathing patterns and simulating high altitude training.
Using the Buteyko method to reverse sleep apnea.
Patrick is a Clinical Director of the Buteyko Clinic International and Chairman of its Advisory Board. Patrick’s professional memberships include a Fellow of The Royal Society of Biology, a Full Member of the Physiological Society, and the Academy of Applied Myofunctional Sciences.
Patrick holds regular workshops and talks on dysfunctional breathing in nine countries including the USA, Canada, Australia, Israel, Denmark, France, Holland, the UK, and his native Ireland.
He has trained Buteyko practitioners from 32 countries and regularly provides online Buteyko courses by Skype and from his clinics in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, and Galway, Ireland.
Patrick has been interviewed internationally for radio and television, including a recent interview with Dr. Joseph Mercola, founder of the world’s largest health website, Mercola.com.
Patrick’s message is simple; breath through your nose in a calm, gentle, and efficient manner. That’s all that matters.
DVD sets include Buteyko Clinic set for adults, and ButeykoKids meet Dr Mew for children.
Visit: https://www.Oxygenadvantage.com, https://www.ButeykoClinic.com, https://www.ButeykoDVD.com and https://www.Asthmacare.ie
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PatrickGMcKeown
“Since Dr. Buteyko died, Patrick McKeown has established himself as one of the leading teachers of this breathing method.”
Dr. Joseph Mercola
Transcription:
Intro 0:04
Recovery After Stroke podcast. helping you go from where you are to where you’d rather be.
Bill 0:14
According to Web MD when you have sleep apnea, your breath can become very shallow, or you may even stop breathing briefly while you sleep. For some people, it can occur many times a night. obstructive sleep apnea happens when something partly or completely blocks your upper airway during sleep.
Bill 0:32
That makes your diaphragm and chest muscles work harder to open the obstructed airway and pour into the lungs. Breathing usually resumes with all that gasp, snore, or body jerk. You may not sleep well but you probably won’t be aware that it is happening. The condition can also reduce the flow of oxygen to vital organs and cause irregular heart rhythms.
Bill 0:54
The most common obstructive sleep apnea symptoms include daytime sleepiness or fatigue driving a sore throat when waking up, and headaches in the morning. trouble concentrating, forgetfulness, depression, or irritability. night sweats restlessness during sleep problems with six snoring, waking up suddenly, and feeling like you’re gasping or choking trouble getting up in the mornings.
Bill 1:21
If you share a bed with someone, they’ll probably notice that before you do, symptoms in children however, may not be as obvious and they may include bedwetting, choking or drooling, sweating a lot at night, ribcage moving inwards as they exhale, learning and behavior disorders. problems at school sluggishness or sleepiness are often misinterpreted as laziness in the classroom, snoring, teeth grinding restlessness in bed.
Bill 1:50
Pauses or absence of breathing, unusual sleep positions such as sleeping on the hands and knees or with the neck hyperextended Sleep apnea is more likely. If you are overweight or obese have a thick or large neck, or have smaller airways in your nose, throat, or mouth. It can happen if you have enlarged tonsils or too much tissues tissue in the back of the throat.
Bill 2:18
A larger-than-average time can also block the airway in many people, as well as a deviated septum in the nose. The condition is more common among men than women, and it becomes more likely as you get older but is not a normal part of aging. Sleep Apnea can be diagnosed by your doctor and you may need to spend the night in a sleep lab or have a sleep study done at your house.
Bill 2:43
There are several approaches to treatment of the condition and many people have noticed improvements in their sleep when they have lost weight if they avoid alcohol and sleeping pills, as they are more likely to make the airway collapse during sleep and lengthen the times when you are not breathing. properly. And now it’s on with the show.
Bill 3:04
Good everybody and welcome to another episode of the transit lounge podcast. I’m very excited today I’ve got a very special guest as always. And today’s guest is Patrick McKeowan. And Patrick is a graduate of Trinity College in Dublin in 2002. Patrick completed his clinical training in the Buteyko echo breathing method at the Buteyko clinic in Moscow, Russia, having suffered from asthma, rhinitis, and sleep-disordered breathing for over 20 years.
Bill 3:33
Patrick is able to offer both theoretical knowledge and his own experiences to help clients overcome similar challenges. Today, Patrick has written seven books and produced two DVD sets on the Buteyko method including three Amazon bestsellers. Close your mouth, asthma free naturally and anxiety free stop worrying, and quiet your mind the batik Self Help manual Close your Mouth has been translated into 10 different languages, including French, German, Italian, Spanish, Norwegian, and Russian. His latest book is titled The oxygen advantage and there’s my copy it just arrived yesterday.
Bill 4:18
And the book is about improving sports performance by addressing dysfunctional breathing patterns and simulating high-altitude training. Patrick is clinical director of the baker clinic international and chairman of his of its advisory board. Patrick’s professional memberships include Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology full member of the Psychological Society and Academy of applied functional sciences.
Bill 4:49
Patrick holds regular workshops and talks on dysfunctional breathing in nine countries including the USA, Canada, Australia, Israel, Denmark, France, Holland, and the UK. And his native Ireland. He has trained with yoga practitioners from 32 countries and regularly provides online Yakko courses by Skype from his clinic in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, and Galway, Ireland. Patrick has been interviewed internationally for radio and television, including recently being interviewed by Dr. Joseph Mercola, founder of the world’s greatest health website, Patrick’s message is simple. breathe through your nose in a calm, gentle, and efficient manner. And that’s all that matters. Welcome to the program. Patrick. Thanks very much.
Bill 5:39
I didn’t realize the bio was so long. Sorry about that. gave you a very interesting look. I don’t have a problem with long BIOS as long as they’re full of good detail and yours is full of amazing data. And I think things that are important that people here are recovering from all sorts of challenges. really do need to return No need to know about understanding. Did I pronounce the method the breathing method correctly?
Patrick 6:08
Yes, pretty much it’s Buteyko.
Bill 6:13
Alright, so I pronounce it 20 times incorrectly but that’s okay. Look, the reason why I contacted you is because I saw you being interviewed by another amazing person who’s done amazing work in rheumatoid arthritis. Clint Patterson, who is somebody that I’ve interviewed for my podcast, and part of the message that I hope to get out about my podcast is that we actually have the ability to actually influence our health quite a lot by doing a whole bunch of different things and rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis and all these ailments that we’re supposed to never be able to cure.
Bill 7:00
We’re now finding that there are people all over the planet that have cured themselves and have used methods that have been put out there by people. Like, you know, like, like Clint Patterson. And you know, other people who have stepped up to the plate and said, You know what, I’m going to find out how to resolve this, you know, the medical challenge for myself, and I become fascinated by that because part of my story is I’ve had three brain hemorrhages. Way early in the pace.
Bill 7:35
So back in 2012, when I first tried to find out how I’m going to get better from the, you know, the impact of three brain images and surgery, I came across an article and some work around the breath. And I couldn’t believe that there was a possibility that I didn’t know that I was breathing incorrectly. How common is it for people to be breathing incorrectly?
Patrick McKeown 8:06
I think it’s very common and factors of modern life really play an influential role in breathing. And probably of all of the factors, stress is probably the biggest one, but also people’s jobs. If one is talking all day, breathing, volume changes, and breathing increases. And it’s ironic to say, but the issue is not that people are breathing less. The problem is that people are breathing in most instances too much. Because stress makes us breathe more.
Patrick McKeown 8:40
Excessive talking makes us breathe. stuffy environments make us breathe more. The belief that it’s good to big bridge makes us breathe more. But the more air we breathe, the last option that’s delivered to the cells. And as human beings we survive on food, water on air, and just because people As good, it doesn’t mean we should be eating 10 meals a day. Just because water is necessary and vital for sustaining human life. It doesn’t mean we should be drinking so much water.
Patrick McKeown 9:11
And you know, there’s much research now coming out about the effects of over-hydration, especially in sports. And you know, athletes are often encouraged to keep on making sure they’re staying hydrated. But the problem is, where’s the balance between being hydrated and being over-hydrated? And if you drink too much water, it can be critical.
Patrick McKeown 9:34
So we’re there, how much should we breathe? So we have all of these factors a modern life that’s changing breathing, and making us breathe more. So the part of the brain that regulates breathing becomes sesh. We develop a habit of breathing too much. And then, simple ways. When we breathe too much. We breathe through the mouth. For example, we have excessive movement of the upper chest, we may sound We’ve heavy breathing during sleep, which is including snoring and obstructive sleep apnea. And we get breathless more easily with physical exercise.
Patrick McKeown 10:09
So we have to, you know, consider that there is a cluster of cells in the brain that regulate our breathing volume. And if they are programmed to maintain a higher breathing volume, in essence, it disturbs both gases, and it results in less oxygen getting delivered to the cells. And I also have to say, you know, there’s this belief that it’s often espoused in western yoga and platters and in different modalities, and this is not to knock any of these modalities because they do wonderful work, but was often told us Indian construction of breathing you often hear the students breathe in the class during rest.
Patrick McKeown 10:54
We should never hear somebody breathing during rest. If you’re doing very light exercise. Your breathing should be so large, should be so effortless, should be so gentle. If, for example, I was to say to, take 10, big breaths in and out of your mouth, your head will feel alive. That’s not a sign of over-oxygenation of the brain. That’s the opposite of the fact that’s happening there. The harder you breed, the more you get rid of carbon dioxide from the lungs. This reduces carbon dioxide in the blood.
Patrick McKeown 11:25
And carbon dioxide is not just a waste gas. In order for us to be released from the red blood cells, you need carbon dioxide. And if you breathe too much, the oxygen is not released so rapidly from the red blood cells to the cells. It’s no point in just having oxygen. We need to get the oxygen from the blood to the cells to the tissues to the organs because that’s where they’re being used, and even improving blood flow. People who are prone to anxiety people who are prone to panic attacks.
Patrick McKeown 12:00
We do gentle soft breathing exercises to help activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which promotes homeostasis. And homeostasis is when you know promoting homeostasis is when the body can help itself that the body can recover quicker. But we don’t do like to have fast breathing we do a true the opposite. And the other aspect of what we do is that we’re opening up on flow. So on one end, there are probably three things that are going on.
Patrick McKeown 12:28
One is as you practice gentle breathing exercises, you have your attention from the mind onto the bright. So in a psychological lavender structural changes take place in the brain, so that for example, the amygdala shrinks, and our ability to deal with stress improves. The second level is that when we’re doing slow, gentle breathing, we’re activating the parasympathetic nervous system.
Patrick McKeown 12:51
And the third level is when we’re doing slow gentle breathing. We’re harnessing gas night based on nitric oxide, harnessing the benefits of carbon dioxide We can improve blood flow and improve oxygen delivery. So in a nutshell, there’s a way to breed, when not to breed. And what I want to impart is how to breed to improve oxygen delivery, as opposed to what’s commonly being taught because what’s commonly picked up here is on radio, TV did instruction, take that deep breath?
Patrick McKeown 13:24
And what I often see then is I see a big prayer, but I don’t see a deep breath, a deep breath is diaphragmatic. But a deep breath is like a baby deeper. It’s so good breathing is true. The nose is driven by the diaphragm, which is deep. It’s effortless. It’s silent. It’s gentle, and it’s paused on the exhale. It’s life. That’s what breathing is. And the only thing outside of good breathing. We would consider abnormal breathing.
Bill 13:54
Yeah. Wow. That’s amazing. I want to talk about what you mentioned about activating the Paris Hilton. Nervous System? Yes. Is that because people who are incorrectly breathing often activate the sympathetic nervous system?
Patrick McKeown 14:12
Yes. And if you breathe through the mouth.
Bill 14:15
Yeah. And that’s more likely to cause anxiety increased cortisol levels, increase all of the stress hormone, increase the heart rate, the blood pressure that keeps, keeps people sort of in this heightened state of, you know, stress.
Patrick McKeown 14:33
And it also affects our sleep one simple adaptation which changed my life was to switch from mouth to nose breathing. And I know that might sound so simple to a lot of your listeners. But we have to bear in mind that studies show up to 50% of children habitually breathe through an open mouth. We don’t have studies for adults, it doesn’t get studied. But I would suspect that it’s reasonably high. How many adults Sleep with their mouths open and wake up with a dry mouth in the morning?
Patrick McKeown 15:03
Among adults when you meet them on the street, they’re doing gentle walking, but their mouths breathing. So let’s just look at them out. So let’s look down at your chest and tummy and take a breath in through your mouth. So when you map read what part of your body moves my chest. Okay, so let’s look at the lungs. The lungs are triangular.
Patrick McKeown 15:30
And the bottom of the lungs, the bottom part of the lungs is where the greatest concentration of blood flow is because of gravity because we were approached. So gravity determines that the greatest concentration of blood is in the lower parts of the lungs. When we breathe through an open mouth, we breathe into the upper part.
Patrick McKeown 15:50
So we’re taking air into the upper part, but the greatest concentration of blood is in the lower part. Now when you breathe through your nose, you start taking the air from the audience. Part of the lungs down into the lower part. But also when you breathe through your nose, you carry this gas called nitric oxide. And nitric oxide comes from the sinuses and is released into the nasal cavity.
Patrick McKeown 16:13
So when you breathe through the nose, you’re carrying nitric oxide. And nitric oxide brings the blood from the lower parts to the upper parts. So it’s called ventilation-perfusion. And that improves by breathing through the nose and breathing softly through the nose. Another thing about nitric oxide is improved arterial oxygen uptake. Nose breathers are better oxygenation papers, and it’s estimated to be between 10 and 20%.
Patrick McKeown 16:41
Nitric oxide coming from the nose sterilizes the incoming air. It’s a pulmonary vasodilator it helps open up the blood vessels and it’s also a bronchodilator which helps open up the airways. So a human being is the only species on the planet that spend most of their time you know habitually map read. If we were to look at the animal world, with the exception of a dog, every animal breeds pretty much through their nose, except in situations where they’re sick.
Patrick McKeown 17:11
So mouth breathing is synonymous with stress or a fight or flight response, our ancestors would have migrated only in terms of stress. nasal breathing was enshrined. How do we know we know by the shape of the skull? anthropologists know that if an individual has been breathing, the tongue has been resting on the roof of the mouth, and the tongue is U shaped. And as the child is growing up, it forms a wide pallet. So they know what to do is look up into the roof then out and look at the maxilla. If the maxilla is nice and wide and U-shaped, that individual grew up as an illustrator, but if the individual has got a higher upper pallet.
Patrick McKeown 17:53
And the narrow maxilla and sometimes over Of course, it’s going to be overcrowding of teeth that individual. Wasn’t it wasn’t my operator? So we know that the first documented cases of map breeding only happened about three or 400 years ago, not that long ago, in the scheme that we’ve been here for 200,000 years, go to a history museum, look at those beautiful foreign faces. And what we also need to look at is, and because you’re looking at cardiovascular health, if everything’s about the way they should do, we should have forward growth of the jaws.
Patrick McKeown 18:27
And if you forward growth of the jaws, you’ve got a good airway. the airway is king. If you’ve got a good airway, you have reduced significantly reduce risk for obstructive sleep apnea. Now, we, our kids are going around with their mouths open. The vast majority of the not vast majority, but I’m saying that a certain population of the adult population is mouth breathing. That in turn then is reducing airway size. Then when they go to sleep, they’re more likely to have snoring and obstructive sleep apnea. obstructive sleep apnea is when the individual is snoring but then they stop breathing.
Patrick McKeown 19:05
And as they stop breathing, their blood oxygen saturation lowers enough to partially awaken the brain to get them out of the deep sleep. So they don’t have a deep sleep, but they also have stress to the heart. So if you’re stopping breathing so many times an hour, every hour or every night, every week for months for years, over time, that part, that’s what we need to look at, and the heart, the heart is a muscle it needs its own blood flow and oxygen. And if we’re not sending sufficient, you know, hyperventilation, over breathing and breathing too much, it causes our blood vessels to constrict.
Patrick McKeown 19:46
And it’s been shown that coronary blood flow, the amount of blood flow reaching the heart to feed the heart will oxygen that reduces so we have to bear in mind cardiovascular How does our breathing is not just this environment Activity through our bread, we can influence by the functions. And through a branch, we can improve our health.
Patrick McKeown 20:09
And it’s not by taking the deep and the big breaths that are being taught. And some of those people say to me that quote, never got around, I say, listen, in order to teach breathing, one should have a basic knowledge of the physiology behind breathing. One should be aware of what’s called oxygen dissociation for a very simple curve. It’s an S-shaped curve. And what it states is that it states that the release of oxygen from the red blood cells to express itself takes place in the presence of increased body temperature.
Patrick McKeown 20:42
This phosphoglycerate is carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide. That’s why I’m not gonna rush. Don’t worry too much. You get rid of your co2 and the bond between oxygen and hemoglobin strengthens. So you know, it’s a fascinating area that this idea of has become widespread spread. It’s like telling individuals food is good, eat more, and the air is going to breed more without realizing that the more air you breathe, the less oxygen that’s delivered and even the brain. There’s a brilliant book called Behavioral and psychological approaches to Breathing. It was written in 1994 reading the information is still valid today to medical doctors.
Patrick McKeown 21:23
They show that the carotid arteries that supply blood flow to the brain can constrict by up to 50% from overbreeding 50% how many of your listeners will wake up tired after eight hours of sleep true and open mouths and many they’ve got they’ve had loads of oxygen, loads of oxygen coming in because they’ve been breathing heavy all night long. But that’s the problem. Heavy breathing, less deep sleep, fewer options get into the brain and less rested sleep and sleep is vitally important. If sleep is right. The body can itself during the day.
Patrick McKeown 22:01
So we need to look at kind of the entirety and you know what I say to people. Try this for a couple of weeks. That’s all. start breathing through your nose. And I’ll go through an exercise, you know, so I’ll give you an exercise people can start practicing. And what we can do is we will check, can you activate the body? Can you When can you change the body’s temperature by changing your breathing? So we’ll do that together as an experiment today.
Bill 22:29
All right, we’ll do it in a little while. I want to go back because you said something really astonishing to me. You said that this change in our breathing has only happened in the last three to 400 years.
Patrick McKeown 22:44
Mouth breathing during rest, what
Bill 22:47
What happened that caused that change to occur? What is it that made us change our breathing?
Patrick McKeown 22:55
Okay, so the question is, how do people switch from productive nose breathing to mouth breathing? We believe it’s due to processed foods. And processed foods and sugar have been around for a long time. Sugar has been around in the UK. It was one day in American schools from upper-middle-class people in the 17th century.
Patrick McKeown 23:16
And they were that’s when they had the first documented cases of malocclusions, which is overcrowding of teachers. overcrowding of teeth now has become endemic. Why is it just a human population that is overcrowded Okay, you will have a small percentage of animals, especially dogs, which we have kind of cross-bred as well. Let’s say in wild animals, it’s, it’s not very common to have overcrowding of teas in the wild animal population. It’s more so in because we’ve kind of interfered with the dog’s diet and everything else.
Patrick McKeown 23:50
It’s taught to be linked to sugar. And what’s the relationship between sugar and causing a change in the immune system? Well, the biggest prevalence of malware Breathing is by nasal obstruction, the nose gets blocked. Now we know that the nose gets blocked due to over breathing. How do we know that we show individuals how to unblock the nose by softening their backs? If you start reducing your breathing, carbon dioxide builds up in your blood and your nose opens. That’s just a normal physiologic thing.
Patrick McKeown 24:23
As you reduce your breathing, carbon dioxide builds up your blood on your airways, lower Airways, they start to open. And also there’s less cooling and drying out of the lower airways. So there was a very good book written back in the 1930s. Now, people may criticize a little bit because of the scientific protocol. But you know, back in the 1930s, there weren’t as rigorous scientific approaches as there would be today.
Patrick McKeown 24:47
But the book is really an observation. It was written by Doctor Weston Price, he was a dentist, and he was fascinated with door sizes shaped faces and the shape of faces. The shape of jaws malocclusions etc. He went to various indigenous populations and marries Eskimos and Aboriginals. You know, the organic people off inhabit the islands and he noticed that all the talk was one generation of a switch from a traditional die to a process dies within one generation. structural changes happen to the face.
Patrick McKeown 25:25
And I believe that these structural changes are getting worse and worse and worse. My mother and father had facial structures, they had no malocclusions had good straight teeth. All of us were my prayers, six of us all my prayers. I was born in 1973. I was a MapReduce, my nose was constantly stuffed my nose and bent my object, and my upper jaw set back my lower jaw set back so I won’t be an ideal candidate for obstructive sleep apnea, which I experienced during my teenage years, but it was undiagnosed. I was exhausted.
Patrick McKeown 26:00
Nobody put the connection together. Now my daughter is missing two teeth. So my mother’s face and father’s face were wired. Our faces were narrower, and my daughter’s face was even the jaws are even narrower. Because congenitally she’s missing two teeth. She’s got to the Genesis, she’s seven years of age, I had a scan done because the other t Rowe was sitting just above the baby teach.
Patrick McKeown 26:26
So a scan will reveal and there are two incisors missing. If there are missing teeth, there’s a higher risk of obstructive sleep apnea. It’s so important for the normal development of the jaws and face because the airway trumps everything well, if the airway is not doing what it’s doing, there are going to be sacrifices made in the body, and sleep is affected.
Patrick McKeown 26:48
And again, the problem with sleep is the link and there is a link now because I’m currently rewriting a new book on sleep and rewriting my original book on sleep and there is a link now for cancer. Under the link, of course, for cardiovascular ill health. So there is a link between sleep apnea, Sleep Disorder breathing, but it stems back to the development of the jaws and the face. And it’s back to breathing.
Bill 27:14
I know that sleep apnea is an issue with people causing stroke because they don’t get enough oxygen to the brain during sleeping moments when they stop breathing. And I’ve met a few people that have experienced stroke because of that. And for whatever reason, you know, it wasn’t it wasn’t worked out early enough that that was that they were in such a serious state.
Bill 27:42
But it was normal for them that that’s the thing that I’m trying to sort of the point I’m trying to get to is that it was a normal breathing pattern. They didn’t know any different. They didn’t know that they weren’t breathing properly, and they just put up with it. And I didn’t know why they were always exhausted and they didn’t know why they had all these challenges. And the last thing they ever expected was a stroke. But the stroke was what allowed doctors to work back and diagnose the sleep apnea and the problem with breathing.
Patrick McKeown 28:13
Yes, cardiovascular complaints. Always look at sleep. Yeah. In the 1970s Dr. Christian Gaming Oh was a French Doctor Who is at Stanford. He suspected that in people with high blood pressure, something was going on in their sleep. This is just people with high blood pressure. He teamed up with a cardiologist. They monitored the blood pressure of individuals during their sleep. And they found that when the individuals were holding their breath that their blood pressure rose dramatically. Holding the breath during sleep.
Patrick McKeown 28:48
I do breath holding for sport. acumen athletes, we do the simulation of high altitude we hold our breath to lower the blood oxygen saturation down to about 85 maybe 80% of to lowest, it’s tough going. It’s tough. Even for an athlete, it’s tough. individuals in their sleep are voluntarily holding their breath to lower their oxygen saturation to as low as 50%. Now, that’s equivalent to climbing Mount Everest without oxygen.
Patrick McKeown 29:18
So you can imagine the stress that that’s having on the individual. And yes, I as a teenager was exhausted in school, and you learn to live with us. And it’s not you still know something is not quite right. Most people would have obstructive sleep apnea. I believe that I’ve come across it because there are partners who tear their sleep, and the partner is there lying awake and the sleeper is there. They’re heavy breathing, and then they’re stopping breathing.
Patrick McKeown 29:45
And that’s when they start investigating. Now, Dr. Christian Gamebuino also developed the apnea-hypopnea index. And that’s a measurement that is still used today, now most recently, and he’s a man out I’m not sure of his age, but I’d say he is in his mid-70s. He’s writing papers. He’s still working, actively working.
Patrick McKeown 30:07
He’s writing papers, we must teach our children to breathe through their noses. I’ve attended a number of conferences where he spoke, and I was lucky enough to speak at the same conferences. I have heard him say, we need doctors, we need engineers. We need highly qualified people. But as long as children are having Sleep Disorder breathing, which is influenced by whether they’re breathing through their nose or their mouth at night, he said, if they’re having sleep-disordered breathing, their brains are getting fried.
Patrick McKeown 30:41
And that’s, I quote him. So what’s happening to a young child then can set up behavioral issues of course, because the child is frustrated and they’re wound up. And the same as with an adult, you know, tears back to so here is that the top sleep doctor in the world In 2014, talking about the importance of nose breathing during sleep, it has been tested.
Patrick McKeown 31:07
We use paper tape across the lips at night, I sleep with a piece of paper tape across my lips every night. That sounds bizarre. I’ve done it for 20 years. The reason I do it is it makes a massive difference to my night’s sleep. You cannot have a good night’s sleep if you’re going around with your mouth open. And if your mouth breathes during the day, it’s going to set you up for disordered breathing during your sleep. So we need to look at breathing.
Bill 31:34
Sorry to be a bit cheeky but that wouldn’t be any good when you go across to give your wife a kiss on the cheek.
Patrick 31:41
Well, it’s either die of our snoring or obstructive sleep apnea so she can make the choice in that one.
Bill 31:49
Well, I say that to lighten up the situation a little bit but I realize it’s actually quite dramatic. This situation is because I’m somebody who actually Until I saw your previous interview was for a couple of weeks, a couple of weeks ago. And before I bought the book, I was a mouth breather and I still end but now I’m noticing my mouth opening and I’m noticing the change. So I’m going back to closing my mouth and breathing through my nose. And I’m noticing that it’s becoming easier for me to do that and to change that habit.
Bill 32:24
It’s interesting that you say that food, processed food, including sugar, well, there’s another reason we should quit sugar. I know why I quit it was for many other reasons, but there’s another one. But what’s interesting is that I constantly have this feeling behind my ear at the top of my mouth that it’s inflamed that it’s always sort of full of what’s the word mucus or some kind of there’s a lining of something there. And that is what triggers my mouth to open. And even though my mouth is open That doesn’t go away, I wake up with a dry mouth. But when I do quite want to close my mouth and focus, even though that’s still there, I still can breathe through my nose.
Patrick McKeown 33:11
Yes. Now with your population of listeners, there will be certain exercises that I would not teach. And a general exercise that we will do for a normal population that wouldn’t have any risk of any cardiovascular issues. We do breath holding to open up the nose. But the risk of doing breath tolling is the terminal offset will increase too quickly. blood vessels will dilate very quickly. And if there was a blood clot rising, it could release and it could cause a problem, right well, so instead we do to one doctor nose glides for a walk which is my toes.
Patrick McKeown 33:50
If you do physical exercise, which is my close, your nose will start running but bringing a hankie butcher, butcher starts opening it up. So gentle physical exercise, exactly what The individual is doing, you know, a person who is from a cardiovascular event after three months or so, to get into moderately paced walking could be very good. It stimulates blood flow, it stimulates the production of nitric oxide inside the blood vessels.
Patrick McKeown 34:17
And nitric oxide is a molecule whose specific function is for lowering high blood pressure. nitric oxide is one of the most important molecules in the human body and emanates from the paranasal sinuses to work in the lungs. But it’s also produced by the blood vessels to help relax and open the blood vessels. So physical exercise is very good to help open up the nose, but the more you breathe through your nose, the more your nose starts to open. Now what I’d like to do is go through a simple exercise.
Patrick McKeown 34:50
So by the way, you can’t do it incorrectly, really. So just give it a shot and see how you go with a job. It’s not a test or anything like that. So if you post 100 on your chest Bill 100 just above your navel. So 100 and your sternum 100, just above your navel, so even bring your top one just up a little bit to get it onto the sternum. That’s it. I just feel your breathing. Allow your shoulders to realize and just kind of tune into your breathing pattern, that doesn’t worry how your brain just breathes as you’re normally breathing. So just tune into your breathing pattern.
Patrick McKeown 35:29
So you feel that person, you feel the breath house. You feel the breath in. You feel the breath out. You feel the breath in. You feel the breath out. start feeling the airflow as it comes in and out of your nose you feel you’re breathing in and you’re feeling breathing out and feel slightly colder air as it comes into your nose and feel the slightly warmer air as it leaves your nose. So you’re feeling a slightly colder air coming in and you’re feeling slightly warmer leaving gently start to slow down the speed of the air entering and leaving your nostrils.
Patrick McKeown 36:12
That’s all only concentrate on the air. It’s a very simple exercise. Gently slow down the speed of air as it enters and leaves your nostrils and slow it down sufficiently to the point that you feel as if you’re going for a mild walk. So gently slow down your breathing to the point that you feel slightly breathless. So you’re slowing down the speed of air as it comes into the nose and you’re slowing down the speed of air as it leaves your nose.
Patrick McKeown 36:44
So you’re taking a slow, gentle breath in and you’re having a relaxed, gentle breath out and gently soften the Brach. Gently quiet the bat. Don’t hold the tummy or restrict your breathing. Don’t hold your breath just Gently soften your breath. And do this for about three minutes. I need you to feel that slider hunger, you’re doing it correctly when you feel that you’re not getting enough air. So your whole objective is to just gently soften your breathing, so you’d like to breathe a little bit more.
Patrick McKeown 37:17
Now we’ve got a bit stressful for you to make your breathing a little bit bigger, so it shouldn’t be stressful. And at the same time, you should feel a slight air shortage, a tolerable air shortage. So all you’re doing is just gently slowing down the speed of your breathing. just soften your breath. Now as you soften your brackets, you’re taking a higher concentration of nitric oxide from the nose into the lungs, where it assists in arterial oxygen uptake.
Patrick McKeown 37:49
At the same time as yourself in your breaths, carbon dioxide accumulates in the blood and it’s carbon dioxide that sends the signal that you need air So the fact that you need there is telling you that there’s a slight increase of co2 in the blood. The increase in co2 in the blood will open up the blood vessels 100,000 miles of blood vessel stretch body. As you slow down your breathing, you can open up your blood vessels.
Patrick McKeown 38:18
As you slow down your breathing, you can open up your airways. And as you slow down your breathing, you allow more oxygen to be released from the blood to the cells. But the key is the air shortage. people meditate because it has wonderful effects. The purpose of meditation is to allow your breathing to go slow and soft. We want the breathing to go slow and soft. But we take it one step further. We want that slider shortage.
Patrick McKeown 38:48
The slider shortage is the key to opening up the blood vessels and activating the parasympathetic nervous system. Do you have a shortage of decibels So now just take a rest for a little bit, take a rest? So just as a matter of interest now you might have to try and breathe through your nose and our A and D are short, it shouldn’t be too intense. It takes a bit of practice and that’s only certainly kind of an introduction because all they want to do is I want people to try it. I want people to leave with this. How you breed influences 100,000 miles of blood vessels. Is there any change in body temperature there by the way, there may or may not be just just Is there a change? Are you colder and warmer, the same? Do you notice anything?
Bill 39:35
I think I’m a fraction warmer.
Patrick McKeown 39:38
Okay, is really changing the slide and amount is your mouth drier and more moist are the same.
Bill 39:47
There’s less saliva but I don’t it doesn’t feel dry.
Patrick McKeown 39:51
Okay, now, when you do it, I wouldn’t worry about the first time because we don’t always get it but when you do is with a little bit of practice. That’s how long it will take. So what I will Say to your listener says, practice this three minutes by five times a day. It’s only 15 minutes, three minutes here, three minutes there, and you’ll start to feel warmer because you get face-to-dilation. And you’ll start to feel increased water live in the mouth.
Patrick McKeown 40:15
And also the nose will open up. We have to think about how we breed when we get stressed, our breathing gets faster. We breathe more through them out. We sign more when we’re stressed. We start taking more air into the body when we’re stressed, we breathe more, and our breathing becomes more noticeable when we’re stressed.
Patrick McKeown 40:37
So how do you counteract stress? Don’t take big breaths because that’s only exaggerating the stressed breathing. To counteract stress, we need to do the opposite of how our breathing changes during stress. Instead of breathing faster, we breathe slowly.
Patrick McKeown 40:56
Instead of breathing through the mouth. We breathe through the nose Instead of breathing using the upper chest, we breed using the die from nose breathing, and we’ll start activating the diaphragm. Instead of having noticeable breathing, we have invisible breathing, and instead of breathing more, we slightly breathe less. And that’s the key.
Bill 41:15
You know, it’s very interesting, I’ve noticed definitely, that I can do it better than I was able to do it even three weeks ago before I knew about your work. And even though I had done a lot of breathing exercises, and I’ve been to yoga and I’ve done all those things, it is enjoyable and I did get a lot out of it. But I’ve never really had a definitive understanding as to what I was doing when I was changing my breathing.
Bill 41:41
I knew I was influencing, the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems and you’re always doing that. But I didn’t really understand you know, the, the the next sort of level how I was changing the the chemical composition of my blood with carbon dioxide and oxygen Now, I’m curious about the alternating breathing pattern that people use. Sometimes in yoga, we get taught to use alternate nasal passages for breathing. Tell me about that. Is that something that you think is beneficial?
Patrick McKeown 42:21
I do, provided that it’s done lightly. I think one of the reasons that have been done, and or at least I know one of the, one of the benefits from us is that whatever if you’re right-handed, whatever nostril you breathe through, you activate the opposite hemisphere of the brain. So for example, if you’re, if you’re predominantly breathing through your right nostril, you’re activating the left hemisphere of the brain, and the left hemisphere of the brain is a little bit more excised. excitatory.
Patrick McKeown 42:54
So if you block your right nostril, and you pray through your left, you activate the right hand. fare and the right hemisphere is that calming effect. So alternate nasal breathing is to activate different regions of the brain. Now generally with a normal individual, you will have one nostril that’s slightly more blockers congested than the other, and they should switch every three hours every 90 minutes to every three hours. But with chronic rhinitis, people who have nasal obstruction, may not switch so readily.
Patrick McKeown 43:30
So, there are four alternate nasal breathing now what we do is we simply just have people block one nostril. So block one nostril. So now you feel a higher concentration of airflow coming into the international and slowing down your breathing. Because alternate nasal breathing is brilliant, but do was with light breathing. If you look at you know, in the ancient scriptures of yoga, and next week I go to a yoga school and Robin Rothenberg I go to the United States on Friday.
Patrick McKeown 44:02
And I work with, we have a, you know, we’re 20 yoga teachers. And we will be exploring the whole aspect of breathing. We’re 20 yoga teachers there. And I know Robin has spent some time going back to the ancient scriptures of yoga. And she said, Patrick says the one word that’s coming out there is the word subtle. That when breathing was described, it was also always soft. Now subtler breathing is light breathing.
Patrick McKeown 44:35
And Yogi masters had a disability to change their metabolism, almost to the point that they were clinically dead. They will do that to their breath, but they didn’t do it by taking big breaths. To do it by soft breathing. Chris pay. He’s in Chicom, a master of Qigong. He said there are three levels to breathing. The first level of breathing is that the person next to you cannot Hear.
Patrick McKeown 45:02
The second level of breathing is that you cannot hear your breathing. And the third level of breathing is that you cannot feel your breathing, not compared Dash, to the student in yoga who you can hear the breathing, you’re gonna hear their breathing, they can hear their breathing, and they can feel their breathing.
Patrick McKeown 45:25
And that’s not the message has got lost in the translation as it was passed down. And over the next coming years, hopefully, I will have the time and associates such as Robin, etc. to put a book together to explain what is the missing piece in yoga. Let’s go back to the basics here because the message got lost in translation.
Patrick McKeown 45:50
And until then, I would say to people, practice you’ve been practicing your yoga breathing for 10 years, maybe practice breathing likely Three to five minutes a day, five times a day. So it’s only about 15 to 25 minutes to try today. Yeah, soften the practice quite Brach. whenever you’ve got free time, slow down your breathing. Look at getting the mouth closed at night, I did a full sleep and presentation to the American
Patrick McKeown 46:22
Academy of craniofacial pain in Vancouver in November. It’s one hour of presentation. I put the entire presentation up on YouTube. For anybody who is looking for information if they want to find out more about the connection between breathing and sleep apnea, I put in a lot of research. It’s all up there.
Patrick McKeown 46:40
Yeah, we’ll put on a presentation. The presentation was made to medical doctors, and dentists, or to talk to some people in sleep medicine. So it’s looking at it from a medical point of view, looking at it with the science, you know, so I think you can really start helping yourself by doing two things, as I learned 20 years ago. I learned two things I learned, breathe through your nose and breathe less. And that changed my life.
Bill 47:07
Well, it’s so simple. And yet, people are gonna find it difficult because changing patterns and behaviors are not easy sometimes, but that’s okay. Man, it’s just about persevering and getting help. If somebody needs to get some help, they can get help from somebody to guide them through that process, whoever that might be. So let’s just assume that it is easy to change. It is easy to do and to work towards that.
Bill 47:31
Well, while I’ve got you, I also want to address the question that always comes up. I know that it does because I’ve listened to and seen a lot of your interviews is the Wim Hof Method comes up a lot with you in discussions. So I know there is for the people listening and watching. There’s a link that we’re going to put at the end of the episode that’s going to send people there to give them the understanding of the difference between your method and the Wim Hof Method so that people understand and we don’t have to address Hear?
Patrick McKeown 48:01
Yes. And first of all, if somebody was recovering from a stroke or a cardiovascular event, I would not do hyperventilation, which is involving 30 big breaths because it causes vasoconstriction. nor would I do breath holding, because it causes vasodilation It’s too much. And I think it’s okay for a normal individual. And but for somebody that’s recovering from cardiovascular, no, it would be too risky.
Patrick McKeown 48:34
Wim Hof, there is something in of course, what he’s doing is being able to achieve great things. But I’m interested in the science. I want to make a couple of points clear. When you take 30 big breaths in and out of your mouth during rest, big breaks. You cannot add any more oxygen to the blood. Your blood bill as you’re sitting there, breathing quietly almost fully saturated with oxygen, your blood is on saturated. If you start breathing more, you’re not going to add any more. And so you cannot bring in more oxygen by breathing more.
Patrick McKeown 49:14
What happens when you take big breaths is you get rid of the gas, carbon dioxide. You get rid of it from the lungs. And by getting rid of it from the lungs, you get rid of it from the blood. Carbon dioxide is the alarm to breed. Your body breeds to breathe out excess co2. If you breed heavy, and you get rid of a lot of co2, well then the alarm to breathe has been depleted. So if you do 30, big breaths, and then you hold your breath, you will naturally hold your breath for a lot longer because you’ve got rid of co2 because the alarm to breathe has been depleted.
Patrick McKeown 49:55
Breath-holding we would say breath-holding is very helpful. For normal individuals and children, and it’s a stressed a little bit stress exercise is a little bit stressful on the body. And, you know, generally, it’s fine, just with the cardiovascular, I would steer away from it. But we would see an improvement in immunity. And we will see less cause less chest infections. And we would see people with chronic fatigue.
Patrick McKeown 50:25
Once we get to a level that we just gently step them up. And then when they reach a certain level, then we introduce Brett tolling because what we’re doing is we’re just gently pushing the body out of its boundaries. And we’re purposely lower an oxygen saturation and it does we wear a pulse oximeter when we do.
Patrick McKeown 50:45
We do lower blood oxygen saturation during the breath tolling and we do increase co2. The difference between our method and vim puffers vim half has 30, big breaths and then holes We hold that fish. Now our method would be looking at it more than from a health point of view addressing dysfunctional breathing patterns. How should you breathe? 24 seven.
Patrick McKeown 51:12
What’s good breathing? So the breath codex exercise, breath hold exercise that we will do is only one part of what we do. The key is what we did together. That’s actually the key gash your breathing right during rest, getting your breathing right during sleep, have light breathing during sleep through the nose, you wake up more alert.
Patrick McKeown 51:35
And also, of course, you’re getting the benefits of helping the body to help itself. And so Vim Hoffs? Yeah, his stuff is brilliant. But we have to ask what’s going on with the science because it could put the message out there that it’s good to take big breaths and I want to say categorically Please, do not take Big brats. The only purpose it serves during rest is to deprive the body of oxygen.
Bill 52:05
Yeah, I hear you loud and clear, I’m coming from an angle of healing the brain. As I mentioned, I’ve had three brain hemorrhages and surgery and all that type of thing. I have left-side deficits so my left side is numb and it’s colder and the motor neurons are a little bit sleepy and it takes a little bit of time to get them going.
Bill 52:27
And the sensory neurons are over excited and when somebody touches my hand, even the wind blowing across my arm, you know the hair hurt hurts, it sends a message so so my approach is coming from a How do I benefit my brain in the healing process? How do I support it and I do lots of things when I sit in front of a computer. I wear you know glasses that have an orange tinge to cut out blue light because blue light tires the brain and stimulants decrease the amount of melatonin in the body and tell me that no, I am actually, you know, going through an awake cycle more than a sleep cycle To put it simply.
Patrick McKeown 53:11
Yes.
Bill 53:12
So how? Would you describe it in the next we’ve got 10 minutes to go. So how would you describe the benefit to the brain? I know that you mentioned oxygen and all that type of thing, but what does it do to the brain? When we change our breathing pattern and our method of breathing and we close our mouth at night instead of keeping our mouth open?
Patrick McKeown 53:36
Okay, well, most certainly, when you breathe through your nose, you get a deeper sleep you fall into, they’ve done a study. And again, I think I ever referenced in the video on YouTube. They got eight subjects. They breathe through their mouth on one night and breathe through their nose on the second night. When they had them breathe through their mouths, the quality of their sleep reduced magically and one individual developed obstructive sleep apnea just by switching from nose to mouth breathing.
Patrick McKeown 54:07
When they slept with their mouths closed, the quality of sleep was deeper was better. They were more rested. And that’s huge because there are eight hours. They’re like sleep. Everybody talks about quantity and sleep. And I’m actually glad that you brought up blue light. We shouldn’t be on a laptop, probably two to three hours before sleep because it does a laptop mobile phone technology and it sends a blue light as you said, the brain stops producing melatonin which is relaxing a relaxant.
Patrick McKeown 54:39
And as a result, we are awake more readily than we don’t have the deepest sleep. The other aspect is slowing and softening your breathing is that you get more oxygen get into the brain. It seems to have an effect on brain cell exposure virtually people are calmer. So Robert fried. He said he wrote that one of the first stages of Depression is hopeless here. So he’s saying that you know, conditions such as, for instance, depression.
Patrick McKeown 55:06
And we certainly know that panic attack is influenced by your breathing. Because you remember the old kind of remedy for a panic attack was to breathe in and out of a brown paper bag. The purpose of the brown paper bag was to rebate co2 back into the body. So bring in co2 to allow blood vessels to open to get more oxygen to the brain. So if you watch somebody in a panic attack, they’re in a state of extreme stress. It’s dreadfully looking at their breathing is heaving, their blood oxygen saturation is lowered, but that’s influenced by their breathing.
Patrick McKeown 55:41
So when I work with somebody with panic attacks, I asked the question, how are these people breathing during the day? How was their everyday breathing, their mouth breathing, their sighing their upper chest waiting, and they’ve got dysfunctional breathing patterns, and then they get into a crowded environment or you’re driving the car. And a little bit of stress from that pushes them over. But the problem isn’t the car. The problem isn’t the crowded environment. The problem is our everyday breathing. we as human beings are very resilient.
Patrick McKeown 56:15
And when everything is working, we’ve got a good cushion to be able to cope with the stresses in life. But when the cushion is reduced, it doesn’t take much to troll us over the edge. And chronic hyperventilation is one of those things where you have a group of individuals who are teetering on the brink of symptoms. years there are no papers written on this, like hyperventilation and diagnosis begging for recognition. hyperventilation, the tip of the iceberg.
Patrick McKeown 56:45
Jenny King wrote a paper on the effects of hyperventilation. And back in 1988, I can’t remember the title and she explored you know, these people, all it takes is just that one event just to push them over well That’s changed your everyday breathing. So they have the resilience to cope with whatever life is thrown up.
Bill 57:06
I just want to share that little message that you said about anxiety and depression. It’s interesting that when you notice somebody who’s depressed, they often they’re hunched over, their shoulders are forward, and it’s stopping the lungs from being able to expand. With regard to anxiety, I was never somebody who suffered from claustrophobia.
Bill 57:28
And I was going to an appointment to have an MRI some years ago, and it was before I became I had a brain hemorrhage. And on the way there, unfortunately, I came across a scene of a car accident with somebody who was deceased on the side of the road. And I associated that with then going into this situation where I had to lie still in an MRI machine, and became anxious and claustrophobic and I couldn’t deal with it.
Bill 57:59
And a few more Months later, I had a brain hemorrhage. And of course, when you have a brain hemorrhage you have an MRI three days, you know, for them to work out what’s going on and I had to get myself sedated. I had to be sedated because I couldn’t be in the machine.
Bill 58:17
And after four years of dealing with the side effects of the sedation, not being able to go home on my own, and needing somebody to pick me up, I said, I had enough. I’m not going through that. Again, I’m not going to take sedation again, I’m going to get into the MRI machine and I’m going to manage the condition of the anxiousness.
Bill 58:40
My own and I employed a named breathing pattern that I learned from a gentleman from two guys who wrote a book called him raining which was a six-second in-breath and a six-second out-breath and what I understood it does is it balances the sympathy Nervous System and the parasympathetic nervous system and brings you into homeostasis. And we did a six-second breath, six-second breath, and that was able to get me 335 minutes of very good MRI.
Bill 59:14
So this is powerful it does work and it meant that I didn’t have to put another you know, sedative in my body which over the four years that I’ve been doing MRIs I was just getting you know, bombshell with all these things that I had to detox. So I truly believe in your, your method and your approach, and that’s exactly why I contacted you. So for the people listening, this is powerful. I have definitely gained a lot from changing my breathing patterns, and this is going to help me take it to the next level. You suffered from asthma, and because I know that it’s a really serious thing and people die from it. I want to touch on that just before we end up finished. How does this help people with asthma? What does it do to make it better?
Patrick McKeown 1:00:08
And very simple, people will ask them to breed too much. And you could say that what’s the chicken and the egg here. If you breathe excessively, you cause the airways to cool and dry out and you lose co2, etc. But your airways constrict in response to excessive breathing. But as your airways constrict, you feel you’re not getting enough air. And when you feel you’re not getting enough air, you want to breed more to compensate.
Patrick McKeown 1:00:41
But that feeds back into the condition. So, Dr. Buteyko, we said that the noisy and deep reading of an asthmatic had always been considered an outcome of the disease and outcome, but nobody could suspect that the big breathing of the asthmatic was feeding back into the disease. So for 20 years, marriage open, I was signed, I was heavy breathing. I was constantly plugged up. I was snoring at night and had obstructive sleep apnea and diagnosed I was as a heavy breeder. I started learning how to unblock my nose by holding my breath.
Patrick McKeown 1:01:21
I started slowing down my breathing. I reset my breathing Center by practice, the more you practice softening the breath, you retrain the brain that regulates your volume. In one week, my asthma improved by more than 20 years. So it totally now at the time there was one clinical trial that was back in 1994. It was conducted at the Mater Hospital in Brisbane. They compare the butter method with a control group which was taught in a house hospital program at the Mater hospital. The people doing the betaken method. They had 70% fewer symptoms in 12 weeks 70% I had 50 percent less need for inhaled corticosteroid and a 90%. less need for a bronchodilator medication control group, which was taught the breathing exercises at Mater Hospital.
Patrick McKeown 1:02:15
Ange, now I’m not here to knock the control group. I’m here to point out that particular groups are taught how to reduce their breathing. The control group was just taught to die from attic breathing. We have to reduce breathing volume. There are now 14 clinical trials and this is the last I’ve been involved in, in different ways, but five of them. We used one for the nose, we reduce rhinitis symptoms by 70%. One of the more recent trials used my book closure mode, they didn’t have a practitioner, they just read the book took the instruction from the book, and use that in the pure tech code. They said we don’t know exactly what’s going on here.
Patrick McKeown 1:02:58
But in quotes, if this was a drug that is widely available. There is an issue that we as breathing, people don’t have the marketing budgets to get the reach to help put it out there. We do our best to YouTube, and podcast books because the book is accessible. You know, I think maybe 10 Australian dollars or 15 Australian dollars you can buy a book with the information. We’re making inroads, the British Triassic Society has given us the view taken to the one plus. So we’re starting to get in with clinical trials.
Patrick McKeown 1:03:35
And most importantly, all I will say is if any of your listeners have breathing problems, don’t breathe through your mouth. It just doesn’t make sense. Your nose is nature’s way to humidify to moisten the filter. It’s got its own enzymes to as a natural antibacterial, it’s sterilized the incoming air, you’ve got nitric oxide coming in to help us ventilation-perfusion. Anybody would ask no but ironically build, the vast majority of people with asthma don’t breathe through the nose because they feel they’re not getting enough air. They breathe through an open-out.
Patrick McKeown 1:04:08
And I have to say this very few healthcare professionals who are working with children and adults with asthma. Very few of them are telling them to listen and stop breathing through their nose. They’re not just giving them that message. The kid is coming about asthma having asthma attacks, and they can be fatal. This is not just about getting a message out there. This is about improving. But more importantly, it’s about saving lives.
Patrick McKeown 1:04:35
We do not change people’s medication. All I do is for 15 years. If somebody comes to me and asked him, I said, Listen, I want to improve your quality of life. I want to improve your asthma control, and then mature physician. your need for medication will gently reduce so we don’t take risks. And we’re teaching something with no side effects. You know, so There’s bread term brilliant methods out there they are.
Patrick McKeown 1:05:04
They’re brilliant meditators. Sometimes it’s difficult for these brilliant methods to get into the general domain. Unfortunately, a lot of our healthcare is driven by financial and by pharma research, and that is a problem. So, it’s really about how we get something that’s so brilliant. It’s like the work that you’re doing, you know, the work that Clint is doing simple modalities without side effects to help people. And that’s where we should be going. And that’s what we would have done for hundreds of thousands of years.
Bill 1:05:37
Look, I’m blown away by your method and your ability to really unpack what’s actually going on. That’s why I got involved. I’m in the middle of building a program. It’s going to be 10 steps to brain health for stroke survivors. I don’t think there’s another program out there. That gives people a whole bunch of different tools to improve brain health that they don’t have to be doctors to be able to implement or do, and breathing is going to be one of the modules.
Bill 1:06:06
And of course, my understanding of breathing was nowhere near your level. So having this conversation with you has allowed me to really take that to the next level having now the book and all the things that you’ve referenced me to go back and read up on is going to really change that module. And it’s gonna make it enhance people’s recovery because all of what I was trying to do was trying to decrease the inflammation in my brain four years ago without taking a steroid that had 60 side effects.
Bill 1:06:40
And all of them were unpleasant and I experienced about 25 of them. So as I’m stroke survivors, we go through a lot of these chemicals, and sometimes we think that it’s the only way I believe that the pharmaceutical approach is the only way and I also don’t knock it because with that The steroids in the very earliest stages of my recovery, I might not have survived.
Bill 1:07:05
So I’m very happy to have been given a steroid at that time. But what it did for me, it required me to recover from that as well, for the next year or two, because I put on weight, it changed my blood sugar levels of genuine blood pressure levels. It did all these things. So I really do appreciate your time. And thank you for the work that you do. And this is my part of trying to help people like you get your message out, because I didn’t have a budget either. But I have YouTube and YouTube for free. And I just love it. Isn’t it fantastic? Where can people find out more about you? Where can they go to buy your book and where can they read about you online?
Patrick McKeown 1:07:53
And we have a lot of resources on view Taiko clinic Comm. So for instance, we put up as much information in terms of showing the signs and what’s going on, and we’ve got videos there for us, mostly patni, etc. And I’ve got about a box, just DVD sets, and you know, it’s accessible, that people can start using a ticket even just even go onto YouTube and start looking, what’s the basis of it.
Patrick McKeown 1:08:19
And when they feel that they’re making some progress, if he wants to go a little bit more in detail, get a book, read a book or something like that, you know, so it’s like, it’s totally accessible now, I visit Australia, generally every October, November to Sydney, and I love going to Australia. And I live there 20 years ago, that one year as a backpacker, worked in every pair factory in Melbourne, or outside of Virgin Victoria, and I notice, you know, it was a great experience. So I always love going back to it.
Patrick McKeown 1:08:47
And slightly different, of course, you know, what approach was? Yeah, so we have people in Australia. There are some great practitioners there, men beam and there’s some radiant breathing specialist in Australia, you know, it’s been there for quite a while. And
Bill 1:09:05
Excellent. I’m gonna look them up. And actually, are you going to be doing any public presentations or anything that we could get to see in October?
Patrick McKeown 1:09:14
Sure, well come along to our course. And you know, we do have a course that was for our clients. So we were trying to come in and they said the fee is quite reduced, and you sit in for two hours a day for four days and you get the entire instruction. So it would be a good way that if people feel they really want to kind of do it, all I say is if people are trying it for themselves, you know if they are recovering from cardiovascular health, don’t do the breath holds. Just do that. Do the nose breathing, go for walks, gentle walks with your mouth closed, like gently work with your body as opposed to kind of pushing with it, you know, and I think people understand anyway, that they’re not going to take risks.
Bill 1:09:56
Yeah. Okay. It’s been fascinating talking to you on this topic. Big Thank you so much. And I look forward to meeting you in October or November.
Patrick McKeown 1:10:05
Yes, absolutely. Thanks very much, Bill. It was a pleasure. Thank you.
Bill 1:10:09
Well, that’s it for another episode of the Recovery after stroke podcast and thank you for tuning in. If you liked this episode of the podcast do leave us a five-star review on iTunes as it will help others find the show and could make a real difference to the long-term health of people that experience sleep apnea. If you know someone that is currently living with sleep apnea, let them know about this episode by sharing it with them via your Facebook page or your preferred social media.
Bill 1:10:36
So this episode of the transit lounge podcast is brought to you by the website recoveryafterstroke.com. It’s where you can find out more about my recovery from three brain hemorrhages and brain surgery where you can make a booking for a Skype coaching session using the online calendar. It’s where you can find links to my YouTube channel information on my coaching packages. Details of my latest projects. Enjoy a lovely day.
Intro 1:11:05
The presenters and special guests of this podcast intend to provide accurate and helpful information to their listeners. These podcasts can not take into consideration individual circumstances and are not intended to be a substitute for independent medical advice from a qualified health professional. You should always seek advice from a qualified health professional before acting on any of the information provided by any of the Recovery After Stroke podcasts. This has been a production of http://recoveryafterstroke.com Check out our page on Facebook and start a conversation by leaving a comment at https://www.instagram.com/recoveryafterstroke/. Subscribe to the show on iTunes and check us out on Twitter.
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