CO2: A Surprising Key to Your Optimal Health and Well-Being

How does CO2, seen mostly as a greenhouse gas, hold keys to optimizing your health and enhancing your overall well-being? Read about its vital role!

Ever find yourself dragging through the day, feeling more worn out than you should? Maybe your brain's in a fog, your energy's low, and stress and anxiety are close friends. We tend to blame it on lack of sleep or not eating right, and we rarely consider our breathing. We breathe about 17,000 times a day without even noticing it might be the culprit behind our chronic fatigue and low motivation.

It's strange to think that something as natural as breathing that we were born doing correctly could get messed up along the way. Stress, sitting around too much, poor diets, not getting enough sleep, and living in homes that feel like saunas all mess with our breathing. Our bodies don't love it. Suddenly, we're stuck in this cycle of constantly tired, anxious, lazy, and not our best selves. In his book Breath, James Nestor puts it bluntly: we're the worst breathers in the animal kingdom! Recognizing we might be breathing wrong is the first step to fixing it. Good breathing? It sets you up for a life of feeling fabulous. Bad breathing? Wired, tired, weak and stressed. Whether you're training for a marathon, cruising down the snack aisle, or going upstairs breathing wrong will catch up to you. What are our lousy breathing habits?

We breathe too much, too fast, and too shallow and feel both wound up and tired. Some signs of incorrect breathing are so sneaky we don't realize we do them: mouth breathing, chest breathing, yawning and sighing, noisy breathing, and taking big breaths because we need oxygen. It boils down to overbreathing.

Every Breath You Take
Each breath follows the same route in our complex respiratory system.
Hopefully, each inhale starts its adventure through your nose, not the mouth. From there, it's down the trachea (windpipe); this tube divides into two bronchi—one for the right lung, one for the left—like a fork in the road. From these bronchi, bronchioles sprout like tiny branches of a tree, leading the air deeper. And at the very end of these branches, we come to alveoli—about 500 million of them (Nestor 2020), each surrounded by its little network of capillaries, ensuring a smooth exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide in your blood. If you visualize an upside-down tree with the trachea as the trunk, the bronchi as the two main branches, and so on to the alveoli, the leaves, you get the picture. The trees in our environment give us the oxygen that the inverted tree in our lungs absorbs. Same structure, different scale – unique synergy between us and our environment!

How this system works
Perhaps it's a good idea to forget everything we thought about breathing because it's not oxygen calling the shots; it's carbon dioxide. CO2 controls breathing. Every cell converts food and oxygen into the energy we need, and then each one releases carbon dioxide as a byproduct/waste gas. The CO2 returns to the lungs; it triggers what we call "breath hunger." In our brain, chemoreceptors—little sensors—keep tabs on our CO2 levels. When they hit a certain threshold, our brain says, "Alright, let's inhale." According to Anders Olsson, a top Scandanavian breathing therapist, most of us need more CO2, and with more, we can sharpen our mind, burn fat, and maybe even heal from some diseases.(Nestor 2020) It seems weird that while CO2 gets a bad rap for heating the planet and being labeled as a waste product, it turns out it's a superstar for our health. That's a twist on the scenario. So even though deep breaths are taught and practiced, even by yoga teachers and meditation teachers, and not only, this myth is wrong. Breathing fully and breathing deeper does the opposite of getting more oxygen into the blood. There are ZERO benefits. It's akin to telling someone with all the caloric needs met for optimal energy to eat more. There is no benefit.
It might feel like we're doing our body a favor when we suck in a big gulp of air, but our blood is already saturated with oxygen. I ran the tests myself during the COVID-19 pandemic. I purchased an oximeter, and no matter what I did—jumping jacks, planks, resting, holding my breath, hyperventilating, mouth breathing and sucking in more air, my blood oxygen levels stayed stable between 96% and 98%, no matter what I threw at it. Oxygen isn't the issue here. It's about getting the oxygen where it's needed: our brain, muscles, organs, and cells. That's where CO2 comes in. When air hits our alveoli and their capillaries, it latches onto the hemoglobin in our red blood cells and gets ferried off to our cells - muscle cells, brain cells, bone cells, etc. Carbon dioxide holds the key to the door that allows oxygen to leave the blood and enter the cells. If you're feeling like you're running on empty half the time, it's likely a CO2 issue. When we overbreathe, sigh, yawn, or take deep breaths, we're getting rid of too much CO2, which can leave us feeling foggy-headed, tired, and just blah.

Benefits of CO2 in our body:

Carbon dioxide releases oxygen from hemaglobin and delivers it to the cells.
It dilates the blood vessels to improve circulation.
Regulates the pH and keeps it in a well-defined range.
Carbon dioxide reduces anxiety by helping us shift into the parasympathetic nervous system.

Perhaps the next time you feel like you need a pick-me-up, breathe less and let the carbon dioxide build up a bit to work its magic.

Blood Oxygen Level Test. BOLT

If you'd like a sneak peek at how much carbon dioxide you can tolerate, consider taking the simple Blood Oxygen Level Test (BOLT). It's best to do it in the morning. It's easy. Take a nice, normal breath and let it out through the nose. At the end of your exhalation, pinch your nose shut with your fingers and note how many seconds it takes before you have the first impulse to breathe. It's not a contest to see how long you can hold your breath; it's ONLY until you have the first urge to breathe. If your first breath after releasing your nose feels like you were suffocating, you held out too long. This test is a gauge of your CO2 tolerance. The higher your score, the better your body's tolerance of carbon dioxide. Ideally, you're shooting for a score of around 40, but don't worry if you're not there yet—there are ways to improve your BOLT score.

If your score is under 15, start by breathing through your nose day and night, try to avoid yawning and sighing and and slow down breathing with light, gentle breaths; an ideal rate is between 4 and 6 breaths a minute.(McKeown 2016) These little changes can make a difference. The higher your score, the slower you'll notice progress toward reaching 40, but every increment will make you feel physically and mentally much better.

Breathing correctly is one of the best things you can do for your health. As you realize the power of each inhale and exhale, and understand it's not about taking big, deep breaths to increase your oxygen and energy levels—it's about slowing your breath down to where your body hums along in harmony with the rhythm of your breath.

Yoga classes:
Whether you're a seasoned yogi or a curious beginner, consider rolling out your mat and joining a class where you'll have many opportunities to unite movement with breath.
Monday and Wednesday at 9:30 am.
Friday 7:30 and 9: 30 am. Strength Training
Sunday at 9:00 am.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday 5:30 pm.
Monday 11:30 am Strength Training ZOOM.

Let the soothing flow of breath guide you as you stretch, strengthen, and find peace within. Every breath and every tree pose counts. Until the next time, breathe easy.

Patrick McKeown, author of several life-changing books on breathing techniques created the Oxygen Advantage.

James Nestor, is an award winning science journalist well know for his book Breath The New Science of a Lost Art.