In order to define your breathing pattern, measure your body oxygenation or breath-holding time after your usual exhalation, but only until the first stress or discomfort. After doing this CP test, one can define their health state using the Buteyko Table of Health Zones.
A person with
normal breathing is going to have about 40 seconds for the body oxygen test. In the case of chronic overbreathing, breath holding time becomes shorter.
Sick people have deep and fast breathing 24/7 and reduced body oxygenation (usually about 10-20 seconds of oxygen in tissues). In the severely sick and critically ill patients, body oxygenation is below 10 seconds.
Dr. Buteyko, based on his studies of thousands of healthy and sick people, suggested different norms for breathing (e.g., Buteyko, 1991).
BUTEYKO'S NORMS
For him, a
normal respiration rate is only of 8 breaths/min.
Here are his numbers for normal breathing:
- normal minute ventilation: 4 l/min;
- normal tidal volume (air volume breathed in during a single breath): 500 ml;
- normal breathing rate or frequency: 8 breaths per minute;
- inspiration: about 1.5 seconds;
- exhalation: 2 seconds;
- automatic pause (or period of no breathing after exhalation): 4 seconds;
- breath holding time (after usual exhalation and without any stress at the end of the test): 60 seconds;
- CO2 concentrations in the alveoli or arterial blood – 6.5% or about 46 mm Hg (at sea level).
It is amazing to observe the physiological effects in people who breathe at rest and during sleep (that may take months or years to retrain). These details, which I also observed in dozens of my best breathing students, relate to very short natural sleep and other factors.
Warning. We cannot measure our own breathing frequency or
respiratory rate since our breathing immediately changes once we pay attention to it. We breathe slower and deeper. Your result can be 2-3 times smaller than your real number during your basal-breathing pattern at rest (e.g., you will count 7 breaths/min, while your actual breathing rate is about 18-20 breaths/min). Hence, you can breathe faster than the
normal respiration frequency, but your test can show that you breathe slower than the normal breathing frequency (12 breaths/min). This is a common mistake.
Article written by Nirvana science consultant Dr. Artour Rakhimov (http://www.normalbreathing.com/)
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