Daily Tip #15 - Bag Breathing
If you’re looking for the details on the benefits of having a proper CO2 balance, just check this out:
https://www.normalbreathing.org/co2/
0:01 - Intro
Hello out there. I'm Shane from MATRIX. My back is feeling wonderful today. How about yours? Yesterday's Tip -- again, being one of my favorites -- really does the trick. But we're switching gears a little bit for today's Tip, and we're moving back into breathing. What you're going to need today is a paper lunch bag. And if you don't have any of those -- and you're really brave -- you can get a plastic bag.
0:30 – CO2 Science
Last Friday, when we did Straw Breathing, I introduced the benefits of a proper CO2 balance in your body. If you're interested in knowing more about that, I'm going to go into it a little bit and there's even more detail in the link below. If you're not, now's a good time to go get your bag. In our bodies, CO2 is not just a waste. It's something that is very important to maintaining proper cell balance. In fact, there's a number of different things that go into how important CO2 is. So much so that I needed to make a list for just a few of them. The biggest one is that proper CO2 balance is super important for proper oxygen transport. You can't get oxygen to the cells because CO2 is a vasodilator -- which means it opens up the blood channels -- without it you can't get blood and oxygen to your cells. And it's a big part of the Bohr effect, which actually gets the oxygen into the cells. So, people with low CO2 levels, that's actually part of the disease metabolism. Second, if oxygen is not getting to the cells, you can't have proper antioxidant properties. So, CO2 is very important for eliminating free radicals in the body. And again, that goes back to proper cell metabolism and the disease mechanism. Chronic hyperventilation is also seen in inflammation responses. It's correlated with that. So more co2, less inflammation. Finally, it also stabilizes nerves and helps to relax your musculature. All of those things that we're looking for during this crazy stressful time. We want to reduce inflammation. We want to stay relaxed. We want our nerves to be firing well, so that everything's working optimally. Ah, enough for the science.
2:29 – Why the Paper Bag?
Let's get into the practical thing that you can do to help keep your CO2 levels in balance. What happens if we go all the way back to our very first Tip -- belly breathing -- and that was a real challenge for you? You're a chest, upper-breather, hyper-ventilator. What happens in your body is we actually have little sensors that regulate the CO2 balance. When we're chronically breathing too rapidly. That sensor gets a little bit off and it stabilizes to a norm of less CO2 and more oxygen, which is not beneficial. You can see this in the panic response. Somebody is having a panic attack. They start breathing really rapidly and they can't catch the breath and what do you do? You give them a paper bag. By breathing into a paper bag, whatever CO2 you are exhaling gets trapped in the bag and you're having to re-breathe it. This increases the CO2 level in your body. And it slows down that stressful hyperventilating response. Causing relaxation and helping you come out of a panic attack. That's why we're going to use our bag today.
3:41 – Note on Plastic Bag
The paper bags are a lot nicer because they make a noise so that you know you have a good seal around your mouth. In addition, they are slightly porous so there is some gas exchange from in the bag to outside of the bag. Whereas -- if you are being brave and using a plastic bag -- you don't get that. So, you will get to that point of having issues catching your breath with a plastic bag a lot faster than you will with the paper bag. With all that being said, all we're going to do is breathe into the bag today.
4:12 – How to Use the Bag
To make that happen, I like to fold the bag over. It makes it a little bit easier to seal around the mouth because you have a thicker surface to press against. Then once you've got it, all you're going to do is place it around the nose, around the chin, and seal the bag up using your hands on either side.
4:38 - [Breathing]
4:45 – How to Use the Bag continued
You can see that when you have a good seal the bag makes some noise.
4:49 - [Breathing]
4:56 – How to Use the Bag continued
And it moves. That's when you know you're doing it right.
5:00 – Responses to Bag Breathing
In general, if you have good sensors working in your body and have good CO2 levels, you'll probably be able to breathe into this bag for about 1 - 3 minutes. Before too much CO2 builds up, and you get that, I need to get out of this feeling. In a plastic bag, it might be a lot faster. If you put this on and can only take 1 or 2 breaths, that is a sign that your sensor is really off. And any little increase in CO2 is a problem. So, this would be a drill that would be very, very, very useful for you to do. If you can breathe into this bag forever, one of two things is happening. One, you might not have a good seal around the bag, so you're getting plenty of oxygen in through the slit. Or second. your metabolism is not working well and you're not creating a lot of CO2. Meaning that your cells are going through the first stages of cellular respiration, but not the latter stages, which are the more efficient ones. And that can play a role in your energy levels, your health, your body weight, all that type of stuff. So, this is a great test to find out both of those things.
6:15 - Summary
In summary, because we're not going to sit here on the video and watch me breathe for two or three minutes, this is how this trick works. You take the bag. Fold the edges. Seal it around your nose and your mouth.
6:27 - [Breathing]
6:37 – Summary Continued
And breathe in and out. You should be able to go for 1 - 3 minutes. If you're too low, or too high. There are reasons for that. And this is something you should probably be working on to help start solving those problems. Please go out and give that a shot. Give me some responses. Let me know how it went for you. If you have additional questions. We're holding the Q&A today at 4:30pm. You can jump on that if you're a part of the mailing list.
7:00 - Farewell
Additionally, at 5:00pm I have my free, 30-minute training session that's going to incorporate all these 15 different Tips that we've been through and show you how to put them together into a workout/fitness program. So, sign up for that and I hope to see you there. Enjoy your weekend!