Patrick McKeown has taught breathing for health, mental, and physical performance since 2002. His latest book is "The Breathing Cure for Better Sleep".
566: Breathe to Transform Anxiety
Patrick McKeown
Discover how simple breathing practices can calm anxiety and boost overall well-being. Hunter Clarke-Fields talks with world-renowned breathing expert Patrick McKeown about:
His journey from chronic asthma to breathing mastery
Why nasal breathing and balanced CO₂ levels matter
Practical exercises to reduce stress—for adults and kids
Tune in for science-backed tips you can use today to breathe easier and feel more grounded.
Ep 566- McKeown
Read the Transcript 🡮
*This is an auto-generated transcript*
Hunter Clarke-Fields (00:00)
You're listening to the Mindful Mama Podcast, episode #566. Today we're talking about how to breathe to transform anxiety with Patrick McKeown.
Welcome to the Mindful Mama Podcast. Here it's about becoming a less irritable, more joyful parent. At Mindful Mama, we know that you cannot give what you do not have. And when you have calm and peace within, then you can give it to your children. I'm your host, Hunter Clarke-Fields. I help smart, thoughtful parents stay calm so they can have strong, connected relationships with their children. I've been practicing mindfulness for over 25 years. I'm the creator of the Mindful Parenting Course and Teacher Training. I'm the author of the international bestseller, “Raising Good Humans”, “Raising Good Humans Every Day”, and the “Raising Good Humans Guided Journal”.
Hey, welcome back to the Mindful Mama Podcast. So glad you're here. Today we're talking to Patrick McKeown who has taught breathing for health, mental and physical performance since 2002. His latest book is “The Breathing Cure for Better Sleep”. And we're gonna be talking about simple breathing practices to calm anxiety and boost overall wellbeing, why nasal breathing and balancing CO2 levels really matter and practical exercises to reduce stress for adults and for kids. So this is all very science backed and I know it's going to help you breathe easier and feel more grounded. So let's dive into this episode.
Welcome to the mindful mama podcast. so glad you're here.
Patrick McKeown:
I'm delighted. Thanks very much, Hunter. And especially if this is going to be one of your first discussions on breathing.
Hunter: I know it's crazy because I've been wanting to get someone to talk about breathing because my husband went through a whole experience over the last couple of years- in 2019, he had a panic attack in Pari. But with my kids, we were at this fair, he had to leave. It was like a whole big thing- it was like a series of over the years, like he had these panic attacks and, and he had been going through all these different things to help him. What is this? I mean, he was, you know, he went to the ER a couple of times and they gave him, uh, you know, downers to suppress his panic attacks. And he discovered a breathing protocol. And I don't know which one it is, but he discovered a breathing protocol and realized that he had been doing shallow breathing and it had been made, it had been leading to this whole problem. And now he's so religious about it, but it's, it's turned around his life enormously as far as anxiety and things like that goes. It's not like he seemed like he was a terribly anxious person before all this started happening. but it's been so fascinating to watch that. I've been like, wow, I have to find someone to talk about this because this is really changing people's lives. And I know you have maybe, you probably have a similar story of like how this inspired you, but maybe you could, I don't know, speak to that. what first inspired you to study breathing and maybe you have some insight into what happened for my husband too. don't know. think anybody who works in breathing, we always started because of our own issues. You know, that's really what drives us into it.
Patrick McKeown:
So I was a kid growing up with asthma and with asthma you have a stuffy nose. And if you have a stuffy nose, you're more likely to mouthbreed. And if you mouthbreed, you're more likely to breathe faster in upper chest. And that in turn can affect your sleep quality and it can also put you into an increased stress response because you know how we breathe is telling the brain either we are safe or we are not simple as that. I remember I initially left school at 14 years of age because I felt that the school system or the curriculum just wasn't for me. I wasn't a disruptive kid in class, but I was a kid that was sitting there. And while my eyes would have been looking at the teacher, my attention wasn't. And my attention was stuck in my head. You know, and in junior school, up until the about the age of 11, I was very bright. I was pretty much top of the class. And in high school, I went from the top of the class to the bottom of the class.
And out of a sense of frustration, I left it. I ended up going back to school one year later, did my final. And then I got into university and I had to work hard. And I mean that I spent all of my hours, teenage years, young adults, studying to get through exams. I then read a newspaper article that was back in 1998. It said two things, breathe in and out through your nose. I wasn't doing that. It said breathe light, breathe slow. I wasn't doing that either. I started putting into practice. I taped my red clothes that night. I taped my red clothes the second night and I woke up the second morning with the best night's sleep ever. And that was it. I changed careers. I'd spent four years at university, attaining a master's degree. And I said, yeah, there was something really in it. And I mean something enormously in it. And here's the thing, Hunter. It wasn't about taking a full, breath. It wasn't about the breathing that was being practiced typically in yoga. It wasn't often the breathing practice that's often taught in psychotherapy and psychology. It was actually about breathing less air, you know, and it kind of flew in the face that everything that was out there, but that's the conversation-
Hunter:
That's fascinating. I was also a mouth breather at night when I was a kid. Although I slept like a log. I don't know. It changed at one point. I had a dairy allergy. The breathing that I was taught was yoga breathing, because I was certified as a yoga teacher a long time ago and learned all the different breathing modalities that yoga teaches you. I think for my husband- I should have checked with him before I recorded this- but I think it was about breathing deeper actually that that changed us because he had too much CO2 or something in his system or not enough. Can't remember what it is. Help me understand?
Patrick McKeown:
Sure. I suppose when we think about breathing, we need to look at it from three different angles. One is how much air do you breathe every minute, every hour, every day? Really important question. And that's determined by how fast you breathe your respiratory rate by the size of each breath, the tidal volume. And that in turn gives you minute ventilation.
Now, if you were under breathing, it's not good. If you were over breathing, it's not good, but most people over breathe. So it's the most common form of breathing pattern disorder. So I said earlier on that I was a chronic mouth breather and I was breathing fast or I was breathing upper chest. So typically that would be called chronic hyperventilation syndrome. And again, that is the most common form of breathing pattern disorder. So the person is breathing a lot of air, but it doesn't mean that there's oxygen delivery adequately to tissues and organs, including the brain.
Because this is a strange thing when it comes to breathing. If I was to breathe more air, I don't bring in that much more oxygen into my blood. My blood is already almost fully saturated. But by breathing too much air, I get rid of too much of the gas carbon dioxide. Hell yeah. And as I get rid of too much carbon dioxide from my lungs by simply just breathing it out, that in turn will reduce carbon dioxide in the blood leaving the lungs. And that's when the problems start.
So when carbon dioxide in the blood goes too low, the blood vessels narrow, blood vessels constrict. And we have 50,000 miles of blood vessels throughout the human body. And our blood circulation is impaired by breathing too much air. But it's not just our blood circulation, also oxygen delivery. So discovered back in 1904, it's called the Bohr effect, B-O-H-O-R. That the main carrier of oxygen in the blood is hemoglobin. So that's the protein, the molecule that carries oxygen in the blood mostly.
And carbon dioxide is a factor that encourages or causes a reaction that hemoglobin releases oxygen more readily. again, if that individual is breathing too much air, they're getting rid of too much carbon dioxide and the loss of carbon dioxide drives up blood pH a little bit too high. So it becomes too alkaline. And in that instance then, hemoglobin holds onto oxygen too strongly. And because the red blood cells are holding onto oxygen, they're not releasing it.
Now, another factor that takes place is that we have 83 billion brain cells and brain cell excitability. So the firing of these brain cells are influenced by blood pH. And if our blood pH is too alkaline as a result of breathing too much air, brain cells are excitable, overly excitable. And even with, say, for example, the default mode networks. So these are the parts of the brain that light up when we are in rumination or mind wandering.
These regions of the brain are more active. Number one is if we are chronically map breathing and number two, if our CO2 is too low. how does that result in experience for a person? What was that you're experiencing? Increased stress, difficulty concentrating, spending a lot of time in thinking mode, can't get out of one's head, not able to hold attention to what they want to hold it upon. And the other aspect is poor sleep.
The autonomic nervous system is an increased sympathetic drive. I think it's horrendous. And, you know, I'm not just saying it because I'm a breathing instructor. You know, we've put all of the exercise out there for free. You know, so they're all in the public domain, but it's, I'm going to come back to this Hunter. Not all breathing exercises are the same. And when you were talking about your yoga training and you spoke about practicing many, many different breathing exercise, the question that I would have is: did any of those exercises deliberately involve breathing less air to the point that you had air hunger and holding that air hunger for three or four minutes? And that's a breathing exercise that is designed to reduce, to help reduce over-breathing, to help bring back breathing volume towards normal, to normalize carbon dioxide in the lungs and blood, to improve blood circulation, improve oxygen so that we stimulate the vagus nerve and balance the nervous system. This is a breathing exercise that's so simple. And yet it's not being taught. What's being taught is the opposite. So we have a belief in the Western world that the more air we breathe, the better. Your stress, take a deep breath. You you're in yoga practice. Take more air into your lungs. You're hearing people around you breathe. We need to have a conversation here. Why are we doing a breathing exercise that can be depleting ourselves, depleting blood flow and depleting oxygen delivery? You know, so that's what my premise is. That's what I want to get out there.
Hunter:
So you're saying that holding the breath is changing the blood flow and the chemistry in this positive way to reduce our stress, reduce our fight, or freeze?
Patrick McKeown:
Yeah. Say, for example, say somebody who comes into me as panic disorder, I'll describe your husband, not your husband per se, but a very common feature that I would see with panic disorder patients. I see they're breathing, they are breathing faster than normal. So their respiratory rate could be 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 breaths per minute. I look at their tidal volume and their tidal volume could be, it can be normal and it can be higher and they can have irregular breathing patterns. And they often feel that they are not getting enough air. They feel that they can't take a deep breath. They're also breathing more into the upper chest. They don't have a natural pause after exhalation. And this is their normal everyday breathing. So they're normal everyday breathing, every minute, every hour, every day. This is how they breathe. So they are breathing in a way that's generating stress. And they're also breathing in a way that they are teetering on the brink of symptoms. So that individual then goes into a crowded place or goes to a fairground or is driving a car. And all they need is a small little bit of stress. And that in turn can generate a feeling of air hunger. But then we have to ask the question, does their body interpret that sensation of air hunger? So people with dysfunctional breathing who are prone to panic disorder, many of them, they can misinterpret those symptoms as catastrophic. So the air hunger then causes them to unknowingly breathe faster and harder, which in turn is hyperventilation, which is generating an increased panic symptoms and anxiety. They may start to feel that the heart rate is quite strong. They may feel that they're not getting enough air. They may feel chest tightness. Or they feel that they are choking or suffocating and of course that feeds back into their stress response. So we need to look at how is the person breathing in their everyday life. It's absolutely key and not for them to go to a psychotherapist and the psychotherapist to tell that person take a few deep breaths. That's not what that person should be doing. Instead of that person breathing faster and harder and upper chest with a regular breathing through an open mouth, they need to start in an edge of the nose. They need to start breathing lighter. So it's not about holding the breath, but it's about softening their breath. And like I would say to anybody listening to this, you know, if you're in a safe environment and you're not driving your car, just gently soften the speed of your breath in. So slow down the speed of your breath in almost at its imperceptible and then have a really relaxed and a slow and a gentle breath out. And just soften the breath relative to how you are breathing.
And by softening the breath, you will be breathing less air, so you know, to have less breathing movement. So I need you to breathe about 30 % less air into your body. And with that, you will feel air hunger. And air hunger is telling you that there's an increase of carbon dioxide in the lungs and blood. And as the increase of carbon dioxide, it's helping to improve your blood circulation. attention to the temperature of your hands. Can you improve the temperature of your hands by breathing a little bit less air? Can you activate the body's relaxation response as evident by increased water sliving them out by breathing light and soft and slow and breathing less air to the point of air hunger? Can you feel sleepy? So here we can dampen the stress response and increase the body's relaxation response literally by just softening and slowing down the speed of the breath, which in turn will stimulate the vagus nerve, which is this nerve that's wandering throughout the human body which 80 to 90 % of communication from the body up to the brain. And also we have to bear in mind that the brain is constantly spying on our breathing. You know, we have a part of the brain right at the back of the brain called the pre-botting or complex. And within that part of the brain, there's a group of neurons and all that function of those neurons is spy on our breath. So the brain knows via our breathing, at least it's one mechanism, whether the body is under trash or perceive trash or whether the body is safe. But we should use this to our advantage. know, too often we are going through life and we're constantly telling the brain that we are under trash because we don't know the relationship between how should we breed versus how are we breeding?
Hunter:
Okay. This is fascinating. So you started to kind of bring us, myself and the listener through this type of breathing and you're saying, softening the breath. Would you mind doing that a little bit more deliberately so I can understand what you're saying? And I'm not sure exactly what I mean by softening the breath, but maybe if you could explain it in another way.
Patrick McKeown:
Of course. What I would like you to do is if you can put one hand on your chest and one hand just above your navel. Okay. And just pay attention to the airflow that's coming in and out of your nose. So just to bring you an awareness of your breathing.
Don't worry about how you do it or anything like that. So it's not about getting it perfect. All we're doing is just working with the breath, how you are breathing right now. So you feel the airflow coming into your body and you will feel the airflow as it leaves your body. There's your breath in, there's your breath out. There's your breath in. There's your breath out. There's your breath in. There. I didn't see that on the breath out. So for you to focus on your breathing, and now just gently soften the speed of the air as comes into your body. So you're feeling the airflow coming into your nose, so you might feel that the airflow is a little bit colder. And as you can feel the airflow coming into your nose, can you soften the speed of the air coming into your nose, almost that the breath in is imperceptible, that you feel hardly any air coming into your nose. So you're really slowing down the speed of the air coming into your nose. And then on the breath out, is just to bring a feeling of relaxation to the body and to allow the air to leave the body effortlessly. So what you're thinking about is, what do I do just to soften the speed of the air coming into my nose, that I feel less turbulent airflow coming into my nose, almost that I hardly feel any air coming into my nostrils, that I'm breathing so soft that the fine hairs within the nose do not move. And then on the breath out, to have a really relaxed and a slow and a gentle breath out. And the breath out, the speed of the breath out should be about one and half or two times the length of the breath in. Because with relaxation, it's not the inspiration. It's not the breath in that's really important, but it's the breath out. So whenever we have that slow and relaxed and a gentle breath out, we're telling the brain that we are safe. We're stimulating the vagus nerve. So you're doing a number of things there.
Number one is having attention on the breath and that can be a good barometer of your ability to hold attention on one thing. And of course it's normal that the mind wanders, that's what minds do, but then you bring your attention back onto your breathing. But as you're bringing your attention onto the breath, you're really softening or slowing down the speed of the air coming into your nose, almost that you are hardly breathing at all. So if you were in a room and say, for example, there was a noxious smell, you would deliberately under breathe so that you're not going to be smelling so much air. So you can just imagine that. So you're really softening and slowing down the speed of the air coming in. And then you're having a relaxed and a slow and a gentle breath out. And by doing that, you breathe less air. And when you breathe less air, you feel air hunger. So to feel a sensation of breathlessness. And the sensation of breathlessness is not because oxygen is dropping, because oxygen does not drive your breathing.
The primary driver to breathe is carbon dioxide. So by breathing less air, you're holding onto more carbon dioxide and this gas is being produced by the body. All you have to do is breathe a little bit less air to hold onto a little bit more carbon dioxide. And as you hold on to carbon dioxide a little bit more in the lungs, it will increase in the blood leaving the lungs and that in turn will dilate your blood circulation. It will improve your blood circulation 50,000 miles of blood vessels throughout the human body. So the ironic thing with that simple exercise is that you are breathing less air, but you're increasing blood flow to the brain by between 5 and 10 percent. You're increasing blood flow to the heart. You're increasing blood flow throughout the human body. And it's known that carbon dioxide in the brain, this has been known for a hundred years, but yet there's a belief out there that oxygen is good and carbon dioxide is the poison space gas. That's not something true. That is absolutely not true.
So if anybody was to take anything from this, what I would say is anything that I'm saying here, do your own research in it and look at the physiology of respiration and look at the functions of carbon dioxide that it does help to dilate your blood circulation. So if you have cold hands and cold feet or brain fog or difficulty concentrating, know, could that be due to over breathing? That you're breathing just a bit fast and a bit too hard? If you're feeling overly stressed,
Are you breathing faster and harder in upper chest having irregular breathing patterns? And that's it, Hunter- have dysfunction under our control.
Hunter:
It sounds like you're simplifying it. And I'm kind of relieved to hear one thing. One thing I teach is that when we want to relax our body, we want to extend our exhales because that helps us, helps the parasympathetic nervous system. It's a little bit of a hack is to extend the exhales, but you're saying kind of like the overall breathing of our body, you know, we want it to be very subtle, very quiet. Am I getting that correctly?
Patrick McKeown:
The first point that you said is absolutely correct. Like anytime that we want to tell the brain that we are safe, just focus on gently slowing down the speed of the exhale. I would encourage people not necessarily to count it. And the only reason being is because very often they hear breathe in for four, hold for seven, breathe out for eight, breathe in for four, out for six. But let's look at somebody coming into, I worked with people with anxiety. I've had 3000 clients just with anxiety and heart disorder. And when you work with quite a number of clients, now I've also worked with for years, like I'm 23 years working with clients with breathing. I'm 51 years of age. I spent as much time working with breathing as I have without it. And you see a client coming into you and that client, you know straight away if their breathing is generating a stress response. They typically are breathing maybe 18, 20 breaths per minute. It's common. And if that person then is told to breathe three breaths per minute or four breaths or six breaths per minute, it's too much for them. So I always want to ease my clients into it. know, I say, look, your breathing is just a little bit faster. How about we slow it down but not to slow it down to the point that it causes you to disproportionately take big breaths?
So in other words, like somebody coming in with 20 breaths per minute, you ask them how they feel. They feel my breathing feels an effort. They already feel uncomfortable with their breathing. So then we should be thinking like, are they breathing this way? What are the drivers to breathe? And one of the primary drivers to breathe is carbon dioxide. And then we have to wonder, what's the key most sensitivity to carbon dioxide? And then what's the relationship with their breathing? Like your husband's example of having a panic attack or how, you know, in that situation, how does he relate to his breathing? You know, what's his relationship with his breath? And even just asking him to bring his attention onto his breath. That may generate symptoms and signals of fear that may not happen ordinarily. So we always have to consider that, you know, dip our toes gently into the water. it's coming back to the first thing that you said is absolutely correct. Whenever we want to tell the brain that we are safe, just take a soft breath in through your nose. You don't need to take in this full breath or anything like that. Just you could have a normal breath in and then you have a relaxed and slow gentle breath out. So that's one exercise to tell the brain that we are safe. The second exercise is breathing less air.
So that's from me soft in the breath, just a little bit more to the point of air hunger. So there's two differences to that exercise. One is without air hunger. second one is with a little bit of air hunger, tolerable air hunger. Like I'll give you a practical example. I spoke at the International Integrative Medicine for Mental Health there in San Diego on Sunday. 1600 people attending it. Huge speakers. 30 of us, including Gabor Mate and Robert Lustig and other people. So it was a very influential conference. I'm getting up on stage, I speak for one hour and I never like using slides. I like to get into a flow stage and I like to speak for one hour without Ms, bots or anything else. And I don't prepare. Like somebody asked me, what did I do to prepare? I said, I wrote down three things. All I wanted to do was get across three things. Number one was breathing. a speaker that scares me going up to an hour without preparation. It is, but you know, this is the thing. And that was genuine, like genuinely. And I never prepare going in. I haven't prepared for this talk either. know, but what do I do? I will always regulate my breathing before I go out on stage. will. And I take time out and I will just literally close my eyes, bring my attention onto my breath and keep on gently softening to speed of the X-AVE. And if I was to feel that my heart rate was a little bit high, again, I would use breathing as a tool.
And I'm sitting there and nobody sees me do anything. So the 15 minutes before I was due to talk, I sat in the audience. I slowed down everything. Nothing for anybody to see. knowing that you have an ability to self-regulate and with that as well, of course, I'm bringing my attention out of the critical mind and bringing my attention onto my breath and into my body. And I would walk out on stage and I would talk with every cell of my body, because I need to get out of my own way there. I need to let the critical mind decide it's too slow. And the critical mind is more likely to sabotage me. Whereas I know that anybody who is doing a type of work for a period of time, all of this knowledge is inside in their brain. All they need to do is get out of their own way. And we get out of our own way by being able to bring our attention fully into what we're doing and fully into the present moment and in the absence of thinking that the thinking mind subsides and then it's me and it's the audience in the absence of thought. Now thoughts come in, I verbalize them, but my attention is fully in the moment and fully in time and that's flow state. I can activate that and I'm not just saying that I do it, I can activate it like a switch and you know, that's the power of the breath. I often feel, and I said that at that conference, know, there I spoke with people who are mental health providers. Psychologists, psychotherapists, a lot of medical doctors there that breathing is not known and people's interpretation of what breathing involves is not known. And if I was to say to one person, what's breathing? They will give me one answer and another person over here will give me another answer. But ultimately, we should be thinking about breathing as the tools in our everyday breathing, improving our everyday breathing, but understanding it, that it is multidimensional. It's simple, but there's a little bit to it as well.
But the only thing is once a person learns that they have it for the rest of their life, it's free. You're describing, of course, an incredible practice that, you know, parents could use that we could all use in lots of moments to calm our anxiety, to regulate ourselves, an incredible way for parents to model regulation for their kids and things like that. I'm wondering for the people who are dealing with anxiety, who do feel anxious about breathing who feel like when I focus on my breath, does scare me. You you said just you encourage them to sort of slow down their, you know, to sort of focus on softening their exhales. Is that it? Is there, is there some reassurance we can give to those people who are, who have that fear that it will be okay or it's, know, and, is maybe focusing on something else in the present moment that to bring that state of presence and that state of calm around maybe better for some people. Yeah. You know, if somebody comes into me and they don't have a good relationship with their breath. if I start bringing their attention, because people will come in, but they may not know how they will get on with the exercises, you know. But if I start bringing their attention, first of all, onto their breath and they are feeling uncomfortable about it, I listen, don't worry about it.
I can give you little gentle breath holes. I can have you home. We have guided audios that are all free online anyway, that you can simply listen to and just follow the instruction. You can do physical exercise with your mouth closed. You know, one of the best breathing exercises is learning to breathe in and out through the nose. And my point here is that 30 to 60 % of children and teenagers persistently mouth breathe. And the mouth does nothing when it comes to breathing.
What's inside our mouth? Our teeth, our tongue, our hard palate, soft palate, gums, saliva, all of that stuff. It's all for eating, for drinking, for speaking, and none of it is for breathing. Now, of course, when you're talking, there's a time that you can't consistently nasal breathe because you want it to maintain speech. So let's put that aside for the moment. But how about when the child is distracted watching television? How about when the child is going for a walk? How about when the child is in school? Is child is stressed or the child is sleeping. There's so much documented evidence looking at the out-breathing in children and the impact it has, and none of the impact is positive. These kids, their sleep quality. I'll just say this. Karen Bonnock did a study that was published in Pediatrics in 2012. It's a very high-impact journal. She looked at 11,049 school kids while there were children in the UK, the United Kingdom. And she tracked these children from 57 months, sorry, from six months to 57 months. So it's a longitudinal study involving 11,049 children. Her conclusion was that if these children have behavioural sleep problems and sleep disorder breathing at age five, and if it wasn't treated by the time these kids were aged, they had 40 % increased risk of special education needs. And those special education needs include ADD and ADHD, but also difficulty with speech, cognitive dysfunction. And you know, then you say, well, that's disorder breathing. Then she points out to what the hallmark symptoms were. Snoring, apnea and mouth breathing.
Hunter (33:05)
Stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcasts right after this break.
I know this very intimately. My second daughter had snoring and we had to take her tonsils out and we did it when she was very young. And wow, did it change how rapidly she could learn! It was fascinating. She learned so quickly after that. It just transformed everything for her in school. I mean, it was at a young age. I think we did at five or six. I can't remember, but it was an incredible, incredible difference.
Patrick McKeown:
Yeah. And Hunter, I'll also say that bringing a child to have their tonsils and adenoids out while necessary and very effective for some kids, how many of these children transition to nasal breathing post-surgery? And that's where the real method comes because unfortunately, even with ear, nose and throat doctors, and we work with them. And, know, I've just written a chapter just going into a medical textbook and I've written it with two ENTs. I've a published scientific article, a review article that's in the Journal of Clinical Medicine written with two ENTs. So ear, nose and throat doctors treat the nose, but they don't necessarily ensure that the child or adult for that matter actually breathes through it. And that's a very important thing to do. So coming back to your question then, one of the best breathing exercises that anybody can do is go for a walk with your med closed or jog with their med closed if they can do it. And the reason being is because your nose imposes a natural resistance to your breathing.
So when you breathe through your nostrils, and of course, the nose was designed for breathing, that in turn, you've got a better recruitment of the diaphragm. So you're breathing lower. You're harnessing a gas called nitric oxide, which helps to redistribute blood throughout the lungs. The partial pressure of oxygen going from the lungs into the blood increases by nearly 10 % with nasal breathing. When you do your physical exercise with your mouth closed, you've got higher carbon dioxide in your lungs and blood. You've got improved blood circulation to every organ, including the heart. And that also for endurance athletes. There's a recent paper by a professor of sports science, George Dallum. And he asked a question. He said, endurance athletes often have poor cardiovascular health. And this is not genetic. This is due to the sport and the heart, the number of miles that they put on the clock. And he said they can be prone to atrial fibrillation and also fibrosing of the heart. So scarring of the heart tissue. And the reason being is because they're doing a lot of mileage. They're putting a lot of miles in the clock, but they're mouth breathing all the way through it. So they're putting their heart under pressure, but their mouth breathing is not necessarily leading to increase their optimal blood flow to the heart. And if these individuals switch to nasal breathing during their physical exercise, they will have increased CO2 in the lungs, increased CO2 in the blood. And his paper was, could nasal breathing mitigate the adverse cardiovascular health effects suffered by endurance athletes? We can start off anywhere here and getting them out closed during sleep is absolutely key. And of course I am, you know, I totally recommend using a nasal breathing support where necessary, but one that would surround the mouth and not covering the lips because mouth breathing, mouth taping has gone viral. And it's never about just forcing mouth tape onto a child or adult.
Number one is: it has to be established that nasal breathing can happen. And also the tape that's used should surround them out. It shouldn't cover them out. So I'm imagining the listener hearing this, wondering about their own breathing. I hope you're doing that exercise with me. Actually, as I'm listening to you, I'm feeling very relaxed because I'm focusing on my sort of relaxed exhales. But I imagine the listener is also wondering about their kids, you know. What are some of the signs? How can parents see habits that are unhealthy in their kids? And what are some of the signs that they're existing? Because it's kind of invisible to most of us, I think. This is not something we think about. It's not something we pay attention to. It's not something we look for. It's not something your parents look for. It's not something the medical doctors look for, Hunter.
Hunter (39:21)
Even today, you will have thousands of kids going into a doctor's surgery with their mouth open and they're walking back out with their mouth open. So what should the parent look for?
Patrick McKeown:
Does your child have any susceptibility to a stuffy nose? Does your child have asthma? Does your child, when they are eating their meal, are they breathing through their mouth and eating at the same time because it'll kind of drive parents slightly crazy and the parents will be copping it? Does your child snore? But do you hear even do you even hear your child breathing? You shouldn't even hear your child breathing during sleep. And I'm not meaning that they stop breathing. That's even worse again. Does your child often have audible breathing during the day? Do they run out of air by talking when the child wakes up in the morning? Do they have bad breath? How is it close of the child? The bedclothes. So for example, when you go into the child's room, are the bedclothes all over the place? And that would indicate that the child has had a very, restless sleep.
Because normally what can happen is when a child does stop breathing, they often change position in the bed. So their bedclothes are all over the place. What symptoms as a result of it? What's the child's dental health like? So mouth breathing children are much more prone to dental cavities and dental issues because saliva is the natural antiplaque agent. And saliva is very important because it changes the microbiome in the mouth. But if the mouth is dry, that in turn, then you've got an increased streptococcus mutants. And of course, the bacteria in the mouth has changed. And of course, where are we swallowing? We're swallowing that into the stomach. So we can actually alter then the microbiome in the stomach. Does the child have croquetite? Mouth breathing children are more prone to croquetite because when the mouth is closed, the tongue is naturally resting up against the roof of the mouth. And the tongue is the organ that helps to shape the top jaw of the maxilla. So the top jaws developed around the pressures that are exerted by the tongue and the tongue is wide and U shaped. How is the child doing academically? You you talked about your own child there with sleep. And again, you know, many kids, they maybe do, have difficulty concentrating in school. I'm not saying that all children with ADHD is as a result of poor breathing. I'm not saying that, but I'm going to say this: a child with ADHD is poor sleep. Yeah, you've got to check. So I'm not saying that this is necessarily that the poor sleep is causing the ADHD, but definitely in our experience, children who are coming in and they have difficulty concentrating, they can't hold attention, their mood is impacted, their hyperactivity, one needs to look at sleep quality there. can be a red flag. So those are the things to look out for. It sounds daunting to imagine that.
The medical profession isn't looking at this. Most of the world isn't looking at this. Here I am one parent who may be worried about my child. I have a child who probably would be resistant to me suggesting that they breathe through their mouth. There's nothing supporting me. You know what I mean? Except I'm listening to this one podcast and thinking, my gosh, maybe this is a clue. I
Hunter:
I'm curious about your suggestion for where a parent might begin if they're seeing this A) in themselves or B) in their kids.
Patrick McKeown:
Yeah. Also pay attention to your child when they are distracted, you know, do they have the mouth open? And what could you do then to help address it? know, any of the books that I've written are very heavy in science and that's purposely. And the reason being because I often felt that breathing was so left to fear and so woo woo that nobody would take it seriously. Now the books that you have, including the sleep book, have everything included in children there. All of the exercises, the protocols, the formats. There's also a QR code and I can give you a link to it that you have downloaded guided audios that are all free. The complete breathing program for children is all free in videos. We do have a nasal breathing support called myotapes. So that's where, you know, that would be a commercial element to it. But other than that, we're all out there for free. Okay, the book is $20 or whatever the book is. And I would say to parents, look at the references. There's 700 references for that sleep book. I have to be very careful as well because I understand that there's so much information out there. if you go to a medical conference, say as I was at the weekend, it can be overwhelming that people are saying, do this, do that to the other. But listen, breathing is a very, simple function. And if breathing is off, it definitely does have an impact. And the thing is, there's nothing to sell here. And that's probably part of the reason that it doesn't get funding for research. are papers out there. Of course there are papers, but it's not like a product that has the promise of making a lot of money because then there's going to be an incentive then to pump a lot of resources into the research. But we're teaching somebody breathing in and out through the nose.
You know, you can decongest your nose in five minutes holding your breath. earlier on, think you mentioned. Yeah. How do we do that? us. So just for the listener, what I would say is if you're pregnant, don't do this exercise. But congratulations if you are. If you are prone to panic disorder or anxiety, you have to go very gentle with it. So I'm going to go very, very easy with it. So, Hunter, whenever you're ready, take a normal, a normal breath in through your nose. I shouldn't hear it and the normal breath out through your nose and then pinch your nose and hold your fingers. Sorry, pinch your nose like that. And then just gently nod your head up and down five or 10 head nods. One, let's do five, two, three, four and five. And let go there, Hunter. And let go. And we're going to wait about 10, 15 seconds and then try it for about eight head nods. And then we will increase it to 10, increase it to 15. Now, this has been known since 1923.
When you hold your breath, you increase carbon dioxide and it helps to constrict the blood vessels in the nose, which are causing inflammation. So that feeling, that nasal stuffingness, and it really, really works. And I've had millions of people use this. Like I've got one book that sold half a million copies that's in 16 languages called the Oxygen Advantage. So it's not that this is just new information, you know, it's already out there. Let's give it a go again. Take a normal breath in through your nose and out through your nose and hold your nose with your fingers just gently and now just gently nod your head up and down.
And keep gently nodding your head up and down and do it for about maybe 10 head nods or if you feel comfortable do it to 12 head nods or 15 even. So keep gently doing it. Now you are going to feel our hunger and it is normal that when you let go to breathe in through your nose and you're going to take a bigger breath in through your nose now, in through your nose. Yeah, I did. And that works pretty quickly, you know. Okay, I'm gonna. Do you feel any difference by the way?
Hunter:
I wasn't congested, but I feel a little lighter. Like, I don't know. feel, This is going to be a good test. If you put this out in YouTube. I'll try it when I'm congested.
Patrick McKeown:
Do, and also ask for the feedback of your listeners. Either it doesn't help or it helps or it's made things worse. So there's only three options there. You know, let your listeners vote on that. I'm curious. You have to do it about six times.
Hunter:
Okay. Good to know.
Patrick McKeown:
And keep 30 seconds or so in between each. So I didn't have to start because you went easy enough. And always, I'll just do it quickly again. Sorry, Hunter. Okay. a normal breath. I won't have you. You don't have to demonstrate it, but just for the listener. Okay. You take a normal breath in through the nose and then out through the nose and then you hold. So you hold the breath after a normal exhalation. And you just gently nod your head up and down and you do it. You know, could be 10 head nods or 12 or 15. It could be 20 head nods, depending on what you're able for. But when you let go, in through your nose and get your breathing under control at the end. And you do that six times. reps. Six reps. Okay. We're going to try this. This is fascinating. I mean, I feel like if we, you know, if parents could adopt some of this breathing to help us to regulate, if kids could adopt it, it could have some long-term effects.
Hunter:
Imagine that drives you pretty firmly to bring this work forward, the results that you see.
Patrick McKeown:
If somebody asked me what has it done for me, I would say, not just changed my life, it saved my life. And I don't mean that in a, you know, you have to bear this in mind. This is seen as the most left of field career occupation possible. That's my occupation. And yet I will say, God Almighty, there was something so innate in it that was unbelievable. And the biggest thing was being able to influence my blood circulation and oxygen delivery and to be able to get myself out of that stress mode that I was in all the time. You know, we even go to, we go to school and we spend 12 years in formal education learning how to think. And our minds are developed into sharp analytical tools that we can reason and decipher information and question and do all of that good stuff, which is great.
So we are trained how to think. But the problem is many of us cannot stop thinking. And we spend a lot of time overthinking. And we spend a lot of time stuck in our head. And a lot of time with mental noise and little worries and little anxieties. And I have six year old kids coming in. We have a clinic here. Six year old children coming in and their parents tell us that they are worrying. You know, of course they're exposed to the stress and all the stuff that's going on the world.
And if the parents are worried about it, of course the kids are going to pick up on it. So for any child, any teenager, and even any adult at that point, it's very important that we pay attention and check in on what's going on in the mind and pay attention to what sort of mental noise is going on. And then just ask ourselves the question, is it helpful? Is this helpful? Is it doing anything to solve anything or is it just an unthinking out of habit? And then we ask the question, well, if it's not helpful, what's it doing to me? Is it putting me into a bad mood? Is it making me sad? In other words, can I be sad if I have, or maybe rephrased that differently, can I be happy if I have sad thoughts? And a young child understands this. And then we need to take a little break from the mind. So we bring our attention onto the breath. And we might feel the airflow coming into the nose and the airflow leaving the nose. We might feel our body moving. So we bring our attention there and we hold our attention there. And then whenever the mind wanders, we bring our attention back. But then we really do want to tell the brain that we're safe. So it's not just about holding attention on the breath. It's by taking that stop breath in through the nose and really having that slow and relaxed and gentle breath out. And you can even stop a little bit more to increase blood flow to the brain. And breathe in and out through your nose as best as you can throughout the day during rest, even during light physical exercise and during sleep. And you've got a tremendous tool to self-regulate there for the rest of your life. And I will say that it is freely available. I don't know if I can mention our website, I've got a link on it. One website is called MyoTape- myotape.com. And there's a children's corner and that is all of the children's stuff.
We have Buteyko Clinic. So it's named after a Ukrainian doctor because this was a physician to develop breathing programs that I teach. So I actually went to Russia back in 2002 and I trained in dundrum. So that's hence I teach this program. So that's why it's kind of more medically tailored. But there's a sleep hub there. And we have guided audios for teenagers if they have difficulty falling asleep, if they're waking up at three o'clock in the morning, for women going through menopause for any person with insomnia. But we also have the complete breathing program for children that's free. So about five or six years ago, my little daughter, she was nine years of age at the time. And I brought her through all of the breathing practices. So I'm teaching her and then any kid can simply just sit down with her parents and just watch six small little videos. And that's the entire program. And there's nothing to sell. We're not trying to sell anything from it. I love it.
Hunter:
Patrick, this has been so helpful. I'm excited to share this episode with everyone that I know now. So I'm so glad we got to have this opportunity to talk. think that I just want to thank you for coming on and for sharing your experience and for having the courage to do something so strange and radical with your life and now share it with all of us. So I really appreciate you being here and what you're doing.
Patrick McKeown:
Delighted to be. Thanks very much, Hunter.
Hunter (53:07)
Thank you for listening. This was such an interesting episode. I've been working on my breathing like this and it's really, really, really helping. So yes, thank you so much.
Hey, before we go, I wanna give a quick shout out to JackieQuid, who left a five star review on Apple podcasts for the Mindful Mama podcast. They said, “It's helpful and empowering. The podcast is great for tips and tricks to be a great parent and build your child for success without losing your mind. Parenting isn't always a cookie cutter experience like some people may make it seem. I really appreciate the advice and reminder that you are trying to give yourself grace.” Thank you so much, Jackie. Those ratings and reviews, they really, really help the podcast get to more people. And yeah, we produce this podcast ourselves, so all the help we can get with you sharing it makes a big, difference. So thank you if you're sharing it or leaving a rating and review. I really appreciate it enormously.
I hope this episode helps you bring some more peace and joy and all that into your life. It is so hard to be human being on this earth and every little bit helps, right? So yeah, I hope this helped you. I'm wishing you a great week, my friend. Thank you so much for listening. Namaste.
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