“He gave but one glance to the right to the left, “now boys” he said, and at the words we swam, sank buried ourselves in the rich, brood, gentle strains of the overture to Faust (French Opera).”
From the short story the breath of Life by Daniel Corkery.
Maybe you recall this short story from “Exploring English” book you may have studied at school or for your Intercert. But the question remains where is the breath of life to be found.
Why do we get sicker and sicker the older we get? What propels stress and stress-related malfunctions of the body?
The subject of how we breathe is covered in the book Breath: the New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor. As the title suggests it seems that man was more able to breathe efficiently in the past than today. In fact, Nestor says 4 billion years ago our evolution chain organisms had to somehow survive, and the only gas available was carbon dioxide. These tiny organisms were able to take in this gas and use it as fuel and spit out what was left which was oxygen. Some billions of years later there was enough oxygen available in the atmosphere and some ancestors emerged to make use of it.
Trees have been around for a long time they take in carbon dioxide and spit out oxygen. So it is doable. These organisms have advanced to become plants, trees, birds, bees, fish and mammals including humans. Mammals grew noses to warm and purify the air, throats to guide the air into the lungs, and a network of sacs that would remove oxygen and transfer it to our blood. The cells took the oxygen from our blood and returned carbon dioxide, back through the veins through the lungs into the atmosphere. In this process of breathing, early man had an efficient sinus and respiratory system until man’s brain started to grow bigger and the respiratory system had less space in the head. This meant that man needed to breathe faster and more often to get enough oxygen into the body. It is claimed we have 100 times more carbon dioxide in our bodies than oxygen.
It is claimed that today humans can increase this toxic gas carbon dioxide in our bodies and sharpen our minds, burn fat and heal.
The usual advice is to breathe deep and get all that carbon dioxide out of your systems. However, the opposite seems to be the case. The solution is not to breathe heavily or deeply or quickly.
So this is quite a concept, the idea that carbon dioxide may be beneficial to the body’s health and internal health and balance. The book is called Breath: the New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor.
Read it and decide for yourself. I will write some more on this next week as I believe there is lot of truth here. And of course, get yourself adjusted. You have a nervous system that requires constant maintenance to fulfil its primary goal your health and well-being.
Yours in health
John Keane
Spinologist
PS: the make up of Carbon Dioxide: one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms.
The make up of Oxygen: two oxygen atoms joined together.
So in carbon dioxide, there is oxygen
PPS: Nestor says in the book, “the best way to prevent many chronic health problems, improve athletic performance and extend longevity was to focus on how we breathed, specifically to balance oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in the body. To do this we need to learn how to inhale and exhale slowly.”