To Breathe or not to Breathe?
by Tanya Zilberter, PhD

Do we need to control our breathing?

"...look, everybody breathes in pure oxygen,

but tries to breath out all kinds of filth!"

A. Raikin

Necessary as air means most necessary. Our breathing process is unique in many ways. Everyone knows how long a man can live without food, water and air. Without air -- almost no time. A few minutes, and brain cortex dies. Also unique is the availability of air: so far no one came up with a way to sell it. Finally, unique is the process's character which is almost automatic. Almost. That's the topic for today.

A man is sitting in a closed room and is doing something. The window is closed, the air conditioner is off. Oxygen is consumed, carbon dioxide is exhaled, thus increasing the CO2 concentration in the room. What happens?

None can say for sure! In a short period of time a number of following might change:

  • Breathing depth
  • Breathing frequency
  • Heart's contraction strength
  • Pulse
  • Blood flow velocity
  • Blood vessel resistance
  • Oxygen availability to tissues (how easily it is transferred from hemoglobin into tissues)

    • In a longer period of time, something else will change:

  • Lungs' vital capacity (how much air is taken in for the deepest breath)
  • Amount of hemoglobin
  • Amount of erythrocytes (red blood cells carrying oxygen)
  • Eritropeses (production of erythrocytes in bone marrow)

    • Your breathing function is affected by the combination of all these parameters which in turn are related to each other, how -- it's impossible to predict. Moreover, each time, random combination might "fall out." So when something changes in the oxygen availability to tissues or you change your breathing, your body brilliantly evades to compensate for those changes.

    So do we need to control our breathing?

    Seems that a healthy animal or a child has no need to. Some breathing techniques manuals instruct to uncover a baby and see how rhythmically it's stomach rises and falls. The chest barely moves. That type of breathing is called diaphragmal, because the diaphragm, a muscle between the chest and stomach is the one that makes the lungs expand and contract. That type of breathing is meant for quiet body state.

    When an awakened baby cries, it is visible that the chest starts working to take in as much air as possible. It is an emergency breathing. It is meant for stress and hard physical efforts. In rest, the body functions' control is overrun by parasympathetic autonomous nervous system. In emergency cases -- it is taken over by a competitive nervous system, the sympathetic one. It increases body's work in order to escape a predator, chase a prey, or endure fear or rage. For example, the heart rate is increased, blood vessels contract to avoid losing too much blood in case of a wound, and so on. Functions that are not immediately needed, like intestinal movement, are slowed down.

    Several US universities have developed the test predicting the development of premature babies. If the control of parasympathetic system is dominating, the prognosis is definitely better: the possibility of cerebral palsy, mental retardation and other typical pathologies of premature babies, is much less. Domination of the sympathetic nervous system, in babies as well as in adults, on the other hand provides for not so good a prediction. Of course, the body is more comfortable under the parasympathetic control, and the latter is dominant until something out of the ordinary happens.

    Nevertheless, like in many other cases, we are deviating from the natural order of things. In this case, it is an abuse of the sympathetic system's services. Hence are the tendencies to high blood pressure, increased pulse, etc. Hence is the emergency type of breathing when it is not needed.

    Try breathing as deep and as fast as you can. Soon, you will get dizzy and might even get a headache. Asthma victims might get an asthma attack. People with heart problems might get an anginaattack. It looks as though our body's in trouble and the weakest points fail first, which is natural.

    There is a disease, panic attacks, a major symptom of which is a strong, uncontrollable fear and frantic hysterical breathing. Do you know how that panic attack is fought? It's hard to believe, but the victim is made to breathe into a paper bag (brown paper bag #4). What happens was recorded by placing a gas sensor inside the bag. After it is breathed in for a short time, the concentration of carbon dioxide inside increases. Then the attack stops. Turns out, not only the lack of oxygen but also the lack of carbon dioxide is harmful to the body. In the "Medline" there are many hundreds of clinical and experimental evidences on the harm of lack of carbon dioxide (hypocapnia), along with good effects of moderate hypercapnia.

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