Today’s guest is Patrick McKeown, a leading authority on nasal breathing and the author of The Oxygen Advantage, a best-selling book that contains simple and effective techniques to help improve health and optimize athletic performance. Patrick has carried out extensive research into the biochemistry and biomechanics of breathing and he is the creator of the SportsMask, which is designed to boost sports performance, and Myotape, which aims to help people switch from mouth to nasal breathing. Through his Oxygen Advantage Program, Patrick provides functional breathing training intended to improve oxygen delivery, reduce breathlessness, and alleviate the symptoms of a wide range of health conditions such as asthma, anxiety, sleep apnea, and nasal congestion. As a former chronic mouth breather, he is well aware of the negative impact that mouth breathing can have on our health and the role it plays in contributing to poor quality sleep, fatigue, lack of concentration, and disproportionate breathlessness during exercise. He believes that breathing lightly and softly through the nose, using the diaphragm rather than the upper chest, calms the mind and improves the biochemistry of the body.

During our discussion, Patrick disputes the widely-held belief that it’s beneficial to take big breaths and counters the assumption that the more air we breathe, the more oxygen gets delivered to the organs and tissues. In fact, he points out that the harder and faster we breathe, the more the blood vessels constrict, causing oxygen delivery to be reduced. He explains that dysfunctional breathing patterns can affect our performance during physical exercise and lead to disproportionate breathlessness, or even exercise-induced asthma. For these reasons, Patrick advises all recreational athletes to switch to nasal breathing in order to increase their fitness levels, delay fatigue, aid recovery, and prevent the build-up of lactic acid. 

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