Transcript

[Will John] (0:00 - 1:05)
Today's guest is Anders Olsson. He is one of the world's leading experts on breath. He is the founder of Conscious Breathing, an organization and institute geared at researching and understanding the effects of breath and breath work on your mood, your strength, your health, and so much more.

I've had the opportunity to go to his institute and train with him. Many of you guys will remember the podcast we did with James Nestor. Both Anders and James are great friends, and this podcast is full of action steps you can take right now that are simple, but will give you an incredible return simply by changing the way that you breathe.

Enjoy the podcast. Hi, people. Welcome back to another interesting podcast.

This time, I've got an amazing guest, one who I've met. It's been how long, Anders? When did we...

I think it was two years, yeah. One and a half? Okay.

All right. Yeah. So normally, I wouldn't have met the guest beforehand or got the chance to work out in the facility and do all this stuff.

But today's guest is Anders Olsson. Anders, thanks for being here. How's it going?

[Anders Olsson] (1:07 - 1:09)
It's all good. Thank you for having me.

[Will John] (1:09 - 1:46)
Okay. Yes, of course. So we've got a lot to get into.

Obviously, my sport being soccer slash football, and you doing what you do, there was a massive overlay in trying to figure out what, let's say breathwork, a conscious breathing can do to enhance not just that, but my overall life. So I want to give the guys a good basis, a good foundation for what you do, who you are, why you're an authority in this field. And then we'll get into some questions and some applications of what you know.

[Anders Olsson] (1:46 - 4:02)
Yeah. I started working with breathing 14 years ago and I came across it when I read a book, How to Swap Asthma for Life. And I didn't have any problems with asthma, but I was really curious because this book was mainly structured around breathing, improve your breathing, and get rid of your asthma.

And that immediately got me hooked because I noticed on myself, wow, finally, I'm able to basically as well, from one breath to the next, get out of my racing mind and calm down. And that was a huge thing for me. Looking back, I realized I've been searching for that more or less my whole life.

And when I get hooked on something, I really go deep and I felt that this is something that I want to spread to others. This is way too good to keep to myself. So I founded my own concept, The Conscious Breathing Practices, which is basically an idea of how to understand where your nervous system is.

We have the gas pedal and the brake. And by turning into your breath, checking in on your breath, you would be able to find out whether you're pushing the gas or whether you are recovering. And then you can also use your breath to shift between the gas and the brake.

So the inhale, if I'm exaggerating, that is connected to the gas pedal. And the exhale, if I'm also exaggerating, that is connected to the brake, the recovery. And a lot of people seem to be a little too much in the activation, the fight flight, and find it hard to relax and recover.

So that is basically the foundation of conscious breathing and the fact that we take around 1000 breaths an hour. So if you want to use the turbo when you really need it, when you want it, and be able to calm down when you are in a position to do so, or when the task at hand can be done when you're in relaxation mode.

[Will John] (4:03 - 4:55)
I find this fascinating. Obviously, this is a topic that I've been interested in for quite some time, just in general. But let's talk about how you can actually manipulate both of those.

Both that relaxation and the gas pedal to get something out of it for what you need. Because if I'm too excited and I need to calm down, it would be very useful for me to obviously be able to have some sort of technique, tactic, something that could help me possibly calm down. And if I know that I'm getting ready to...

That I need to be amped up, then it's very possible that that would be useful as well. So could you explain how people are or how you found a way to possibly manipulate the breath or what exactly are you doing to help me calm down or help me get amped up?

[Anders Olsson] (4:55 - 6:02)
So most people can relate to the fact when we're excited, we may breathe fast, high up in our chest, we may breathe through the mouth, we may hold our breath. So those are activation breaths. And if you want to calm down, you just do the opposite.

And since our nervous system, the number one task of our nervous system is to keep us alive, we then have a tendency to go more into activation and fight-flight. So it seems like most people have a challenge to actually calm down and relax. And especially if you're sports people, that's crucial.

A lot of people that are into sports, they wouldn't miss a single training, a single workout. They are way too focused on that. But the problem for a lot of sports people could be the relaxation part, the ability to calm down.

So the breath could be a huge tool for you in between training and competition. Could you break down kind of what it looks like?

[Will John] (6:02 - 6:16)
Just as a form of... I mean, because obviously I've been to and we had quite the discussion on this and I have some of your stuff right here from that. I don't remember what the exercise...

[Anders Olsson] (6:17 - 6:20)
You mean the Relaxator or... 

[Will John] (6:20 - 6:31)
The Relaxator. There we go. This thing, putting this on and trying to... It's unique.

I want to explain what it does and I'll let you do it. You can do it better than I can, obviously.

[Anders Olsson] (6:31 - 9:02)
Sure. Yeah. This gives you a resistance on the outbreath.

You can set it from one to five and you inhale through the nose and out through the Relaxator. So what it does then is that it helps you to slow down your breathing. It activates your diaphragm.

That is your most important breathing muscle. If you think that at rest, you're taking about thousand breaths an hour, when you're doing physical activity, you may take two or three or four times as many. So the more you breathe, the more efficient you want it to be.

Otherwise it will use up too much of your resources. So there will be less oxygen available for your muscles or for your nervous system. So at the end of a football game, for example, you may make that mistake that make you lose the game, for example.

So it helps activate the diaphragm, which is about 70 to 80% of the total muscle work in moving the air in and out of the lungs should be performed by the diaphragm. So that's our most important breathing muscle. And together with the heart, those are the only two muscles that never rest.

They are constantly active. The heart's to pump blood and the diaphragm to bring in air. And the Relaxator helps you activate the diaphragm.

And also it increases the pressure in your lungs. So it opens up your airways. It increases the muscle tonus in your throat, which is for a lot of people, that's a bottleneck, not only for asthmatics, but you have this exercise-induced, what is it called?

ALO. The airways collapse when you exert yourself. So the Relaxator helps you to strengthen this area so that the air can pass easily.

And it also helps you to train to breathe rhythmically. A lot of us, when we focus on something, we freeze. We stop breathing.

That's why we need breaks all the time, because our brain doesn't like that because our brain is the major oxygen consumer. And when we stop breathing, obviously we will deprive our brain of oxygen. So if you're able to maintain a rhythmic breathing, giving a steady flow of oxygen to the brain, you will be able to concentrate for longer.

So there are a lot of benefits. Yeah.

[Will John] (9:03 - 10:35)
I mean, there's tons, right? And obviously being able to concentrate for longer and do all this stuff, this has more applications than just sport, right? I mean, this is clearly going to benefit you in every area of your life.

Can you touch on something that I found incredibly interesting, especially when I came across your name for the very first time, which was in the book Breathe. Is it Breathe? I always get it wrong.

Breath or Breathe? Breath. Yeah.

Is it Breath? God dang it. See, there you go.

I always get it wrong. But that was where I first came across you. And that's James Nester's book.

And then of course, I got to know him. And he's like, you gotta go. He's like, you're in Sweden?

You gotta go to Anders. Go. And that was this whole thing.

But what was so interesting to me was the mouth breathing aspect, and the differences in mouth breathing and nasal breathing, and the massive differences in the efficiency that comes through consistent nasal breathing, or the horrible effects that possibly come from consistent mouth breathing. Yeah. So I'm hoping you can maybe just explain that for people, because that's one of those things that most players, most athletes have either never heard any information on it.

Or two, if they have heard some information, it's maybe like, it doesn't matter. Just get the air in, get it out, whatever. When you breathe, you breathe.

Just run, right? 

[Anders Olsson] (10:35 - 13:14)
Yeah, exactly. Or oxygen is what we want. And with the mouth is bigger, so you can take in more oxygen. But it's like saying, oh, I have my car here.

Let's give it more fuel and it will go better. No, it won't. It needs the right amount of fuel.

And the noses are fine-tuned instruments to give us the right amount of oxygen and actually keep the balance between oxygen and carbon dioxide. And that's one of the key things I talk about. When we have a tendency to breathe a little bit too fast, a little bit too shallow, like many people do, including people when doing physical activity, we upset the oxygen carbon dioxide balance where we lowered the carbon dioxide pressure in our body.

And that closes up our body because carbon dioxide has a widening, relaxing effect on the airways, a widening and relaxing effect on the blood vessels. So the airways will open up when you slow down your breathing. The blood vessels will open up when you slow down your breathing and then maintain more of the carbon dioxide produced in your body.

So anyway, the study that James talked about in his book that we did at Stanford, we blocked our nose for 10 days so we could only breathe through our mouth 10 days and 10 nights. And it was really, I shouldn't say horrible, but I would prefer not to do it again. I noticed I was like I did a time journey.

I went back to my own life where I was more stressed out. I started to, we measured tons of things, including adrenaline. So my adrenaline went up by threefold, I think.

And my sleep got really, really bad. I woke up. I went from no snoring at all to about three hours per night.

We filmed ourselves when we slept. We recorded our sound and I was dry like a desert in my mouth. And over these 10 days, my sugar cravings increased a lot from not at all to being to seven to eight from a scale from one to 10.

So the last four days I had pizza and beer and ice cream and chocolate and I'm kind of a healthy, so I don't eat much of that. So it was really a huge difference. I guess my body needed to compensate because the lack of sleep, the poor sleep, the lack of deep sleep.

It was really an interesting experience.

[Will John] (13:16 - 14:32)
Wow. Yeah, that's it. I mean, it's an incredible study and something to because I think before having heard that at all, I don't think I was a consistent mouth breather.

But I definitely would take some time, I would catch myself on the field, right? Yeah. You catch yourself.

And I remember having a discussion with you about the switch. And when you finally just make this switch to do it, it feels awkward at some times, especially when you're really pushing. And I remember some of the discussions that we had with it is not to get so obsessed with it that you never take that breath out of your mouth, maybe that it happens.

But it's the fact that you consistently breathe through your nose is that you're getting the benefit. What I find crazy, though, in some of the studies that have been listed and I've seen all over is they did a study with the, I think it was cyclists, right? That had the ability to, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, maybe you know the study, but something along the lines where with nasal breathing, they were like, what is it?

30 times more efficient? I don't know. 10 times, 20 times?

I can't remember necessarily, but incredibly more efficient just with nasal breathing. What was that?

[Anders Olsson] (14:32 - 17:55)
A couple of studies myself with 10 people each time. And I mean, if we just cover the basis, what the nose does, it is that it warms the air, humidifies it and cleans a lot of the bacteria and viruses and other particles in the air.

And if we consider the fact what researchers tell us we inhale about 100 billion particles a single day. And imagine taking that in through the nose where most of it is trapped in the nose or taking it in via the mouth. So mouth breathing means that the air presented to the airways and lungs, it's cold and dry and full of these particles.

So they get irritated, they get inflamed. And when that happens, swelling occurs. So that means we get narrow airways.

And when we have narrow airways, adrenaline will rise. There was a study showing that when they lowered the carbon dioxide, which we do when we start to breathe faster, because the narrow airways means that we need to compensate. So we push the gas pedal and increase our breathing rate.

And in that study, they showed a 360% increase in adrenaline. Because if you are allergic to nuts, for example, and you eat it by mistake, you get an anaphylactic shock. And if you come to the hospital, you will get an adrenaline shock, right?

Because adrenaline has the ability to open up your airways. So when they are narrow, you increase the stress hormones, also the same with cortisol. And those are the main ingredients in asthma medication.

Asthma means we have narrow airways. So they contain either adrenaline or cortisol. The adrenaline increases the airways and the cortisol reduces the inflammations that occurs in the throat with mouth breathing.

So that way to help the airways keep open by reducing the inflammations. But the thing is, there is a risk then that we get too excited, right? We make mistakes because we are too stressed.

We are too much in fight flight. We should, of course, be alert and focused on concentrating when we're doing our activity. But it seems like a lot of us, we go over that threshold.

And then when we are too stressed, we get tense and then our muscle doesn't work too well. So we use up way too much energy. So the studies I have done in one of them was really interesting.

We were cycling or the participants were cycling and we were measuring their pulse and their lactic acid levels. And one of the results was a guy who's super fit. He used to have the Swedish record in triathlon Ironman distance.

It was eight hours, 42 minutes, I think, or 24 minutes, but a lot of exertion. And his pulse, when we compared the same bat level on the bike, his pulse with mouth breathing was 155 and with nasal breathing only 139. And for such a fit guy, that's a huge difference.

[Will John] (17:55 - 18:52)
Right. Massive. Yeah, especially standing out over a long period of time.

Yeah. And I want to touch on something that is... Because you talked about it, what happened to you when you did the mouth breathing test.

But sleep, which is a massive factor in your ability to recover well after any sort of extraneous activity. After a game, the guys that sleep well will recover faster. It's clear, right?

The guys that go out and do whatever and they don't... It takes them longer to get back to a level of balance. So you have a product also, as well, that is kind of...

Oh, you have it right there. Yeah, yeah. It's the sleep thing.

Yeah. Okay. Can you explain what happens to people during sleep and why it's important for this to be happening?

Because like, right, we sleep for seven, eight hours, most of us. And what's the idea behind this?

[Anders Olsson] (18:53 - 21:33)
Well, as you say, if you're able to recover well, you have a huge advantage. We all know when we have had a poor night's sleep, we are not doing our best the next day. So it's crucial.

And it's not only about the hours we sleep. It's also about the quality. Obviously, we need the deep sleep, because for one thing, the nervous system is cleaned when we sleep.

So it can't... When we're busy during the day, it has to check for all the stimuli that comes our way and is fully busy. So it can't clean itself at daytime.

And that happens during night. And specifically, the deeper our sleep is, as well as learning. If we want to learn a new thing, if I question you on something that you heard today, if I question you that in the evening, or I do it the next morning, you will reply, your results will be better the next day.

Because when you've had a night's sleep, and specifically the quality sleep, your brain will be able to organize the information and put it in boxes and get the bigger picture. And that's the foundation for learning. So when we do nasal breathing, at rest, we put our body more in a state of rest and recovery and safe and secure, all of that healing and activating the immune system, all of that, that we're supposed to do when we sleep.

And when we have our mouth open at rest, it automatically means that we are hyperventilating, a low grade form of hyperventilating, which means that we put our body in slightly more in the direction of fight flight, which is obviously not very smart, very good when we want to recover. So when you tape your mouth at night with this sleep tape product, then you ensure that you only do nasal breathing. In my view, I know I'm biased, but this is the best biohack ever invented.

It's so easy. It could be a mental block for people. No, no, I can't do that.

That's ridiculous, or I won't survive this or whatever. Once you get over that, maybe if you're not confident enough to try at night, you can try for a few evenings to get used to the sensation. And when you're ready, you apply it at nighttime.

And when you have done it the first time and survived, then it takes three seconds. It's a no brainer.

[Will John] (21:35 - 22:48)
It's so true. And what's funny is that I know that you're not talking nonsense, because I've done that.

I've done it. And me being an athlete and a lifelong athlete, I'm no stranger to doing whatever it takes to try and not necessarily get an edge, but to recover, to learn how to be better, to all these things. So when someone says, yeah, put this tape on before you sleep, I'm just like, alright.

For me, it's no problem. What I would call the sleep when sleeping with sleep tape is a hyper-peaceful. Something changes.

And it's obviously very hard for me. We know what it's like to have a good night's sleep. But I don't know how to convey perfectly the sensation of having a good night's sleep, but knowing that all of it was perfect quality.

That all of it was good. That I wake up knowing that everything was calm and peaceful throughout the night. You have this sensation when you do that and when you're able to just breathe through your nose.

And so yeah, I can definitely vouch for the sleep tape there. Awesome.

[Anders Olsson] (22:48 - 24:08)
And you know, a lot of you read in the paper, yeah, sorry, I can't compete today. I woke up with a cold. And what does that say?

You go to bed, you're well, you're healthy, and then you wake up in the morning and you have a cold. Something must have happened during the night, right? And that's something could definitely be attributed in a lot of cases, I think, to the mouth breathing, which then means that you're laying there for six, seven, eight hours, maybe taking in this cold and dry air, irritating your airways.

And then you wake up like that. So it's a huge thing, not only to recover, but also to make sure that you don't get sick. I don't know how many people I work with that do a lot of training and say that, hey, when I'm taping my mouth at night and when I do nasal breathing during physical activity, I don't get sick anymore, or it has reduced significantly.

And then they say, compared to all my training mates, they are not maybe sick all the time, but it is actually quite common for people that exercise a lot to be sick now and then.

[Will John] (24:09 - 26:10)
Right. Yeah, yeah. There's a definite switch.

And I remember also having a discussion with you about what my teammates thought of this. And it's really interesting. I'm seeing an increasingly widening openness to the topic, right?

Yeah. Which is something that you would have imagined wouldn't take so long to get into the cultural zeitgeist for athletes to want to be about this. But we see similarities across the fact that the majority of clubs that I've been at, only maybe two had mental coaches or support.

Somebody to mind what's happening with players' brains and minds and how they're thinking. And so in the same sense, I remember having a discussion about the fact that breath coaches or someone who is actually interested in this, because there's so few things in sports where you can actually make massive gains. We feel like we've got it with running, with workouts and all the stuff we feel there.

Where are these places where we're still going to take giant strides? Yeah. This is definitely one of them.

And I can attest to what's going on and what it's done for me, just having this mentality around conscious breath work and working with my breath. And so with that in mind, I wanted to touch on... And I know you have a unique view or let's just say a more in-depth view of Wim Hof, who's become incredibly popular.

Yeah. And the Wim Hof method, necessarily the practice. Could you explain what it is that you felt...

I know it was released or sorry, it was related to adrenaline as well. Maybe what you thought possibly could be happening when you do the Wim Hof. Could you explain maybe what it is for people who don't know and then what you feel is going on?

[Anders Olsson] (26:11 - 30:26)
Yes. So Wim Hof breathing as it's popularly called, which comes from the yoga tradition, the Tamil tradition, I think from the Tibetans. And that is to do forceful breathing and thereby you change the state in your body.

You affect your nervous system in a big way. So what you do is that you take in a lot of oxygen, which you actually don't need. Because if you think about it, if someone is unconscious and you're giving mouth-to-mouth breathing to that person, the reason why mouth-to-mouth breathing works is because you are exhaling a lot of oxygen.

So if you inhale the oxygen you inhale at rest, you will exhale 75% of that oxygen. So you're only using a very small amount to start with. So then we may think that breathing faster, breathing bigger will oxygenate our body better, but it's actually the opposite.

So the Wim Hof breathing means you take in a lot of oxygen when you do this over breathing, oxygen that you don't need, and then you will exhale a lot of carbon dioxide, which then constricts the airways, constricts the blood vessels. So that of course challenges your body, just like going out running or biking or whatever, we challenge our body. So this is a huge challenge for our body and then it needs to adapt.

So the idea is that with the Wim Hof breathing, you will strengthen your body, you will be stronger. My view is that you become stronger because automatically when you lower the carbon dioxide, when you do this forceful over breathing, then you will lower carbon dioxide, then you will automatically increase the adrenaline. So you reaching that state of feeling stronger and better via fight flight, which in my view, it may not be necessary because we have enough resources as we have most of us, the fight flight resources, because we are more or less born in fight flight.

That is what has mainly kept us alive during evolution. It has been a lot more important to be able to run away from a tiger than to admire the sunset or whatever. So it's easy for us to go into fight flight.

We don't necessarily need to train that more and more and more. So the strength you feel after doing this heavy breathing may not be so beneficial in the long run. I know the Wim Hof community would obviously not agree with me.

I have written an article on the subject, comparing Wim Hof with conscious breathing. And what I find over and over and over again for people who apply the nasal breathing, the rhythmic breathing, even in the sports field, they say that they have more endurance. That is a continuously, the feedback you get more endurance, they recover faster, they sweat less, they get less sore muscles, they get less sick and they have lower pulse.

And that means you achieve these things without engaging in the forceful breath work. I can see it has a place and there are millions of views on Wim Hof's method and his videos and tens of thousands of comments saying that this is fantastic, it is great. I'm just saying that I think there is another level, a next level, the ability to reach your goal where you want without running on your turbo all the time, because I think that is a more short term focus that may get you where you want in the short term, but in the long run, it may get you to become more injured or getting sick more, etc.

[Will John] (30:26 - 31:04)
Can you then explain as best you can and as literal as you can then that opposite then or this next level because you mentioned rhythmic breathing, the conscious breathing, but what is the practice exactly then? For somebody and for people that are going to be listening to this, they will have heard of the Wim Hof method. And they will say, all right, well, you say there's something different.

What is that specifically as a practice? Because the Wim Hof method has a very rigid rule set to it. Do this, do this, do this, do this, do this.

Conscious breathing then and rhythmic breathing is what exactly?

[Anders Olsson] (31:04 - 34:00)
Yes. The mouth breathing, the fast breathing, the shallow breathing, the big breathing, that is activation. And conscious breathing is then the understanding that that is activation and the calming the nervous system is nasal breathing, rhythmic breathing, low and slow, meaning low using diaphragm and slowing down your breathing.

And this is what happens when you use the mouth. You have to compensate for the poor efficiency by like an analogy with a car, you have to push harder on the brake. You have to breathe faster.

So conscious breathing is to calm your nervous system is more efficient. So if you're on the football field, for example, there are a lot of times during a 90 minute game where you don't go as fast as you can, meaning that in maybe 90% of the time you would be able to turn to your breath, close your mouth, breathe through your nose. And there is this amazing study saying that they took a bunch of people and had them bike and one group, they had the tongue resting in the roof of the mouth and the other group, they did not.

And there was a huge difference. The tongue resting in the roof of the mouth, which means that you can't do that if you are mouth breathing, you need to do nasal breathing. They were the muscles that did this simple leg exercise, which is a common exercise to see how strong your muscles are, how fast they are.

So about 25% faster and about 30% stronger the muscles were by just keeping the mouth in the roof, sorry, the tongue in the roof of the mouth, which is quite amazing. So that is what you can do in order to calm down. You do a sprint, you chase the ball, but then after that sprint, you're probably able to calm down, closing your mouth, put it, let it, your tongue rest in the roof of the mouth.

You would be able to recover much faster so that you are ready sooner to go to chase that ball again or whatever, or you, since it's more efficient, you will have more oxygen for your brain and for your muscles because our breathing is the number one function. And if that takes up a lot of resources, which it does when we breathe fast and big breaths, a lot of resources will go to our breath, meaning that there will be less resources to our nervous system and to our muscles. So when you have an efficient breathing, there will be ample resources to chase the ball again.

[Will John] (34:02 - 34:27)
And that's fascinating. And one of the things that I remember us having a discussion on was also the, and I think you've touched on it just a little bit earlier, but the obvious conventional wisdom is with an obsession on oxygen, whereas you understand that carbon dioxide is where we need to be, let's just say, also focused on.

[Anders Olsson] (34:27 - 36:10)
Carbon dioxide paves the way for oxygen. That's how I would put it. Oxygen is the reason why we die if we stop breathing.

We are so dependent on oxygen. And the reason why we need oxygen so much is because it helps us to produce energy efficiently. So if you produce energy without oxygen, that is called anaerobic, without oxygen.

And if you produce with oxygen, that is called an aerobic energy production. So without oxygen, you're only able to extract about 6% of the available energy in the food we eat. But with oxygen, you can extract up to a hundred percent, let's say 16 times more.

And obviously that's a huge difference. And that's the reason why we die if we stop breathing. So that's why probably we think oxygen is what we need of it.

It's okay to just take in more, but it doesn't work like that. Just like our car doesn't work better because we give it more fuel. It has to have the right amount of fuel.

And it's actually oxygen that makes us take the next breath. Sorry, it is carbon dioxide that makes us take the next breath. It is not the lack of oxygen in our body.

It's the buildup of carbon dioxide. When we inhale, we take in oxygen. Oxygen and the nutrients, they are converted into energy and carbon dioxide.

And the buildup of carbon dioxide in our body, that is what controls our breathing. That is what makes us take the next breath. So we exhale the excess carbon dioxide.

So conscious breathing, to a large extent, is about helping us to tolerate higher levels of carbon dioxide.

[Will John] (36:11 - 37:09)
Okay. And that's exactly where I wanted to go with, this ability to tolerate higher levels of carbon dioxide. I think we spoke a bit about it, but I think we were referring to an exercise or a way to increase this tolerance was by, and obviously within reason, but and correct me if I'm wrong, if I'm remembering this wrong, it was exhaling and your ability to then let's say, do something on either lower breaths, or if it was like you were to exhale and do whatever it is that you needed to do, rather than taking a huge breath and holding it in and then trying to do, let's say, pushups. Am I remembering this correctly or wrong?

Are you working with carbon dioxide when you exhale it all and then try and do work or run or...

[Anders Olsson] (37:09 - 40:49)
The key is in order to help us build more ability to keep more carbon dioxide, to tolerate higher levels of carbon dioxide, you have to take it in steps and realize, even though you've been training for 10 or 20 years, you're a beginner when it comes to this. And actually it could be a lot harder for athletes because they may not have that high carbon dioxide tolerance. A lot of athletes, I've been jogging now for 15 years doing only nasal breathing and very rare that I come across a jogger that is breathing calm.

They look more like the eyes are about to pop out and the mouth is wide open. So what you do then, you may, for some they say, no, I can't do that. It's impossible.

I have a deviated septum. I have a very narrow nose. But if you think about the concept that if you don't use it, you lose it.

If you do a lot of mouth breathing, your nose will start to malfunction. But the good thing is that your body can adapt if you start to, if you change. So if you start doing nasal breathing more and more and more, first, you can do it outside of the training arena.

So using the Relaxator example, you slow down your breathing, thereby helping you to tolerate higher levels of carbon dioxide. So it is mainly in our outbreath. If we prolonging that a little bit, that is how the key to slow down our breathing and learn to tolerate higher levels of CO2.

But a lot of people that are into sports, they are just like me, way too competitive. So they're thinking, like when I started with breathing, okay, I like this. I've got to have the world's best breathing in the shortest period of time.

And then I gave it all I have. But the thing is that performance and calming down your breathing doesn't usually go hand in hand because the key is relaxation. And that is what you find in the outbreath.

If this is activation, this is relaxation. So by prolonging, you exhale slightly. And if you're too competitive, you will then start to prolong it a lot, but then you will have to pay the price.

Afterwards, you may find yourself sighing or yawning or just taking big breaths or realizing you're talking fast. All of these things is your body trying to get rid of the excess carbon dioxide you have built up too fast. Thinking of going to the gym, you never have set your foot there before.

You don't start with a hundred pushups. You may start with one and then you increase to two and three and four. So take it step by step.

Increasing your tolerance for CO2, you could start outside of the training arena. And then you can, by using a Relaxator, taping your mouth at night and just closing the mouth at daytime, starting to pay attention to your breathing, become aware of it. And then you can slowly do it when you exercise.

For example, if you're out jogging, you can think, okay, I do to the next three there or the next hundred meters. And then you increase it like intervals. And before you know it, your nose starts to free up, starts to feel like you can get more air in actually.

[Will John] (40:49 - 41:20)
What about these, and I'll put in quotation marks, high altitude masks? Some of these things, they're called or they'd like to call themselves high altitude masks and maybe even oxygen resistance training or however they want to be marketed. There was a time maybe even in 2016, 17, where they were massively popular.

And I think they are still quite popular. What have you found? What do you think about these?

What's the idea behind that?

[Anders Olsson] (41:21 - 43:51)
Yeah, I don't come across them that much these days. But yeah, they were really popular. And it's basically a turbo way to help you tolerate higher levels of carbon dioxide.

But at the same time, it's not that comfortable because you increase the carbon dioxide level quite fast. And I think it's more like going from the one push up to 50, the leap is just too big. And then you feel like you're failing and then you will stop doing it.

Because a lot of people can tolerate pain in their muscles, but very few people can tolerate when the carbon dioxide levels goes too fast because that is when we feel breathless. Then is when we start to panic. That is when we think, I'm not going to survive this because when our breath is threatened, our whole life is threatened.

If a muscle hurts, we know that, wow, it's just lactic acid. It will pass or I use my brain to just continue. But with the breath, it's something different.

It's directly connected to our survival. So I can see the benefits of using it. But at the same time, I think it may be too tough for a lot of people.

But also I must say that during Corona, a lot of people have used a mask. Those masks, they are more permeable than these training masks, the high altitude masks. So in a way, a lot of people have been practicing tolerating high levels of CO2, but most people don't know about it.

So inside the mask, they're actually opening their mouth. And what they're doing then, I think is that they, because they can't take all of that CO2. So they start to mouth breathe, breathe shallow and fast, which means they shut down or depress their immune system because they go more into fight flight.

And they're taking, even though they are filtered some through the mask, they are still taking in most of the air unfiltered down into the lungs. So these masks, if you engage in mouth breathing and shallow and fast breathing, they are actually then counterproductive, I would say.

[Will John] (43:52 - 44:09)
And they're not, I don't want to call them false advertising, but they're not actually mimicking high altitude training, correct? We're not gaining the exact benefits of going up on a mountain and working out for a month and then coming down to sea level.

[Anders Olsson] (44:10 - 45:17)
No, no, you are. There are studies showing that, for example. Really?

Yeah. Because at high altitude, you do oxygen restriction. So a lot of people, they experience first when they come to high altitude, they get sick or they have this high altitude sickness.

They don't feel very well. And that is because they start to breathe too much and they lower the CO2. And then when they get acclimatized, they stay there for some days and then they start to operate better.

But since the oxygen levels are lower, they need to survive. They're basically restricted of oxygen and they will hold on to more carbon dioxide. So they actually, they will develop a better balance between oxygen and carbon dioxide, less oxygen and more carbon dioxide.

And you actually do that on the sea level as well. Or you can also study show when you hold your breath, it's the same. That's also oxygen restriction and carbon dioxide buildup.

[Will John] (45:17 - 45:47)
Okay. Yeah. It's interesting.

Yeah. Just as a whole thing. And one of the other places where I know that people are making these massive gains as an athlete you want to look at and are these athletes and truly, I mean, either outrageous or possibly just too outrageous.

Maybe you already know where I'm headed. But are they called deep sea divers? Deep divers?

[Anders Olsson] (45:47 - 45:52)
Yeah. What is it called? What are they called?

Deep divers or deep sea divers.

[Will John] (45:52 - 45:53)
Deep divers? Yeah. Okay.

Deep sea divers.

[Anders Olsson] (45:54 - 45:55)
Or free divers. Yeah.

[Will John] (45:55 - 46:34)
Free diving. Free diving. Maybe it's free diving.

Yeah. Where these are people are able to just take a few breaths or I don't know what they're doing specifically and then go underwater for well beyond what we all would just be able to just take a quick breath and hold a 10 minutes, nine minutes, whatever. Incredibly long amount of time.

Yeah. Why aren't... Would I gain a massive benefit on the field from being able to train the way they are and then just not going underwater and just going to play football?

Or is there any correlation? Is there anything that can be learned from them or what they're doing? Or do you know what they're doing?

[Anders Olsson] (46:35 - 49:58)
Yeah. I mean, they learn to tolerate the oxygen restriction and tolerate the higher levels of CO2. So a wonderful example is the diving grandmothers living on a peninsula of Korea.

They dive up to five hours per day, do up to a hundred dives per day and go down 15 to 20 meters looking for pearls, which they then sell. And a lot of these women, can you believe it? They are in their seventies and in their eighties performing these crazy athletic achievements.

And I think a reason why they have this extraordinary health is because they have learned to tolerate less oxygen and higher amount of carbon dioxide. Because we have to realize that even though we are so dependent on oxygen, it is both a curse and a blessing. We can't survive without it.

We need the oxygen to produce energy efficiently, but oxygen is toxic. The only reason, the only explanation I can think of why we have so little re-oxygen in our body, that we can only survive for a couple of minutes without breathing, if we compare to the fat we have, the water, the hormones, everything else we have in huge excess. Oxygen, which we are so dependent on, we have so little of, and that is because it is toxic.

And you know about free radicals? So we're talking about, oh, we need antioxidants. We need to eat food that combat the free radicals.

And free radicals is free oxygen radicals. Because oxygen, why it's both a curse and a blessing, it's so reactive. That's why we can produce energy so efficiently in our mitochondria, the energy factories in our cells.

And those are like, they're also called the furnaces of our cells. It's like fires burning in them. And when we put the oxygen there, it will generate heat and energy and water and carbon dioxide, all of these things that our body needs.

But if we have an excess of oxygen, it is like, if we think of a fire in our backyard and we put oxygen on it, it will just explode. So we have to keep the oxygen, like a nuclear power plant needs to keep in a certain, it can't take over and go too far. So carbon dioxide is that the control rods that they have in these nuclear power plants, making sure that the reaction doesn't go out of hand.

So when we take in too much of this oxygen, we get too much of these free radicals because the mitochondria will start to leak. And then we will have what we call inflammations. Free radicals are not bad per se.

Nothing is really, I think, good or bad. It's when it comes out of balance. Water is good, but if we don't drink anything, it's bad.

If we drink 10 liters in a day, it's also bad.

[Will John] (50:00 - 50:34)
Yeah. And that balance, yeah, is something that you have to strike, which is very cool. I want to get into, since we've got just a few minutes left here, I've got a few questions.

And one that you've touched on a lot of people's questions. So some of these questions are redundant now, which I won't ask. But there is an interesting one that I'm just curious what you might say to someone that just asked you this.

But yes, is there a way you can calm your nerves down on the spot or give yourself a boost of energy on the spot with your breath or through breathing?

[Anders Olsson] (50:34 - 52:11)
A boost of energy. I think you can get a boost of energy by doing the Wim Hof breathing. For example, when I did a water fasting a while ago, I did 72 hours of water fasting, only drinking water.

And then I planned to finish the last half hour I did the Wim Hof breathing. And to my surprise, I found myself so energized. So I decided there and then, despite before doing the Wim Hof, I was super hungry, super fed up with not eating, and I couldn't wait to eat.

And then after doing the Wim Hof, no, let's do another day. So I did another 24 hours just because I increased my adrenaline. So you could get energy just by doing that, going to forceful breathing.

And you could also get energy by doing the opposite, slowing down your breathing, doing nasal breathing, which is what I'm advocating. I think it is more efficient. So for example, in the football field, as I say, a lot of the feedback I get is faster recovery and more endurance because you oxygenate your body better when you slow down your breathing, when you use your nose and all the benefits coming with the nose.

So that's my number one tips if you want to boost your energy too. And specifically, you can do that when prolonging the exhale.

[Will John] (52:12 - 52:28)
Okay. When prolonging the exhale. Yeah, that's how you- Right.

But then what about prolonging the exhale and then not breathing in? That's for a certain period of time.

[Anders Olsson] (52:28 - 52:31)
Yeah, you can do that as well. Yeah, you can do that.

[Will John] (52:32 - 52:33)
Okay. That's still... Yeah.

[Anders Olsson] (52:33 - 53:22)
All right. We talked about it earlier, the tongue in the roof of the mouth, right? So closing the mouth, prolonging the exhale slightly, having the tongue rest in the roof of the mouth, inhaling through your nose, activating the diaphragm because when you inhale through your nose, you will automatically activate the diaphragm and you will drive the air to the lower parts of your lungs.

There you have the most alveoli. Breathing shallowly is actually very inefficient. So just by driving the air to the lower parts, most of the alveoli are situated there.

So that is where the gas exchange takes place, right? Where the oxygen goes from the lungs to the blood so that you can get it out in your body and oxidate your muscles and your nervous system, liver, etc.

[Will John] (53:22 - 54:23)
Okay. This question is a bit more overarching, but it touches on recovery and all of these things as well. Have you seen any...

And obviously, since we've touched on Wim Hof and there's the ice baths, the cold showers, there's all sorts of things that one could do. We've already added in here with the sleep tape, for sleep being an important part of your recovery. If you had to put together a packet, essentially, paraphrasing, but if you had to put together a packet for someone's recovery that included all of these things, meditation, ice baths, cold showers, Wim Hof breathing, conscious breathing, what would you put in your top three?

What would you put together as a thing? You got the sauna, right? In Scandinavia, you guys enjoy a sauna.

What would you put across all of these things, if you could rank them, if that's possible?

[Anders Olsson] (54:25 - 57:08)
Well, I would definitely go for the sleep tape because sleep is so important. And overall, just prioritize sleep, putting it really high on your list, because that is crucial, basically, for our ability to stay healthy and well. And obviously, breathing goes hand in hand.

If you're mouth breathing, you just can't get the deep sleep you need. So that would be on the top of my list, also because it's so simple. Everyone can do it.

I just finished a course the other day, and there was one woman there. It was a six weeks course. And on the last lesson, she was so happy saying, finally, I have been able to tape my mouth at night.

I had this drowning accident when I was little, and that has haunted me for my entire life. And I just couldn't tape my mouth because nasal breathing has not been an ability for me. And now I've been able to do it, and it has just changed my life.

So that would be on the top of my list. They will also be using the Relaxator in order to help you train this rhythmic and low and slow breathing. And then I was only allowed to say three.

Yeah, sure. I think cold shower is a fantastic breathing exercise, actually, because you can't withstand the cold water any length of time if you're huffing and puffing and breathing a lot. You have to find your calm breathing rhythm, and that could actually translate to other situations where you feel that you are under stress, that you are able to deal with that stress with more calmness.

And of course, I would put that before the cold shower. I would put nasal breathing during physical activity. And if you do sports, which is very high intense, you can't train at high intense all the time, right?

So it doesn't matter which sports you are in. There should be a lot of instances where you do the more aerobic type of exercise, more low intense exercise, and there you are definitely able to apply nasal breathing. So those will be my top three.

The sleep tape at night, the Relaxator during daytime, and the nasal breathing during physical activity.

[Will John] (57:09 - 59:09)
All incredible stuff. I mean, we're just about done here. Obviously, we're going to link to more than everything that you said.

I mean, we'll link to all the products, obviously, depending on where guys are seeing this. If you're listening to this, it's in the show notes. But if you're watching this on YouTube, then it's right below in the description box.

This is awesome. And I know there's going to be a lot of follow up from all over the place from people that are going to see this and they're going to have all sorts of questions on stuff like this. So maybe at a later date, we'll have to have some sort of follow up with different and more specific things.

Yeah. If you're up for it. And yeah, I think there are definitely always going to be questions about a topic like this because it's not something that we're taught.

How is it that I went maybe... Yeah, nearly 14-15 years before anyone mentioned, as a pro, anyone. And I played in like six different countries.

No one, not a single person mentioned breath. Not one person ever. And I played at teams that had...

We had millions of different coaches. Analysis coach, this guy coach, this guy scout, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so I can only imagine where we will be at in a few years as it becomes more mainstream.

Yeah. But still, in a lot of ways, I know it has an uphill battle because it's just so easy to say, go to the gym and do the thing and drink this protein or whatever, take this pill or whatever it is that people are going to seek out as the next best thing as the edge when a lot of times, what always matters in football and a lot of things that we preach is that your foundation matters. Your technique and breath is at the foundation of everything.

It's the foundation of everything, whether you're taking a test or you're going for a jog, how you breathe is going to affect the anxiety, the anxiousness, how you feel and how you are. So yeah, I think there'll be a lot of questions as it still rests as something that a lot of people are...

[Anders Olsson] (59:09 - 59:15)
There is a huge difference compared to when I started 40 years ago, but we are still just scratching the surface.

[Will John] (59:16 - 59:28)
Well, listen, thanks a lot for doing this. For everybody who is here watching this live, we appreciate you guys being here and obviously the questions that we got beforehand. And Anders, thanks a lot.

We will do this again for sure.

[Anders Olsson] (59:28 - 59:29)
Thank you, Willian.