The low down on oxygen transport(,lung disease, rehab, and training as an endurance athlete).

This might be more than you wanted to know about oxygen, but I promise to take the material out of the science textbook and into your real world. I wanted to discuss obstructive lung disease conditions and what you can do to improve airflow and therefore blood gases and bodily health. And as an extension of that I figured I would just talk about how to improve performance as an endurance athlete seeing how a large part of is related to oxygen transport and energy production.

Heres the lowdown,

COPD, brochitis, asthma, emphysema are all obstructive lung diseases. They can be diagnosed from simple lung function tests which I used to perform as well as more complicated tests imaging tests as well. Basically these conditions diminish your ability to expel carbon dioxide so the amount of carbon dioxide increases in your blood which increases acid production.  For those people who are still smoking or have environments where they breath carbon monoxide, let me say that the carbon monoxide kicks the oxygen molecule off the hemoglobin very easily so you will end up with a low oxygen content in your blood (Sao2 as measured by that little finger probe at the hospital).

Asthma isnt so bad, its just an irriatation of the lung tissue and tubes from all the crap we breath, pollen, mold, bacterial spores, 2nd hand smoke etc.. Heck I was a high level distance runner and only around age 30 did i realize i had mild obstructive lung issues due to breathing in 2nd hand smoke all my childhood. The irritants constrict the smooth muscle of the bronchioles (the tubes leading to the lungs), so you have a smaller pipe to push air through, which means you have to increase the pressure from your breathing muscles to push it through.

Bronchitis sucks cause in addition to the asthma issue, it involves mucus production which decreases airflow in addition to the smooth muscle issue.And chronic coughing can scar the bronchioles as well.(but chronic coughing does give you one hell of a good core workout). Ok that was almost funny.

Emphysema, well this is no pretty picture,  this is the death of lung tissue. and once its dead it isnt coming back, just like after a heart attack where a small area of heart tissue suffers from lack of oxygen and dies as calcium that was inside the muscle leaks out into the blood.

An extra issue with emphysema is this thing known as Blood gas matching or (VA/Q matching). It is similar to how air and gas mix in a carburator of a car. Due to destruction of healthy breathable lung tissue, and less oxygen and greater carbon dioxide in the blood, the end result is less CO2 breathed out by parts of your lungs.  You now have to resort to ingesting something similar to a carburator cleaner (gunk out). Unfortunately its easier to fix VAQ issues in an automobile than your lung.



So what can be done to improve airflow, oxygenation, cellular health and therefore energy production?

I mean really do we really want to be ingesting 5 hour energy, caffeine, or stimulant pills at the check out ailse at walgreens?


So here are some bullet points on how to improve the above categories

• Exercise (the drug of choice). Just get out and do what you love, and if you dont love it, then hire a coach. The benefits are too numerous so dont wait till you feel like you want to exercise. I mean really does anyone who chooses to go back to school as an adult, really feel like studying all the time.
• Learn to breathe like a baby again, let your belly move out as you begin your breath, then near the end, lift your shoulders up to pull the upper lobes of your lungs to extract extra oxygen.
• Make sure your not anemic(see your doctor)
• Make sure your erythropoietin levels are optimized(a hormone made in your kidneys). 
• Increase overall cellular health by reducing inflammation and oxidation by increasing your bodys natural production of glutathione peroxidase and superoxide dismutase(some high end nutritional supplements can do this).