Can simple breathing techniques improve your health?

Could simple breathing techniques that anyone can quickly learn be the key to overcoming major medical conditions and optimizing health? In recent years many books have made a compelling case for this idea.

One popular example is Patrick McKeown’s The Oxygen Advantage: Simple, Scientifically Proven Breathing Techniques to Help You, which he also summarizes in a TED Talk.

The idea that breathing could dramatically affect health is not far-fetched, McKeown explains. Scientists know that breathing has a profound influence on our body’s 100,000 miles of blood vessels that play the vital role of oxygenating cells and organs. What if our modern lifestyles and diet have had a subtle but detrimental effect on our breathing, which eventually leads to health problems?

McKeown spent his childhood and early adulthood struggling with asthma, taking copious amounts of medication just to function until, at the age of 26, he discovered the work of pioneering Russian researcher Dr. Konstantin Buteyko.