Breathe In, Breathe Out

In this edition of The Rundown, exercise tackles colon cancer and why breathing through your mouth is hurting your performance.

*Many of you received the Thursday edition of Fit Cult twice last week. This was due to a technical issue with substack that has been resolved.

The Rundown

Exercise & Colon Cancer. For the first time, researchers have identified exactly how exercise can lower your risk of getting colon cancer and slow the growth of tumors. A team of scientists from Newcastle and York St. John universities found that physical activity releases the cancer-fighting protein, interleukin-6 (IL-6), into the bloodstream. IL-6 helps repair the DNA of damaged cells, reducing their growth into cancer.

Published in the International Journal of Cancer, the small-scale study, which is a proof of principle, looked at 16 men, aged 50-80, who had lifestyle risk factors associated with colon cancer. The men provided a blood sample before and after they cycled on indoor bikes for 30-minutes at moderate intensity. On a separate day, blood samples were also taken from the participants before and after they had rested, as a control measure.

Testing the blood samples collected after exercise, the scientists found an increase in the IL-6 cancer-fighting protein. When they added these blood samples to colon cancer cells and monitored cell growth over 48 hours, they discovered that the after- exercise samples slowed the growth of the cancer cells and reduced the extent of DNA damage compared to the blood samples taken after rest.

Co-author, Dr. Sam Orange, Lecturer in Exercise Physiology at Newcastle University, noted that the findings are important because they could help develop more precise exercise guidelines for cancer prevention, as well as drug treatments that mimic some of the health benefits of exercise.

Breathe In, Breathe Out. Breath work isn’t new. See for example, the ujjayi breath in yoga, athletes who have limited their oxygen intake during workouts for decades and last week’s Rundown discussion on IMST. But taking this basic life function and applying it to exercise performance is getting more attention thanks to research from Europe, including a study published in the European Journal of Sports Science.

The research (read the abstract) looked at 21 rugby players who performed sprint tests over four weeks. One group sprinted at hypoventilation at low lung volume, which means they exhaled normally and then held their breath. The other group breathed normally. The group who held their breath increased the average number of sprints they could run from nine to 15. The control group did not improve.

The science behind the tests is that tolerating higher levels of carbon dioxide in the body (by restricting your breathing or breathing through your nose rather than your mouth) has been shown to increase the body’s oxygen uptake. Put another way, breathing through your nose increases carbon dioxide in the blood but also releases nitric oxide, which helps transfer more oxygen to cells. More oxygen is a natural enhancer of performance.

According to Patrick McKeown, a clinical director at the Buteyko Clinic, a breathing institute in Ireland, “mouth breathing is an epidemic.” He says that “any athlete who trains while nasal breathing will, after several weeks, exceed their personal best, regardless of their sport.” He recommends combining nasal breathing with breath hold exercises. Of course, performing breath holds and nasal breathing during workouts isn’t for everyone, particularly people with heart conditions, lung problems or high blood pressure.

Replay

This week’s vintage moment in fitness culture is brought to you by a “new use for the medicine ball.” Photo credit: Bettmann/Corbis.