The Oxygen Advantage by Patrick McKeown
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I picked this up as someone recommended it as a home remedy for asthma, and it didn't seem insane that breathing exercises might help asthma. I'm generally pretty game. This book, however, is a pile of repetitive, confusing, and inconsistent quasi-garbage. Why two stars?
- Some of the exercises are interesting and actually work. For example, his nose decongestion exercise actually works shockingly well (hold your breath while walking as long as you can, then breathe through your nose, then repeat four or five times). Some of the other exercises actually helped a lot with my last asthma attack (no rescue inhaler). So the exercises work(ish) within narrow parameters, but I don't think they work for the reasons he thinks they do, or for the range of ills he suggests can be solved by them.
- The author included a lengthy works cited that has some interesting science in it. The studies don't always say what he says they say, but they're interesting nonetheless.
Read the fourth section for the exercises, and give them a try if you have asthma or breathing difficulties, then throw the rest of this mess away.