They make two claims that are close to central: 1) Breathing while in the middle of reading a sentence makes it more difficult to comprehend. 2) Increasing oxygen to the brain will increase intelligence.
I’m extremely skeptical of both of these claims. The first one is just very strange since they seem to assume that breathing requires “attention.” For me, and for most humans, breathing is so reflexive that it takes effort to actively think about it. Moreover, if it did take conscious attention, I’d be very curious to hear an explanation for how we can breathe in our sleep.
The second claim is marginally more plausible, in that it is pretty clear that a lack of oxygen can create problems. But that doesn’t mean that more oxygen makes things better. There’s a fair bit of literature on human behavior in high oxygen environments. I’m not an expert on this at all, but I’ve never seen any claim that cognitive functions improved when one switched to high oxygen environments. It is marginally more plausible that increasing glucose access to the brain could actually help, and it is marginally plausible that their suggestions would increase the glucose level which would possibly help. But, even this doesn’t fit with very basic empirical data. While it is true that low glucose levels impair cognition, there are a variety of disorders that increase blood glucose levels (such as some forms of diabetes) and I’m not aware of any evidence that slightly elevated glucose levels help, and highly elevated levels lead to comas, long-term brain damage, and lots of other unfun stuff.
The only piece of data I can’t think of that possibly supports this is that I seem to recall seeing some evidence that coastal populations generally have higher IQ on average than non-coastal populations (although a quick Google search doesn’t turn up anything supporting that claim). But even if this is the case there are a lot of possible explanations for this, including more complicated environments, easier access to certain trace nutrients (such as iodine), as well as better economic situations.
I strongly agree with the skepticism about breathing having any serious effect on attention.
I have a caved-in chest (about medium), have quite poor fitness and can’t swim. My lung capacity is way below average, but I have no problems at all concentrating. My attention span is significantly above average, I don’t find reading or writing long sentences difficult at all. I can easily hold large chunks of information in my head if I must. My meditation practice is doing just fine. Concentrating for an hour or more is not tricky at all. (I blame video games. Playing >8 hours/day of high-attention games during high-school does this to you.) Only distractions are tricky, but then only if I’m trying to avoid unease.
Last summer, I did about 2 months of jogging to improve my fitness. I went from not being able to run for 10 seconds to running over 20 minutes without pause. This did not affect my mental capacities in any way I could notice. (Memory might have improved, though.) At best, thinking while running improved, but I never found it hard to listen to audiobooks, even when completely out of breath or exhausted.
I’m deeply skeptical of the claims made.
They make two claims that are close to central: 1) Breathing while in the middle of reading a sentence makes it more difficult to comprehend. 2) Increasing oxygen to the brain will increase intelligence.
I’m extremely skeptical of both of these claims. The first one is just very strange since they seem to assume that breathing requires “attention.” For me, and for most humans, breathing is so reflexive that it takes effort to actively think about it. Moreover, if it did take conscious attention, I’d be very curious to hear an explanation for how we can breathe in our sleep.
The second claim is marginally more plausible, in that it is pretty clear that a lack of oxygen can create problems. But that doesn’t mean that more oxygen makes things better. There’s a fair bit of literature on human behavior in high oxygen environments. I’m not an expert on this at all, but I’ve never seen any claim that cognitive functions improved when one switched to high oxygen environments. It is marginally more plausible that increasing glucose access to the brain could actually help, and it is marginally plausible that their suggestions would increase the glucose level which would possibly help. But, even this doesn’t fit with very basic empirical data. While it is true that low glucose levels impair cognition, there are a variety of disorders that increase blood glucose levels (such as some forms of diabetes) and I’m not aware of any evidence that slightly elevated glucose levels help, and highly elevated levels lead to comas, long-term brain damage, and lots of other unfun stuff.
The only piece of data I can’t think of that possibly supports this is that I seem to recall seeing some evidence that coastal populations generally have higher IQ on average than non-coastal populations (although a quick Google search doesn’t turn up anything supporting that claim). But even if this is the case there are a lot of possible explanations for this, including more complicated environments, easier access to certain trace nutrients (such as iodine), as well as better economic situations.
I strongly agree with the skepticism about breathing having any serious effect on attention.
I have a caved-in chest (about medium), have quite poor fitness and can’t swim. My lung capacity is way below average, but I have no problems at all concentrating. My attention span is significantly above average, I don’t find reading or writing long sentences difficult at all. I can easily hold large chunks of information in my head if I must. My meditation practice is doing just fine. Concentrating for an hour or more is not tricky at all. (I blame video games. Playing >8 hours/day of high-attention games during high-school does this to you.) Only distractions are tricky, but then only if I’m trying to avoid unease.
Last summer, I did about 2 months of jogging to improve my fitness. I went from not being able to run for 10 seconds to running over 20 minutes without pause. This did not affect my mental capacities in any way I could notice. (Memory might have improved, though.) At best, thinking while running improved, but I never found it hard to listen to audiobooks, even when completely out of breath or exhausted.