Nutrition for Freediving and to Improve Lung Capacity – Part 1

Welcome to the first episode of the Freediving Podcast by Renee Blundon. In this episode, I’ll talk about nutrition specifically for freediving and improving your lung function and lung capacity, in order to make your lungs stronger, healthier and more flexible for freediving while at the same time, improving your immune system, making it more resilient to COVID-19 and other viruses and bacteria.

This podcast can also help other athletes who are looking to improve their breathing and lung capacity, or anyone really who wants to improve their lung health and breathing, which at the same time helps to improve your overall health and therefore your quality of living.

Time Stamps:

• 00:10 Introduction to the podcast
• 01:56 Nutrition for freediving and lung health / lung function
• 07:00 Lung and respiratory issues in freediving
• 09:10 Health and fitness for a strong respiratory system and lung capacity
• 12:15 Nutrients – the foundation of good health
• 13:35 How respiratory and breathing problems are on the rise!
• 14:58 Measles, a severe respiratory infection and how it’s naturally treated / prevented
• 19:00 Vitamin A, being used to treat Measles and respiratory infections
• 21:10 Low Vitamin A and malnourishment while freediving
• 24:00 How Vitamin A is fundamental to the immune system
• 24:35 Understanding how nutrition is being used in studies
• 25:40 What Vitamin A does and how it’s needed to produce epithelial cells, surface cells that line the lungs
• 28:27 Foods that have Vitamin A in them
• 32:00 How to best supplement with Vitamin A
• 34:32 Vitamin A deficiency in the West – the issue with people eating empty caloric foods
• 35:52 The issues with eating artificial foods or partially fractionated foods, like egg whites
• 36:54 Omega-6 oils, how too much will affect your omega balance and arachidonic acid / inflammation
• 37:54 The science involved in nutrition; leukotrienes, arachidonic acid and too much Omega-6
• 40:40 Advice for targeting nutrition for freediving specifically
• 42:20 Conclusion and discussing Part 2 of Nutrition for Freediving and to Improve Lung Capacity

Resources:

Contentious, contagious and concerning – the impact of recent measles outbreaks across the world

COVID-19 and Measels: Double Trouble for Burundi

Vitamin A Supplementation to Improve Treatment Outcomes Among Children Diagnosed with Respiratory Infections

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Episode Transcript

Please enjoy this transcript of this podcast episode.

Introduction to the Podcast

Hello and welcome to episode one of the Freediving Podcast, your source for tips and information about training for freediving, not only so you can freedive better but so you can live the most healthy and EPIC life possible.

I am your host, Renee Blundon. And as always I will offer information about; how to improve your health and nutrition for freediving, how to improve your fitness for freediving, your breathing and mental training as well as helpful advice and training concepts for freediving in an enjoyable, safe and sustainable way.

This podcast represents the efforts of my own personal research and my trial and error with my freediving training, as well as hopefully, eventually the combined efforts of a public open source information network which I invite you to join on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/powerofthebreath

If you wish to get additional podcasts they will be on my website at reneeblundon.com/podcast.

And both informations and questions can be sent to me at info@reneeblundon.com

I am a competitive freediver and freediving instructor trainer and my only goal here is to provide information to help freedivers all over the world improve their freediving performances in a smart and healthy way to hopefully avoid suffering from an injury, black-out or LMC, over-training issues, and other accidents and health issues related to freediving training.

Thank you all for listening!

Nutrition for Freediving

So we’re gonna get into the show today. As I begin working on this and I apologize that I’m getting this episode out later than expected, I had to do things that were inescapable last week and also the podcast took some time to set-up everywhere online. But now that the podcast is all set-up, I hope to get future podcasts out much faster with at least one episode per week.

So, now let’s dive right in!

Today’s topic and the theme for the rest of this month of July is nutrition for freediving. And this is a massive topic as you can probably imagine. And it can be a bit complex and controversial, being that the specific foods to eat for freediving obviously vary from person to person. Foods that work for me, may not work for you, and visa versa.

Which is why for these episodes, I’m just going to actually focus on the essential vitamins that I truly believe, just based on my research and what I’ve noticed in my life, and my training, which vitamins to be super helpful and quite important for freediving and for the health of your lungs and respiratory system.

And then you can decide which foods or which supplements you prefer to go to, to get those essential vitamins if you choose to do so. So today and in the next episode (or two) we’ll talk about; nutrition and the necessary vitamins, that are specifically helpful for supporting your freediving, and your lung health and lung function

Just note that, not only are there these incredible vitamins out there that you want to make sure that you’re getting because they’ll help make your lungs so much healthier and stronger and more flexible for freediving, but at the same time they’ll also help improve your immune system, making it more resilient to viruses and bacterias that come around, and in today’s day, we have COVID-19 floating around which unfortunately is of particular concern for everyone but can especially freedivers and our ability to do our sport because it’s a virus known to attack lung cells.

So by getting these essential vitamins, you improve your immune system and make your lungs and respiratory system more resilient to viruses and bacterias, which means less often getting sick, so therefore less time out of the water, and also less chance of over-training or getting lung injuries, among other things.

So to give you an example, since changing my nutrition and tinkering with it over the last couple of years, I changed from a diet where I just wasn’t getting the nutrients that I needed, and so I was sick several times per month, all the time, and I was out of the water a lot, and just feeling horrible, like almost every day.

So I changed that to a diet where now I’m getting an incredible amount of essential vitamins and minerals, and now I feel like a completely different person, I get sick maybe two times per year, so I rarely ever miss a day of training, and I feel really good, have so much energy.

And even my breath-hold time has improved quite a bit. Before I was battling getting in the 3:30 – 4:30 range, and now I do well over 4 minutes quite easily, I know that’s not great in the world of freediving, but that’s pretty good for me because static apnea is not my strong suit.

And then now started my depth training again after 6 months off, so it’s still a little early to tell the difference it’s going to make, but just being that I have so much more energy and feel so much healthier, and that I’m able to train consistently without losing time out of the water, I think it’s going to go really well this season and I’m pretty excited.

So just from my personal experiences, I think that nutrition and getting the vitamins you need is such an important topic which is why wanted to talk about it on the podcast.

So this podcast I think can be quite helpful for, not just freedivers, but really anyone, and especially athletes, who would like to improve their lung health, their lung capacity and their overall health through nutrition.

Lung and Respiratory Issues in Freediving

So lung and respiratory issues have always quite a problem for a lot of freedivers, you’ve got quite a lot of people who battle with squeeze issues, for example lung squeeze or trachea squeeze, or chest pain or throat pain either during the dives or after the dives.

Then in the winter time or just while traveling around, its quite easy to catch a cold, leading to congestion and blocked sinuses, and this puts you out of the water for maybe a week or two. And if you try to go freediving anyway, then you can get a sinus squeeze or ear baratrauma.

So lung and respiratory issues are definitely quite a problem, whether your someone that battles with just some of these issues, just a few times a year OR if you’re someone who battles with these issues throughout your whole life, it definitely impedes our freediving, and our ability to train and dive deeper, or longer in the pool if you’re doing dynamic or trying to train static apnea.

And as a freediving instructor and competitive freediver who travels around quite a bit, and so I meet a lot of people, I can’t tell you how many students and other freedivers I meet, who battle with lung and respiratory issues; especially asthma, colds, sinus issues, lung issues either from dust, from smoking, from air pollution, inflammation, allergies, lung injuries, you name it, and myself included, I’ve battled with many of these things as well!

So we have all of these respiratory issues, that make it so difficult for freedivers to freedive! And also just to be able to breathe easy, and get the oxygen they need in order to feel good and feel strong and healthy.

Health and Fitness – For a Strong Respiratory System

My health and fitness is really the top priority for me in my life, which is part of the reason why I do a lot of other activities as well, for example I do; swimming, weight lifting, Insanity videos, Crossfit, all sorts of things throughout the year just varying for the periodization.

And the reason why is I’m just always trying to improve my fitness level and my lung function, my anaerobic threshold, aerobic capacity, anaerobic capacity, flexibility, all of these things, and so I train with all these different activities in order to have a strong respiratory system, because that’s going to improve my circulatory system and my fitness for freediving.

And for sure I’m not the only freediver doing this, this is so common, freedivers across all the various disciplines train quite seriously. If you have a look at the top 5-10 athletes in the major freediving competitions and in the current world rankings, pretty much all of these top level freediving athletes are incorporating training elements that help improve their lung capacity, and their respiratory system in order to improve their breath-hold time and their freediving performance.

Because…the healthier and the stronger your lungs and your airways are, then the more oxygen that your body has available for your muscles and for your tissues, so the longer you can hold your breath, and the longer you can hold your breath, the deeper you can freedive! I mean, in theory obviously, because you have to have good equalization, and relaxation and depth adaptation, but if those are all good, then you can freedive quite deep!

So whether you’re a freediver who battles with some kind of regular lung or trachea squeezing issue or if you experience chest pain during your dives or even after your dives, or if you find you’re getting sick like all the time, getting every cold that’s going around, or feeling super fatigued, unwell and burnt out after your freediving training.

Or if you’re none of those but if you’re a freediver who’s looking to improve your lung health and function and your breathing, and therefore your overall health and immune system, maybe you want to have better and faster recovery between your diving sessions, anyway, I really hope every freediver out there can benefit from the nutritional information presented in this podcast.

Nutrients, The Foundation of Good Health

So, moving right along here, when I talk about nutrition for freediving and for lung health, basically what I’m referring to is those specific nutrients that the body needs and that the body uses for maintaining, restoring and rebuilding our cells and our tissues, before, during, and especially after our freediving.

And this, really is the foundation of having good health in general and in freediving. So I’m going to cover specifically which vitamins and foods can make all the difference in the world for improving your freediving, and your lungs and respiratory system, and therefore your overall health and immune system.

So…with that all said, I want to now have a look about what’s going on right now in the world when it comes to nutrition for freediving. Now it’s obviously near impossible to find news and information specifically in regards to freediving or nutrition for freediving, so I had to zoom out a bit and I’ve been researching nutrition for improving lung health, lung capacity, respiratory health, which if you improve your lungs and your overall health, without a doubt that’s going to improve your freediving.

At least it did for me, so if it worked for me, I’m sure it’s going to help you as well.

Respiratory and Breathing Problems are on the Rise!

So for sure it seems to me anyway, like the lung and respiratory issues that I mentioned before, are on the rise. And without a doubt in my mind, I really, strongly believe that the nutrition aspect is playing such a huge role in this. And, I’ll let you know why in just a bit…

So I don’t know if I just think that lung issues are on the rise because of all the news on COVID-19, and also just the thought of people all over the world, completely immobilized on lock-down in their houses for like weeks and months on end, that’s obviously not healthy or good for your breathing. If you’re a freediver or just anyone and if you’re cooped-up inside of your house and you’re not breathing fresh air, and you’re probably not breathing correctly, so the muscles just aren’t going to work properly.

So anyway I suppose it’s just casual observation, but I have been noticing that some of biggest headlines in the news have been about lung health and also nutrition. And I’m not talking about COVID-19, I’m not going to discuss too much about COVID-19 on this podcast, because I want to talk about other things…

Measles is Back!

But like for example, measles!

Measles is a very serious and also a very contagious respiratory infection. It’s even more contagious than COVID-19. (Measles has a reproduction number of 12-18 compared to COVID-19 which is 2-3)

So, basically it causes a total-body skin rash and flu-like symptoms, so like; mumps, and coughing, chicken pox, runny nose, conjunctivitis, watery eyes, and other things like that. And in a nutshell, they virtually were able to eliminate most all of those things, through the measles vaccination.

And yet today, because of the push back against the idea of vaccines, a lot of people became anti-vaccers, and now measles is back and at super high rate that hasn’t been seen since like the 1970’s. So measles, has now come back into the population, how crazy is that?

And so this is what’s going on, I have a peice here from Bio medcentral.com, published on June 12, 2020, written by Srimathy Sriskantharajah. It’s titled:

Contentious, contagious and concerning – the impact of recent measles outbreaks across the world.

And it says in a paragraph here:

“2018 saw outbreaks of measles cases in several regions across the globe, and the World Health Organization later confirmed that more than 140,000 people had died of measles in that year – As of November 2019, the World Health Organization stated in a disease outbreak news article that there had been (I’m just going round it here) 413,000 officially confirmed cases of measles in 2019.”

And the article goes on, talking about where the measles outbreaks have been recently occurring, which is basically everywhere…the US, Europe and it’s quite bad especially in Africa and the Republic of Congo, which is the country with the largest outbreak of measles in the world, just because children aren’t getting vaccinated, or they’re not getting vaccinated properly (they’re supposed to get two doses and they’re only just getting one) and also they’re extremely malnourished, which I’ll talk about in a second…

So the reason why I bring up measles is because it’s a SEVERE respiratory infection, so we can really learn a lot about improving lung health and respiratory health and function just by looking at what they do to, for natural prevention and natural treatment of the measles virus!

So to understand how nutrition fits into the measles picture, I have another piece here, called:

COVID-19 and Measels: Double Trouble for Burundi

It’s written by Sanjeet Bagcchi for thelancet.com in June, 2020. And it’s all about how:

Measles is currently a leading cause of death in children in Burundi and this is because, “of high rates of malnourishment, Vitamin A deficiency, which increase the risk of severe complications from measles.”

SO!

When you have a population of people with very low Vitamin A levels and malnourishment, then measles can just rip through and kill a lot of people!

And keep in mind this is among a ton of articles out there and scientific research all on measles, all saying basically the same thing about how Vitamin A and nutrition is related to lung and respiratory health and lung function

Vitamin A Being Used to Treat Respiratory Infections

I’m going to share one more article here which really hits the nail on the head. And this one’s from the World Health Organization’s website, it’s among many others on their site on this same topic, and the title of the article is:

Vitamin A Supplementation to Improve Treatment Outcomes Among Children Diagnosed with Respiratory Infections

And if you have a read of that, and I’ll put a link to it on the podcast page, it’s all about how Vitamin A, is really one of the most helpful vitamins for your lungs and for respiratory system.

And even though there are a lot of doctors, who don’t like to think about treating infections or diseases with vitamins, and I totally get why that is, I’m going to come back to that later, but that article is a case where, Vitamin A is being used to do just that!

They’re actually using Vitamin A to treat children with respiratory infections – kids that have bronchitis, and pneumonia, and who’ve had pretty severe respiratory infections!

They actually found Vitamin A to be so effective for the treatment and prevention of respiratory infections, that created these programs, for example the Vitamin Angels program, where members of the industry produce Vitamin A, and then they donate it, and then it’s then taken to the areas of the world where they have a Vitamin A deficiency (even though keep in mind the West also is quite deficient in Vitamin A as well, but definitely not as bad as some of these other places)

And because of this (!) there’s a massive reduction in measles and many other types of respiratory infections!

So basically if your Vitamin A levels are very low, this pre-disposes you to a bigger vulnerability of getting a respiratory infection if you’re exposed to viruses or bacteria, and your lungs are not as healthy, not as strong and not as flexible as they could be!

Low Vitamin A / Malnourished while Freediving

And obviously you’re not in the most healthy condition to be freediving, keep in mind that any sort of breath-holding activity will just stress body more, especially deep dives, they take a massive toll on the immune system!

So if you’re deficient in Vitamin A, unless you’re some kind of outlier with natural breath-hold talent, it’s going to for sure negatively affect your freediving and your breath-hold ability, and you’re going to be also so much more likely to get sick, to have an injury or a black-out or some kind of accident.

And so my aim with all of this is let all the freedivers out there listening know, that doing something as simple as just making sure you’re getting enough Vitamin A, along with Vitamin D, N-Acetyl Cysteine and Omega-3. Just by adding these particular vitamins to your diet, whether through food or through supplementation (food is obviously a much better source), but these vitamins are going to help make your body more resistant to a potential respiratory infection, and they’ll make your lungs healthier and stronger for freediving.

And in this particular moment, I think it’s especially important to keep your lungs as healthy as possible, not only is COVID-19 going around, and measles (probably you don’t have to worry about that if you received a vaccination as a child) But there’s also pneumonia, among a million other respiratory conditions which I mentioned before…

So I don’t know about you, but I for sure want to make sure that I am doing everything I can, in order to get my lungs and respiratory system super strong and healthy and as resistant as possible to getting any potential infection. This way I can keep freediving and keep doing all my other things I like doing, and also because I just really just to be healthy and feel good.

Like I said before my health is my number one priority so I take it quite personally when it comes to understanding nutrition as like a science. And I know for a fact, because I’ve seen it clearly just by tinkering with my own diet over the years, that nutrition can be used to boost my health, and my performance as an athlete, and especially today, my strength of resistance.

So if you’re looking to improve your lung capacity and your freediving, I’d encourage you to have a look at your nutrition. It’s going to help build your immune system’s resilience, which is so key!

Vitamin A – Fundamental to the Immune System

And Vitamin A is just absolutely FUNDAMENTAL to the immune system function!

It powers up the white blood cells, and the other factors in the immune system that allows the body to be more resistant to respiratory infections and viruses, so really every freediver and actually every single person out there should be making sure they’re getting enough Vitamin A!

And I know that I’m covering a lot of things here and it’s all just super interesting – but let me just give you a quick explanation of what I was talking about when I talk about nutrition that’s being used in studies.

Nutrition Being Used in Studies

So the studies say that they treat such and such thing with Vitamin A, and that’s basically just the language of the study, it’s a syntax. In reality, it’s more accurate to say that when people have low levels of Vitamin A, which is a key important nutrient, that when you supply that nutrient, the nutrient doesn’t go in and kill all these bacteria and viruses – no! It actually just supports the normal functioning of the body!

So the studies that I’ve been talking about today, really just recognize the importance of nutrition, and if we get the right nutrition, the body can do amazing things and can perform so much more optimally, the immune system can function at a higher level and therefore now we are less susceptible to things, so that doesn’t make Vitamin A a drug. It makes it a key nutrient!

What Does Vitamin A Do?

So just referring back to the study where the World Health Organization used Vitamin A to treat respiratory infections, it states here that: “Most of these likely preventable deaths, occur in low resource settings, and are strongly linked to poverty, inadequate access to health care and under nutrition.”

“Several nutrition interventions have been shown to be effective in reducing the number of cases of acute lower respiratory tract infections and the potentially deadly outcomes associated with pneumonia.”

And, here’s the punch line on what Vitamin A does:

“Vitamin A / Retinal, is involved in the production growth and maturation, the development of; red cells, lymph cells and anti-bodies and epithelial integrity. Because of its proven effectiveness in protecting against measles associated pneumonia, Vitamin A supplementation has been investigated as a possible intervention to speed recovery, reduce the severity, and prevent against subsequent episodes of acute lower respiratory tract infections”

So what does all of that mean!?

Well, just like I was saying, people that have low levels of Vitamin A are more vulnerable to respiratory issues, and their lungs are not as strong or as healthy as they could be, because vitamin A is needed by the body in order to produce red blood cells, white blood cells, lymphatic cells, epithelial cells, cells that are part of resistance to infections.

Epithelial cells. What are those?! Those are surface cells that line the lungs. And if you have a strong immune function in the lining of the lungs, I’d hypothesize, that you’re much better able to withstand hydrostatic pressure, less chances of having a lung or trachea squeeze, also likely you can recover faster from your dives, and for sure your better able to resist exposure, and resist becoming ill when you are exposed to infectious things. So less chances of getting sick!

And in the next episode, I’ll switch over and talk about Vitamin D, in exactly this light. But just to kind-of sum up my point here, what this article is basically saying is that the nutritional actions help people’s lungs and airways be stronger and more resilient.

What Foods Have Vitamin A?

So now it’s important to bring up, where is Vitamin A?!?!

And I have a list here…the best sources for Vitamin A are; cod liver oil, butter, eggs, beef liver, lamb liver, mackerel, salmon, tuna, goat cheese, trout, caviar… Those are the best sources if you’re on a standard regular diet or a typical Mediterranean or even a Keto Diet.

If you’re vegan or vegetarian, likely your best options would be carrots, sweet potato, squash, cantaloupe, apricots, spinach and kale.

So the thing is with Vitamin A, is the best sources of it are in a lot of foods that a lot of people just don’t eat.

For example; butter, butter is an excellent source, one of the best sources of Vitamin A that are out there, but some people avoid butter just because of the perceived saturated fat linked to heart disease.

And then also eggs are a really good source of Vitamin A, but some people don’t eat eggs for the same reason, they’re concerned about cholesterol.

And then a lot of people get grossed out and run in the other direction when you say beef liver or cod liver oil…

Although, if you’ve ever tried some of the cod liver oil that’s out there, for example the Carlson Fish Oil, it’s absolutely amazing, and it’s such a phenomenal source of Vitamin A (and also vitamin D), Two things that are really central to lung health and respiratory health!

And cod liver oil, in addition to being an excellent source of Vitamins A & D, it also has Omega-3, so I’d highly recommend it!

And as far as beef liver, a lot of people don’t eat liver but it can be really tasty if it’s cooked properly. So I cook it together with beef kidney and heart and I fry it in ghee and butter, with a little bit of water and salt, and if it’s cooked properly, and covered and simmered, so you don’t dry it out, the taste is just absolutely incredible. It might take a few times of eating it to sort of get used to the texture and the taste, but before you know it, you’re loving it and it makes you feel SO good right after eating it, I feel like I’m just flying!

So both cod liver oil and beef liver, are really just so delicious and they’re not unpleasant at all, and I really can’t think of anything better than those, that would have such an impact of benefits, and in improving your lung health and boosting your immune system.

One of the reasons why I’m so passionate about nutrition, is that I’ve discovered semi-recently that there are some very simple and amazing foods, that have just profound effects on your health, and cod liver oil and beef liver, and salmon row also are such awesome examples of that, just looking at the Vitamin A content in these foods, as being something that we definitely don’t want to forget about!

It’s just so mind-blowing how well these vitamins work, it’s something that a lot of people, including me for a long time (!), a lot of people just don’t understand about these amazing simple nutrients.

Vitamin A Supplementation

If you’re a vegan or vegetarian, and you’re finding it difficult to get enough Vitamin A through vegetables, then supplementation may be way to go. Personally I don’t supplement but I used to so I can fill you in on what I learned about it when I did.

Firstly, you want to make sure it’s the Retinal Vitamin A, which is the pre-formed Vitamin A rather than the Beta Kerotine. Not everyone is good at making that conversion of Beta Kerotine into Vitamin A.

So the daily recommended dose of Vitamin A is at least 10,000 international units.

So what I used to do whenever I ever got super sick or felt like I was about to get sick and come down with a cold or something, I’d used to take somewhere between 25,000 and 50,000 instead of 10,000 units, so this way I could get better faster. But for sure I’d definitely confirm that with your doctor first!

Just FYI – there were these guys, like quite a while ago, Jonathan Right and Alan Gabie, who talked about doing a super large dose at one time of Vitamin A at the first sign of a cold. And they were taking around 300,000 units of Vitamin A for 5 days straight, in order to really boost vitamin A levels in the body.

So these days we hear so much about Vitamin A being toxic in high doses, so I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone ever recommending or taking such massive doses of Vitamin A, but you can buy a 25,000 unit Vitamin A supplement and it’s a tiny little capsule. And if you’re super sick with some kind of lung issue, maybe you have a cold or maybe you have a lung squeeze or trachea squeeze or cold or something like that, that’s the amount I’d take to help recover and get better. But definitely consult your doctor first!

Vitamin A Deficiency in the West

Now I mentioned earlier, about the studies in Africa, just as areas that you can kind-of expect a nutritional deficiency in, but if you look at the West for a moment, the Vitamin A deficiency is there as well!!

If you just have a look at the average nutrients that people are getting in the US, and in Europe among other developed nations, and just look at how many people are deficient or sub-sufficient in nutrients, most people aren’t actually outright deficient, but they’re certainly not optimal either.

In the US, for example, the numbers are up to near 90% of people that are sub-sufficient in nutrients. So it’s the overwhelmingly majority of people who aren’t getting enough nutrients – and things like Vitamin A are right up there near the top of the list!

Basically A LOT of people in developed countries, are over-fed and under-nourished. Because people are eating foods that are empty caloric foods, and they aren’t eating enough of the nourishing foods. And really the only way to get those nutrients is by going back to basics, and eating real foods for the fundamental vitamin and mineral contents that these foods have, and that they used to provide us with, which at some point became basically unpopular.

The Issues with Eating Artificial Foods or Partially Fractionated Foods

Another issue, I think – just something that I’ve noticed, is that a lot freedivers don’t eat certain fats; like eggs and butter.

Either it’s because it’s they’re on a vegetarian diet (which is so challenging to get all the vitamins you need) or maybe they’re on a standard diet, but it’s just been the prevailing wisdom, that if you want to be healthy, you’ll avoid these foods.

So instead people are eating a lot more artificial foods or partially fractionated foods.

And so for example, I see a lot of freedivers eating egg whites but not the egg yolks – so they’re eating a lot of these high Omega-6 oils in place of these richer more natural fats.

Well, that advice which, was been preached to us as the ‘healthy way’ has ironically turned out to be one of the contributing factors to lung issues and lowered lung function, believe it or not!!

Omega-6 Oils & Omega Balance

Just to fill you in a bit about Omega-6 oils and omega balance…

What happens when you have too much Omega-6 from eating a bunch of egg whites, is that the body takes the Omega-6 and produces something called arachidonic acid. And when I talk about arachidonic acid, I talk about inflammation, it’s basically the same conversation.

Arachidonic acid is actually one of those things that activates some of the inflammation damage of respiratory infections!! So it’s obviously not good for your lungs or for your breathing or for freediving. When you have too much arachidonic acid and not enough Omega-3, then you’re going to have more activity in the lungs, that are inflammatory actions in the lung tissues!

So, point is, if you want to have stronger and healthier lungs for freediving and also just in general, don’t eat just the egg whites, eat the yolks too!

The Science of Leukotrienes

Ok so I’m gonna nerd out for a bit and talk more about the science involved in the nutrition for lung capacity and for respiratory health. Just to put it simply, we have these compounds in our body called leukotrienes, and they’re made from arachidonic acid. Now it sounds very chemical but arachidonic acid, as I mentioned before, is made from Omega-6 oils!

So these leukotrienes, well guess what, they’re a potent mediator of bronchi constriction and airway inflammation!!

SO when we have too much Omega-6, we’ll very likely have too much arachidonic acid, and when that happens, these leukotrienes, the mediators of airway constriction they’re more active, so you’re more likely to have the swelling of the lungs and of the airways, which is obviously not good for your health or for your freediving or even for your breathing, and this is in people who’s omegas are really out of balance, and who is that…? Well practically everyone in western culture!

There’s actually an Omega-3 index test that you can do, and so you can see if you have an adequate intake of the EPA and the DHA, which is basically the fish oil omegas that you want to have for good respiratory health!

BUT if you do the Omega-3 index test, one of the things that you definitely want to look at when you find out your EPA, is your Omega 3’s relative to the arachidonic acid balance. And also your Omega 6, relative to the Omega 3 balance.

And based on what I’m saying about the arachidonic acid and the production of leukotrienes, and what they do, and the swelling that they can cause in the lungs and restriction of the airways, this is obviously something you don’t want to have happening – not only is it bad for your health and freediving, your body won’t be getting the oxygen it needs, maybe you’ll even be breathing heavier, it’s definitely not good.

So if you can do an Omega-3 index test just to find out where you stand, that would be great.

Or what you can do, if you want a slightly easier approach rather than testing and learning about all of this, is you can just boost your intake of the fish derived Omega-3’s, and what I’m really talking about, is the EPA along with some DHA, but especially the EPA part of the Omega-3 which is really, really important for supporting your lungs and for improving your breathing.

Targeting Nutrition for Freediving Specifically

So basically, there are all of these various nutrients and each one has a particular role in supporting freedivers lung capacity so that we can stay healthy and freedive optimally. And if you really want to target nutrition for freediving specifically, what I would recommend is not think of it as “oh I’m going to try and take more of this vitamin or that vitamin so I can dive deeper or hold my breath longer…”, but instead think of it as “I’m going to include these particular vitamins in order to support my lung tissues, the structure of the lungs, and the airways, and I’m going to do things that will improve the function in those areas”

And I’d recommend focusing on improving your lung capacity and your respiratory health, rather than trying to find this kind-of magic pill for freediving. I’m sorry but there’s no magic pill or shortcut to becoming a good freediver, it’s a matter of regular training, nutrition, preparation, planning, and dedication and passion for the sport!

But if you focus on doing things and eating the right foods or supplements that improve your lungs and your airways, then you can then start to see, and notice how you feel and what your body can do, by applying these specific individual nutrients that support lung capacity in their own unique way.

So I’d encourage everyone out there to try and explore the nutrition side of things, and just see how your body responds. The proof is in the pudding!

And I that’s what I want to give people today.

Conclusion and Part 2 of Nutrition for Freediving

So this is really just such a massive topic. And so I’m going to pause there and let all of this sink in for a bit.

The next episode will be Part 2 of Nutrition for Freediving, and that’s where I’ll get into some more details and some history and about how other chronic lung issues, how they’ve been treated just naturally with particular nutrition, along with more information about Vitamin D and N-Acetyl Cysteine, just a lot more info and tips about the nutrition that we can apply to freediving in order to improve our lung capacity, our immune system and our freediving and breath-hold performances.

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Thank you for listening! And hope you enjoy the rest of your day 🙂