Oxygen Advantage

“Chew some gum, stand up straight and shut your mouth.”On the latest episode of the Oxygen Advantage podcast, OA founder Patrick McKeown welcomes renowned orthodontists Dr. John and Dr. Mike Mew.Dr. John Mew is the originator of orthotropics, a type of oral posture training designed to prevent poor craniofacial development in children. A lifelong pursuit, Dr. Mew has always been intrigued by the development of the face. After seeing that many young people develop retracted jaws which can negatively affect their appearance as well as contribute to issues such as sleep apnea, he began to develop his theories.John is joined on the podcast by his son, Dr. Mike Mew, a fellow orthodontist who has continued his father’s work to improve the craniofacial development of the next generation from his clinic in Purley, London.Both men talk to Patrick about the reasoning behind their work as well as the benefits of keeping the mouth closed both for improved functional breathing, crooked teeth and improved craniofacial development.Find out more about the Mew’s work at the John Mew Orthotropics website and Orthodontichealth.co.uk.For more information on OA, please visit our website; www.oxygenadvantage.com.Check out Spotify or your local podcast provider to listen to more of the OA Podcast. https://open.spotify.com/show/5XTS4B3ODaEfsbNOBmYb6d

“I was silently fighting this chronic panic disorder from the age of 13.”On this week’s edition of the Oxygen Advantage® Podcast Patrick is joined, by musician, author, mindfulness therapist and mental health advocate, Niall ‘Bressie’ Breslin.A former Westmeath Gaelic footballer and Leinster Rugby player, Niall is a well-known celebrity in his native Ireland where he rose to fame as front man for rock band The Blizzards and as a solo performer.In more recent years, Niall has grown in prominence thanks to his work with mental health awareness and his part in founding mental health advocacy charity A Lust for Life where he currently serves as Creative Director.Growing up in Ireland in the 90s, Niall would sometimes run afoul of the Christian Brothers teaching him in school and suffered beatings at their hands. Niall moved to Israel with his father, a UN representative, at 13 and suffered PTSD after experiencing the conflict going on there. It reached a point where he was experiencing 2-3 panic attacks per day.Niall still captained his school football team and would go on to play U21 Gaelic football for his county and professional rugby for Leinster before embarking on his music career. In fact, exercising was the only time that Niall felt he could “breathe normally”. Everything came to a head when he suffered a massive panic attack prior to an episode of Ireland’s The Voice where he was working as judge.Since then, Niall has done “everything and anything” he can to communicate what he went through and help others to deal with similar problems. Find out more about Niall’s Mindfulness work at www.niallbreslin.com.For more information on OA, please visit our website; www.oxygenadvantage.com. Check out Spotify or your local podcast provider to listen to more of the OA Podcast. https://open.spotify.com/show/5XTS4B3ODaEfsbNOBmYb6d

“Does your body recover quickly and get back to ‘normal baseline’, or does it stay there?”The latest episode of the Oxygen Advantage podcast is taken from a recent OA Members Masterclass (05 Jan 2023). Oxygen Advantage founder Patrick McKeown speaks to Dr. Jay T. Wiles, a clinical health psychologist, working as Health Behavior Coordinator for the WJB Dorn VA Medical Center and the Greenville VA Clinic in South Carolina, USA. He is also the co-founder of Hanu Health, a health technology company that sees stress as “an opportunity – a chance to learn and build resilience”. Dr. Wiles has specialized training in health behavior coaching, health assessment, nutritional interventions for mental and physical health, motivational interviewing, applied psychophysiology, and consultation. In this masterclass, Dr. Wiles focuses on resilience and Heart Rate Variability (HRV) – when the amount of time between your heartbeats fluctuates slightly. Undetectable, except by specialized machines but a possible indicator of future health problems including a heart conditions or depression. Find out more about Dr. Wiles’ work at the Hanu Heath website.For more information on OA, please visit our website; www.oxygenadvantage.com.Check out Spotify or your local podcast provider to listen to more of the OA Podcast.https://open.spotify.com/show/5XTS4B3ODaEfsbNOBmYb6d

“Breathing is 50% of movement. Movement is everything.”On the latest edition of the Oxygen Advantage podcast, Patrick and Daniel are joined by Mads Tömörkènyi, Copenhagen-based author and scientific researcher of biomechanics, neurophysiology and anthropology.Mads is the author of Human Mechanics: Unleashing the Potential of a Highly Advanced Species, where he points to four main pillars of health: nutrition, breathing, movement, and sleep. Blending history and scientific evidence, Human Mechanics aims to help us “experience first hand the incredible benefits of digging deep into your biological potential”.With a background in sports science and physical training, Mads’ studies have given him a deep understanding of the important role that breathing plays when trying to get the best out of physical movement and training. Mads points to the importance of using the diaphragm when breathing during exercise and physical movement. He notes that too much emphasis can be put on big belly breathing which uses abdominal muscles but not the diaphragm to the same degree. He and Patrick agree that people put too much emphasis on “the six pack” as the sign of true fitness which is not the case. In fact, they note that too much emphasis on building abs, and therefore focusing on just one group of muscles, has a negative effect on the development of core strength. Putting a focus on breathing during physical exertion is the safest and most efficient way to build abs without neglecting the development of essential muscles. For more information on OA, please visit our website; www.oxygenadvantage.com.Check out Spotify or your local podcast provider to listen to more of the OA Podcast. https://open.spotify.com/show/5XTS4B3ODaEfsbNOBmYb6d

“It’s athlete preparation… I’ve been doing this for 40 years and I’m still learning.”This week on the Oxygen Advantage® Podcast, Patrick and Daniel are joined by lecturer, trainer, author and widely considered one of the foremost authorities on strength and conditioning, Michael Boyle. Beginning his career in the early 80s, Mike struggled to find work full time in the new field of strength and conditioning and worked at the college level. He often offered his services for free and supported himself working in bars for the first 10 years of his career. He would go on the work with the Boston Bruins, the World Series winning Boston Red Sox, and the gold medal winning US Women’s Olympic Hockey Team.Mike explains how strength and conditioning has evolved over the years. From originally being “the weights guy” he evolved the conditioning side and looked at preparation, healthy eating, core training and more. Another challenge he faced was trying to change old school mentalities about preparation for athletic competition. Even facing resistance for pushing the now very common knowledge that a big part of preparation for an athlete was being healthy.A continued evolution was what brought Mike to breathing. When he first heard the diaphragm described as a muscle and knowing that muscles can be trained, began bringing it into core training. Mike quickly learned that simply asking people to exhale to their maximum accessed the deep abdominal muscles including, the internal obliques and the transverse abdominis and could greatly benefit strength and conditioning core training. This is a very interesting conversation with someone at the top of their field.More on Michael Boyle can be found on his website bodybyboyle.com.For more information on breathing for health and performance, visit the Oxygen Advantage® website.Check out Spotify or your local podcast provider to listen to more of the OA Podcast. https://open.spotify.com/show/5XTS4B3ODaEfsbNOBmYb6d

“You cannot study this without trying, so you have to get into the water.” On this edition of the Oxygen Advantage® Podcast, Patrick and Daniel are joined by research scientist, cold immersion specialist and author of new book ‘Winter Swimming: The Nordic Way Towards a Healthier and Happier Life’, Dr. Susanna Søberg PhD. A scientific researcher, Susanna’s studies originally focused on metabolism and more specifically, brown fat, the body’s healthy fat that helps regulate temperature. As part of the research she started looking at how the brown fat reacts to various cold situations such as cold air on your skin or entering a cold room. This eventually led her to look at cold water immersion and ice swimming, a well-known pastime pursuit in her own home of Denmark and throughout Scandinavia. After facing her fear and entering the water, Susanna soon learned the importance of breathing when putting the body into such an extreme environment. She says that there are big health advantages to cold water immersion and that everyone taking part could benefit greatly from learning to breathe calmly and lightly during cold water immersion. Susanna takes Patrick and Daniel through how cold temperatures affect people differently, how important controlling your breathing is in dealing with the cold, how commonly cold water immersion is used around the world for health benefits and much more. Winter Swimming: The Nordic Way Towards a Healthier and Happier Life is available from all good book stores.For more information on breathing for health and performance, visit the Oxygen Advantage® website.Check out Spotify or your local podcast provider to listen to more of the OA Podcast. https://open.spotify.com/show/5XTS4B3ODaEfsbNOBmYb6d

“If you are terrified of vulnerability, best of luck having mental toughness.”This week on the OA podcast Patrick and Daniel are joined by author, coach and mentor Todd Herman who trains and educates professional athletes, leaders, and public figures on performance, strategy, mind-set, and execution.Starting a peak performance and coaching service in 1997, Todd has been closely involved in the field ever since. Despite struggles starting his business, the Canadian was able to build a strong, successful company and built a very large collection of clients across the sporting world, even to the point where he was working with different people in over 85 separate sports.Leveraging this expertise into developing his own method for boosting athletic performance and into releasing his bestselling book ‘The Alter Ego Effect’, Todd has seen his success just grow from there.He speaks to Patrick and Daniel about how he has started to bring breath work into his teaching and how he helps give athletes the tools they need to prepare mentally and find consistency.

“When you understand the principles of what you’re actually doing with your nervous system, it’s just a lot more straightforward.”This week on the OA Podcast, Patrick and Daniel speak with yoga master, TEDx Speaker, podcaster, writer, and entrepreneur extraordinaire Lucas Rockwood.Lucas is the successful founder of YOGABODY and since the earliest days of his love affair with yoga he has made it his goal to find out the relationship between yoga and breathing and he admits, it has not been an easy road to walk.Yoga was the saviour of Lucas who was a very unhealthy twenty something in 2002. He worked a job he hated, was abusing drugs and alcohol and only fuelled himself with quick and easy junk food. Something had to change, and for Lucas that change came after a challenging but rewarding yoga class.Since then, he has travelled the world to work with master yogis and continues his journey to clearly define the breathing exercises for yoga. He notes that the main focus in yoga classes is on the poses and, while essential, this can often mean participants are lacking in the specifics of how to breathe for various postures.It a goal of his to educate the yoga community about the importance of the specific breath for the right posture.

James Cannings “Kids are growing up and are now coming into the workforce. And in another ten years they're gonna make up a big part of that workforce and they're angry.”In this week’s episode, Patrick and Daniel are joined by James Cannings, Sustainability Officer for advertising firm MSQ. James was the co-founder of MMT digital which he grew from a staff of 3 to over 100.The company was acquired by MSQ where James now serves as Sustainability Officer. While much of his focus is on external environmental sustainability, he also points to the importance of internal sustainability as regards our own health and wellbeing.James explains how he is role is a much newer one to the corporate world and is constantly evolving. Currently his focus is on environmental sustainability but he admits he has a “deep fascination” with broader sustainability across the supply chain, the workforce and beyond. He points out that the future for sustainability may be very positive thanks to a younger generation that are more concerned about their health and wellbeing and have seen what previous generations have done to the environment.James also takes us through his own internal sustainability journey as he turned to yoga and better eating in his 30s as the pressure of selling his company lead to poor health and eating habits. It's a journey he says he could not have made without the help of his wife Em.For more on the Oxygen Advantage visit www.oxygenadvantage.com.Or check out Season 1 of the podcast athttps://open.spotify.com/show/5XTS4B3ODaEfsbNOBmYb6d.

“There are three main physiological targets that you can hit when you do any sort of training session; Aerobic Target, Anaerobic Target and Neuromuscular Target.”This week on the OA podcast Patrick and Daniel are joined by author, consultant and expert in high intensity training, Dr. Paul Laursen to talk about his work.An avid sportsman throughout his life, Dr. Laursen describes himself as a “failed athlete” who had taken a deep interest in sports from an early age. He was able to leverage that love of sports into his successful career in medicine and sports science, specialising in High Intensity Training for his PHD.While in a professor at Edith Cowen University in Perth, Australia, he met and carried out many clinical studies on Interval Training with his long term colleague Martin Buchheit. Following the successful publication of many papers and a large review of their work they co-wrote the very successful ‘Science and Application of High Intensity Interval Training’.Dr. Laursen outlines some of the reasoning and methods behind his research and explains how he has started to put more of a focus in his work on breathing to see if performance can be improved at high intensity through targeting and conditioning the respiratory muscles.