- Updated on September 23, 2019
Proofread by Samson Hui Proofreader on July **, 2019
By Dr. Artour Rakhimov, Alternative Health Educator and Author
Many pages of this site provide ranges for the CP test (or the DIY body oxygen test) that generally guarantee the absence of some health symptoms or those chronic diseases that are based on low body oxygenation. This can create a wrong impression that CP is the only factor that determines one’s health and symptoms. This page provides examples related to other factors that influence health.
First of all, as it was mentioned on the CP test web page, there are some (rare) exceptions when the CP test does not represent their body O2 and health. This relates to people with denervation of respiratory muscles, resected carotid bodies, and near-death experiences due to asthma attacks. People with sleep apnea and blunted or lost CO2 sensitivity can also have exaggerated CP test results.
Apart from these situations, there are more common cases when people can experience increased symptoms at higher CP levels.
Examples of factors that do affect health
A person with epilepsy can have seizures during sleep even at 20+ s for the morning CP (and larger daily numbers), but is free from seizures during sleep at about 15 s for the morning CP if he or she is grounded during sleep.
Similarly, a person with hypertension may still have high blood pressure at 25 s for her minimum daily CP in the condition of electrical insulation from the Earth, while grounding could normalize her blood pressure even at 20 s CP. Similar cases are possible for problems with heart palpitations and night sweats or hot flashes.
Sometimes, people practice breathing exercises with food in the stomach. This can lead to the development of inflammation, irritation of the gut, and the appearance of digestive problems which lead to abnormally low weight. Although they can increase their usual CPs nearly 2 times, e.g., from 10 to 20 s, they can have more symptoms and worse health at higher CPs. Common symptoms are poor sleep, inability to exercise, low energy levels, and mental fog.
Apart from grounding and body weight, there are other factors that affect health.
For example, ideally, someone with cancer should work hard to get 35+ s CP 24/7. Then his or her chances to eliminate tumors and malignant cells are very high (over 90%). But if this person gets stuck at about 25 s morning CP for months, the behavior of his tumor will depend on many other health factors including diet and exercise. For example, a raw diet (and good GI parameters) and daily physical exercise leading to strong perspiration will provide a significant advantage for the same CP level.
Imagine two people who have identical CPs (e.g., about 25 s) and a similar cancerous tumor. One of them eats a lot of junk food, practices breathing exercises for 2 hours per day, and does not do a lot of physical activity. The other person has a raw vegetarian diet with daily physical activity but does not include any breathing exercises. Both of them, as we said, have the same CP. In such conditions, the first person can expect worse long-term health.
Using functional foods, probiotics, herbs, and other supplements to fight chronic diseases can provide certain benefits, especially at higher CP levels (e.g., over 15-20 s). This means that someone who gets a certain CP level mainly by breathing exercises can have poorer health and more symptoms than a person who has the same CP but uses a larger variety of natural approaches and maybe even spends less time on breathing exercises.
Even in relation to breathing itself, apart from the CP, such health factor as diaphragmatic breathing (vs. chest breathing), and possibly breathing frequency, can play a large role in symptoms and well-being for a certain CP. There are thousands of people who learned the Buteyko method and got up to about 20-25 s for their morning CPs, but some of these students achieved diaphragmatic automatic breathing at rest, while others have remained chronic chest breathers.
These examples are not intended to reduce the value of the CP or Buteyko breathing exercises and other breathing practices, but rather, to show that using a variety of factors that affect health helps to have a smoother CP progress and better long-term wellbeing.