When the cells start working harder as when starting to run, they don’t have enough oxygen in them to fully digest the sugar they are burning. What ends up happening is that acid builds up within the cells and leaks into the blood. The acid itself can both act as a warning in the breathing center but also starts to act on the red blood cells to mildly encourage oxygen to be released into the cells that need it.
Normally, you get warmed up and start to breathe easier but it depends on the excitability of your nervous system as well as the capacity of your endurance system. If for any reason the system is not converting to an endurance metabolism in which very little acid is produced, the excitable metabolism will continue. One of the consequences of this is chest breathing. The goal of chest breathing is to rid the body of acid, which is designed for shorter periods of sprinting and not for prolonged running. The end result is a depletion of carbon dioxide which would probably explain the tight chest a shutting off of digestion.
One solution is to desensitize the breathing center via hypercapnic breathing. We use Frolov’s Respiratory Training Device for this. In more severe cases it is better to take a break from running and do something a little more mild, or jog a few minutes and let the acid build-up a little, then walk a few minutes. Those nerve fibers detecting acid and carbon dioxide are adapting if the levels are mild and your brain will get used to it without panicking. It is also critical to train abdominal/side-breathing to be used during the running and it should fix it.
One Response
Hi, this is a comment.
To get started with moderating, editing, and deleting comments, please visit the Comments screen in the dashboard.
Commenter avatars come from Gravatar.