What do I need to do to breathe better?

There’s something called the respiratory quotient, which is the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide (CO2) that happens in your body. Fat has the lowest RQ at .7, meaning you’ll get the lowest amount of CO2 but the most amount of oxygen. This is why a lot of people report that they’re breathing better on the ketogenic diet, even if they have COPD, asthma, or emphysema. Plus, they can go longer when they exercise.

Depending on the amount of ketones in your body, the RQ may even be a little lower; potentially as low as .66 then ranging to .73. Protein has a slightly higher RQ at .8. But check this out: carbs are 1.0, meaning they give off the most amount of C02 and the least amount of oxygen.

Now, that being said, I want to bring up the concept of ketoacidosis.

When your body is in an acidic state, you have a difficult time breathing. More CO2 than oxygen is being produced, but for a different reason than I described earlier in this video. If you're concerned about ketoacidosis, I’ll define what it is.

Not only does the pH drop by a slight degree, but your blood glucose will be very high; on the order of 300 or more. When you’re on the ketogenic diet and you’re not a diabetic, your blood sugars are going to be more like 80, 70, 0r 60. In other words, quite low. You’d have to be a diabetic type 1 for it to be as high as it would be in ketoacidosis.

And this situation of extremely high blood sugar occurs when you have no insulin going on. So you’d have to be a type 1 diabetic, who hadn’t taken their insulin, for your blood glucose to get so out of control. Add in a very high level of ketones plus acidic blood, and the dangerous condition of ketoacidosis will result. So I just want to clear this up because sometimes people are confused and concerned that ketoacidosis is a common risk on keto. It’s not.

Another type of acidosis is lactic acidosis; which, ironically, is a side effect of the diabetes drug metformin. If you experience this, take vitamin B1 and calcium.

To summarize, the keto diet has the benefit of generating less CO2 and more oxygen to help you breathe better.