First, the Wiktionary definition:
hypoxia (plural hypoxias) (pathology) A condition in which tissues (especially the blood) are deprived of an adequate supply of oxygen
Second, two views:
1. According to this article from the American Cancer Society, cancerous tumors often thrive in part because they don’t receive an adequate amount of oxygen from the blood. They are hypoxic. Aerobic exercise may increase the flow of oxygen to the tumor and result in (1) fewer cases of metastasis and (2) better results from radiation and chemotherapy.
But why take my word for it? Bradley Behnke, Ph.D., a physiology researcher at Kansas State University, explains it nicely. Bolding mine:
“Hypoxia is a common phenomenon which occurs in almost every solid tumor – brain, lung, breast, and prostate – and if the tumor is hypoxic, the prognosis for the patient is poor, resulting in significantly shorter survival and recurrence-free survival of patients versus those with a non-hypoxic tumor,” says Behnke. “But exercise training seems to alleviate this hypoxia almost completely.”
Hence we have another case of heroic aerobic exercise helping a human to hinder the spread of a harmful unhealthy disease. Hallelujah!
2. If you swim for exercise, you can incorporate hypoxic training into your workout, which will increase your lung capacity and aerobic conditioning even as you temporarily deprive your lungs of oxygen. Here’s how:
- Say you’re swimming freestyle in a 25-yard pool and you plan to swim 500 yards at a steady pace. (That’s 20 pool lengths.) Swim the first 25 yards, breathing on every stroke (that is, if you breathe on your right side, do so each time your right arm swings out of the water).
- Count how many breaths you take swimming from one side of the pool to the other. This number becomes your “par,” as in golf.
- For the remaining laps, see how far you can get under par for each 25 yards. If your “par” on the first 25 yards was 30 (meaning you took 30 breaths to get from one side of the pool to the other), on the next 25 yards breathe only 28 times. Then on the next lap try to breathe only 22 times.
- Keep swimming all 20 laps without stopping, but maintaining or reducing the number of breaths you take for each lap. You may find it helpful to streamline your body and glide farther under the water when you push off from the wall, and to elongate each stroke – all marks of an elite swimmer.
- How low can you go? Can you swim the final laps breathing only a few times?
Professional swimmers know this as hypoxic training. You’ll find yourself gasping for air at the end. But your heart will be pounding, and long term you’ll increase your lung capacity and poop out less quickly on any kind of endurance exercise.
