Measure your breathing effectiveness with the BOLT Score (Body Oxygen Level Test)

Discover how your breathing impacts your health in this episode on the BOLT Score (Body Oxygen Level Test). Learn how a simple breath-hold test can reveal your breathing efficiency, stress levels, and overall wellbeing. You’ll be guided through the test step-by-step and shown how to use your results to improve your breathing, boost resilience, and feel calmer every day.

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Lisa

Multi-Award Winning Hypnotherapist, Healer, Breath Work Practitioner

& Spirit Release Practitioner

Contact: lisapryce-jones@outlook.com / 07427 451992

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Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Hello, welcome, Lisa here. In today's podcast, we're going to explore the BOLT Score, which is a simple test that reveals how you breathe. Let me firstly ask you a slightly unusual question. How long could you comfortably hold your breath after a normal exhale? Not a big inhale, not pushing yourself, just a gentle pause? Because the answer to that question might tell you more about your breathing, your fitness, and even your stress levels than you think. Today, as we explore the BOLT Score, the Body Oxygen Level Test, you will find out how you can use it to better understand your body and to improve your breathing. So, firstly, what is the BOLT Score? The BOLT Score is a simple, safe, and effective way to measure your functional breathing. It's not about how long you can hold your breath by force, it's about how long your body can comfortably tolerate a pause in breathing before you feel the first natural urge to breathe again. That urge is driven by carbon dioxide. And this is key because your sensitivity to carbon dioxide plays a huge role in how efficiently your body uses oxygen. So, in simple terms, your BOLT score, the body oxygen level test, gives you insight into how calm, efficient, and functional that your breathing really is. So why does it matter? It matters because a low BOLT score often points to overbreathing, breathing too fast or too much. And this can be linked to a wide range of health issues, including anxiety, stress, poor sleep, reduced exercise tolerance and fatigue. Whereas a higher BOLT score, on the other hand, is associated with better oxygen delivery, greater resilience to stress, improved endurance, and calm, steady breathing. So it's a small test with surprisingly big insights into your health and well-being. So let's try it together. I'll firstly explain it and then we'll practice it. We're going to take a normal inhale followed by a normal exhale and again another normal inhale followed by a normal exhale. And then we're going to squeeze our nostrils closed and we're going to count in seconds. And you might want to use your phone to do this for as long as you can until you get that first definite desire to breathe. Perhaps a slight contraction in your throat or the urge to inhale. We don't want you holding on as long as possible, it's that first definite desire to breathe. And when you get that release, continue to breathe, stop your timer or your counting, and that number in seconds is your BOLT score. So let's do it together now. Breathing in through your nose, breathing out through your nose, breathing in through your nose, breathing out through your nose, squeezing your nose, counting in seconds or setting your phone, and just distracting yourself as you look around you, perhaps noticing what you can see, what you can feel, what you can hear. Hold it as long as you can until you get that first desire to breathe. And when that happens, release your nose and note the number of seconds. Remember your BOLT score will change depending on your age, your fitness, and your health. However, if your bolt score is less than 25 seconds, you are considered to have dysfunctional breathing. And if it's over 25 seconds, it's considered to be functional. Therefore, recording this at this moment in time will help you as you do breathing exercises moving forward to monitor how your BOLT score changes. In due course, it will increase maybe just one second at a time. Remember, this isn't about competition, it's about awareness and taking action through your breath exercises to increase your BOLT score moving forward. Let's explore now why your bolt score changes. Because your bolt score isn't fixed, it can vary even from day to day, and several factors can influence it. Stress levels, anxiety can lower your score, sleep quality, poor sleep will often reduce it. With your exercise and fitness, regular training can improve it. With age, breathing patterns can change over time. And health conditions, particularly asthma, congestion or illness, can also have an impact. And with lifestyle habits too, such as mouth breathing, talking a lot, or even diet, can play a role. So if your score is lower one day, don't panic. It's not a failure, it's just feedback, it's awareness for you to take action. The good news is that you can improve your BOLT score, and simple practices such as breathing through your nose during the day, slowing your breathing rate, practicing some gentle breath holds, reducing unnecessary sighing or overbreathing, and ensuring that you're breathing in and out of your nose at night, using mouth tape if need be. Over time your body becomes more tolerant of carbon dioxide and more efficient with oxygen, and as a result, your BOLT score will gradually increase. So, on reflection, your breath is happening all of the time. But how often do you measure it or train it? Your BOLT score is a window into your breathing and your overall well-being. So use it, check in with it, track it, and most importantly, be curious about it. Because small changes in how you breathe can lead to big changes in how you feel. Thanks for listening.