AirofitPRO Breathing Trainer/Virtual Breathing Coach for Respiratory Strength

Description

THE BASICS
Airofit generates resistance on your respiratory muscles - primarily the diaphragm and the intercostal muscles. This causes fatigue, which is then overcompensated by muscle tissue growth, making your breathing muscles faster, stronger and more efficient - just like any other muscle group.
Of all the body’s muscle groups, the ones with the power to make a fast difference for performance are the respiratory muscles - simply because we usually don't train them.
Together with breathing experts like
Mike Maric
, we have developed a range of breathing exercises that focus on different areas of your breathing to ensure you are able to unlock your full physical potential.
THE BREATHING TRAINER
Your Airofit breathing trainer provides adjustable airflow resistance, making your respiratory muscles work overtime. Depending on the selected training program, duration and intensity, you will be able to select the most appropriate resistance level.
Airofit's E-unit contains pressure sensors and a Bluetooth transmitter. This allows us to measure your breathing patterns and visualize them on your phone via the Airofit Sport mobile app.
THE MOBILE APP
Airofit has combined respiratory training with the latest technology by connecting the trainer to your smartphone.
Since all training is designed to be done separately form physical activity, your phone guides you through all exercises.
The app acts as a virtual breathing coach, giving you live feedback and ensuring all exercises are performed correctly since you see the level of your compliance. The access to your training data gives an overview of your progress over time.
IMPROVED RESPIRATORY STRENGTH
Stronger breathing muscles enable athletes on all levels to improve their performance in high intensity, as well as in endurance sports. Focusing on your breathing muscles, primarily the diaphragm,
prolongs the time until they fatigue
, and thereby prolonging oxygen supply to muscles used during exercise.
INCREASED VITAL CAPACITY
Airofit improves your Vital Capacity, which is the actual amount of air you can get in and out of your lungs. Stretching your diaphragm and intercostal muscles allows you to decrease the residual volume and
increase the amount of usable air
. This, of course, is interesting for athletes, as well as patients with asthma or COPD.
BOOSTED ANAEROBIC THRESHOLD
To work harder, our muscles require more energy than can be produced using oxygen. Our bodies cannot supply enough oxygen for such high performance. Getting your muscles used to an oxygenless environment ensures
prolonged ability to perform at high intensities
for longer periods.
AIROFIT CONCEPT HAS BEEN TESTED
AMBU Internationa
l has conducted a clinical survey regarding the effect Airofit has on exercise performance. The study was based on expiratory and inspiratory resistance training. The performance effect was measured in a standard Cooper running test before and after a two-month trial. 68 people were divided into 3 groups, which spent 8 weeks training with different resistance levels.
Group 1 was a control group and trained with virtually no resistance -o.5%. Group 2 trained with 33% resistance, while Group 3 had the the difficult task of 50% resistance training. The results show that those in Group 1 (control group) increased their performance by 0.5%, Group 2 improved by 8% and Group 3 improved athletic performance by 15%. This proves that the higher the training intensity using Airofit, the stronger the user’s respiratory muscles become, thereby enabling higher performance.
Why Inspiratory Muscle Training (IMT)?
Primary weakness of the inspiratory muscles, as well as the effects of static and dynamic hyperinflation, secondary to airway obstruction, induce weakening of inspiratory muscles, as well as increasing the elastic work of breathing. The resulting neuromechanical dissociation (an imbalance between demand and capacity) intensifies the sensation of dyspnoea. See extract from ‘Respiratory Muscle Training: Theory and Practice’ (McConnell, 2013) for a comprehensive description.
Furthermore, a recent review by O’Donnell and colleagues (O'Donnell, Milne, James, de Torres, & Neder, 2019) provides an authoritative, up-to-date overview of the mechanisms contributing to dyspnea in patients with COPD. They conclude that:
“
A common final pathway of dyspnea relief and improved exercise tolerance across the range of therapeuticinterventions (bronchodilators, exercise training, ambulatory oxygen, inspiratory muscle training, and opiate medications) is reduced neuromechanical dissociation of the respiratory system”
.
Evidence supporting IMT for patients with COPD
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonic Disease, also known as COPD is an umbrella term used to describe certain types of lung diseases such as emphysema, chronic bronchitis, and refractory asthma (COPD Foundation). Living with COPD limits people from doing physical activity. Airofit users who suffer from such diseases claim that they can improve their Vital Capacity and general wellbeing within weeks of starting to train with the device.
The strongest and most robust form of evidence is that derived using systematic review and meta-analysis. The most recent of these for IMT and COPD was published in 2018 (Beaumont, Forget, Couturaud, & Reychler, 2018). Based on their analysis of 43 studies, Beaumont and colleagues concluded that:
“IMT using threshold devices improves inspiratory muscle strength, exercise capacity and quality of life, decreases dyspnea”.
In addition, a recent physiological study from the laboratory of O’Donnell examined the effect of IMT upon diaphragm activation and exertional dyspnoea (Langer et al., 2018), demonstrating the basis for the physiological mechanisms underpinning the benefits of IMT. The study showed that,
“8 wk of home-based, partially supervised IMT improved respiratory muscle strength and endurance, dyspnea, and exercise endurance. Dyspnea relief occurred in conjunction with a reduced activation of the diaphragm relative to maximum in the absence of significant changes in ventilation, breathing pattern, and operating lung volumes”.
See also the evidence cited by O’Donnell and colleagues in their 2019 analysis of underlying mechanisms (O'Donnell et al., 2019).
Evidence supporting IMT for patients with asthma
According to the Global Asthma report 2018, Asthma affects 339 million people worldwide. Athletes who use Airofit and suffer from Asthma have positive feedback in terms of improving the way that they cope with the disease.
There has been far less research on the effects of IMT with patients who have asthma. A 2013 Cochrane systematic review (Silva et al., 2013) concluded that,
“There is no conclusive evidence in this review to support or refute inspiratory muscle training for asthma. The evidence was limited by the small number of trials with few participants..”.
Notwithstanding, there are a number of similarities between the neuromechanical mechanisms intensifying dyspnoea in acute asthma and in COPD. Accordingly, it is reasonable to suggest that, for at least some people with asthma, IMT will have the same benefits as have been shown for patients with COPD (Beaumont et al., 2018; O'Donnell et al., 2019). Furthermore, based on the observation that,
“
IMT has been shown to decrease dyspnea, increase inspiratory muscle strength, and improve exercise capacity in asthmatic individuals”
, a 2016 narrative review (Shei, Paris, Wilhite, Chapman, & Mickleborough, 2016) recommended that:
“In order to develop more concrete recommendations regarding IMT as an effective low-cost adjunct in addition to traditional asthma treatments, we recommend that a standard treatment protocol be developed and tested in a placebocontrolled clinical trial with a large representative sample”
.
The most recent randomised controlled trial of IMT with patients who have asthma (Duruturk, Acar, & Dogrul, 2018) concluded:
“These findings suggest that IMT may be an effective modality to enhance respiratory muscle strength, exercise capacity, quality of life, daily living activities, reduced perception of dyspnea, and fatigue in asthmatic patients”.