Why Does The Oxygen Advantage Focus On Breathing Techniques?

My adopted younger sister, Marissa Payton, loves pulling pranks on others. But I'm the only one who gets hurt in her pranks. Last year, she and our older brother, James Payton, locked me up in a cold storage room. Because of that, I'm afflicted with a case of severe asthma. James apologizes to me before telling me that he'll take me cave diving just to make it up to me. Marissa tags along with us on the trip. She keeps casting me malicious glances every now and then. Feeling rather uneasy, I quickly get into the water just so I can get away from Marissa. But when I'm 65 feet deep, I feel a wave of suffocation hitting me all of a sudden. It turns out that Marissa has secretly shut off the oxygen supply. I can hear Marissa's smug laughter ringing out from the underwater communicator. "Look, Jamie! I told you that Nat would fall for it again!" James' voice is filled with affection. "Leave it to you to be smart enough to think of such a prank to play on your sister, you little imp." My face has gone blue from the suffocation. I struggle with all my might in an attempt to turn on the bailout cylinder, only to feel my hands getting slapped away from them thanks to Marissa, who has swum over to me. She then whines into the communicator, "Look at how dramatic Nat is being, Jamie! She can't stand the suffocation at all even though it's only been a few seconds!" I hear James' icy and aloof voice reverberating in my earpiece. "Just hold on a little longer. Look at how delicate you are! It hasn't been all that long, yet you already can't stand it. How humiliating. You're not even in the same league as Mari!" This time, I can only stare at James in despair as my complexion slowly goes purple. Has he forgotten what happened to me? Thanks to their prank, my lungs have already sustained irreversible damage. It's getting more and more difficult for me to breathe. Finally, my vision goes black, and I collapse in the dark bottom of the sea. This prank isn't funny at all, James. This time, I'm going to die for real.

My sister was autistic. The doctors called it "severe sensory overload." The rule was simple: No sudden noises. Ever. So my whole life was set to mute. I never wore heels. I never raised my voice. I wasn't even allowed to laugh. It was all to keep her from having a meltdown. My father, Victor, the Don of the Castellano family, would grip my shoulder. His face was a mask of apology. "Sera, you're my good girl. Protecting your sister is our duty. You're healthy and strong. You can sacrifice a little for her, can't you?" That day, I was on the second-floor terrace and accidentally knocked over a pot of white roses. The sound of it shattering sent my sister, who was sunbathing in the garden below, into a meltdown. For the first time, Victor glared at me like I was the enemy. He roared, "Can't you just be quiet? Do you want to drive her insane?" My sister backed away in terror, right into a glass table, and let out a piercing scream. Victor charged past me, a blur of rage and panic. He slammed into me on the stairs as I was running down to help. I lost my footing and crashed chest-first into the sharp corner of a wrought-iron banister post. Pain exploded in my chest. I opened my mouth to scream, but only silence came out. My family swarmed around my shrieking sister. No one even glanced at me. My lungs filled with blood. I was drowning on the floor. They all thought my sister, the one with autism, needed the family's comfort. They thought I just took a fall. That I could wait. They were wrong.

After my fiance’s childhood friend found out I was born with a heart condition, she secretly poured a high-dose energy drink into my champagne. The moment I drank it, my heart started racing, and stabbing pain spread through my chest. In a panic, I tore open my only emergency medication, but the water I used to take it had been swapped with strong lemon water. As soon as I drank it, my face went pale. I lost all strength and collapsed to the ground. “Lemon water’s full of vitamin C. It helps with hangovers and keeps you healthy.” Charlotte Whitmore laughed so hard she nearly doubled over. With her arms crossed, she looked at my fiance, Ethan Cross, the boss of the Rolling Stones. “Ethan, your fiancee’s acting is incredible! “I’ve been a doctor for years, and I’ve never seen anyone react like this to a little champagne and lemon water.” I bit my lip until I tasted blood. The pain made my eyes sting, and I clutched Ethan’s leg. “Honey, please, call an ambulance! I can’t take it anymore…” For a moment, his expression wavered, but the guests quickly cut in. “Come on, stop pretending! Nobody dies from a bit of champagne and lemon water.” “Yeah, you’re just jealous Charlotte got promoted and didn’t want to toast to her.” Ethan’s face turned cold again. He yanked my hand off and stepped away. “Charlotte’s a doctor. You’ll be fine with her here.” I stopped begging and texted my father asking for help.

Love can hit you when you least expect it. It could be a soft easy wind that caresses you and gets stronger over time till it absorbs into your body and heart. Other times it can hit you like a gale-force wind and take every breath you will ever have. Laken stole my breath. She was my gale-force wind, and I will gladly give her every breath I have just to keep her safe, alive, and mine. If I have to live without her then I don’t want my breath. I don’t want anything but her. I will go to hell and back to get her from the grips of death.

The first sign wasn’t the deaths. It was the air. When twenty-five-year-old ER doctor Naomi Sinclair notices healthy people collapsing for no medical reason, she expects to find a virus, a toxin, or something medicine can explain. Instead, every test points to the impossible. Her patients are breathing. Their blood carries oxygen. Yet their bodies are dying as if they never inhaled a single breath. As panic spreads across New York and all over the world, a powerful company called Aelion introduces a revolutionary device that seems to keep people alive when nothing else can. At the center of it is Aiden Vale, a calm, brilliant executive who always seems to arrive with exactly what the world needs. The more Naomi works beside him, the harder it becomes to ignore the connection growing between them and the questions she can’t stop asking. Then a scientist disappears after revealing a terrifying discovery on live television. Mysterious warnings begin appearing in Naomi’s life. Overnight, the impossible becomes ordinary, and she soon realizes the greatest threat may not be the people who are dying, but the reason they’re dying at all. As the air grows deadlier and the line between salvation and deception begins to blur, Naomi must decide who to trust before every breath becomes a luxury. But when the person holding the answers is also the man she’s falling in love with, how do you save the world without losing your heart… or your very last breath?

I am a firefighter. A beam crashes onto me in the middle of a burning building. At the same time, my oxygen is about to run out. I writhe and struggle as much as I can to reach for my backup oxygen canister, only to feel my fingers brushing over a bottle of water instead. When I turn around, I see my wife, Leah Sawyer, giving the last backup oxygen canister to her new mentee, Roderick Wyndham. I begin calling out to her via a walkie-talkie. "Leah, I'm being pinned down right now, and my oxygen's running out! Where is the oxygen canister?" As Leah shields Roderick behind her, she replies impatiently, "I've already given it to Roderick. It's his first time inside a burning building, so he's frightened. Having an extra canister on him gives him a sense of security. "You're already a veteran firefighter, so you can just think up a way to resolve your situation. Don't go around wasting precious resources." I can feel thick smoke infiltrating my lungs at that moment. Feelings of asphyxiation soon overwhelm me. "My leg is broken, so I can't move at all! Without oxygen, I won't be able to hold out till I get rescued!" But Leah merely chortles in response. "Stop playing the pity card! Every time we're out on a mission, you're always the cowardly one who's terrified of dying! You have zero sense of dedication at all! I shouldn't have let you join the firefighting squad, to begin with! "What's the use of you clinging to the equipment? Giving it to the newbies is the best way of maximizing its value!" I can only smile bitterly in response. Using what's left of my strength, I switch to a public channel and begin reporting to the command center. "For the record, Captain Leah Sawyer deliberately tampered with the essential rescue equipment in order to protect Roderick Wyndham, causing me, a fellow firefighter, to be trapped in a deadly situation. "I hereby request the immediate activation of the Firefighter Emergency Evacuation Act. Also, I formally charge Leah with gross negligence and attempted homicide."