Keys to Good Health by Good Breathing
A very common slogan among asthma sufferers is “When you simply can’t breathe, very little else matters”, alluding towards the desperateness of a single who can’t inhale the life-giving air. Is life-giving air the whole story on breathing? This article takes common breathing advice and provide reasons for its usefulness. It goes further and offers essential elements in breathing technique for better health.
Breathing just might be one from the most centrally integrated autonomous behaviours that reach well beyond a straightforward filling in the lungs. Garcia AJ writes this year:
“Breathing emerges through complex network interactions involving neurons distributed through the nervous system. The respiratory rhythm generating network comprises micro networks functioning within larger networks to build distinct rhythms and patterns that characterize breathing.”
The outworking of Garcia’s study can best be viewed when a body’s affected by strong emotions like fear & anger.
Mainstream advice for breathing is always to override the autonomous control and consciously inhale deeply from the nose and exhale over the mouth slowly with pursed lips.
Dr Carla Naumburg PhD of ‘Ready, Set, Breathe’ fame suggests breathing exercises bring mindfulness into way of life. By remembering to breathe, a location is created to recover calm reducing blood pressure and stress hormones so creating opportunity of situation control.
Professor Konstantin Buteyko (Russia 1923-2003) is credited to get a technique characterised by slow and reduced breathing along with spaced pauses of no breathing allowing Carbon Dioxide to develop to bursting point.
Breathing is often a relevant component with the practice of Yoga. Yoga breathing techniques typically accompany either different poses or some sort of meditation. Thus it is very to separate and ascribe the result on the breathing, poses or perhaps the meditation.
Pandit JJ, in 2003 tested 3 breathing methods for optimum Oxygen uptake, as follows:
1. Three (3) minutes of tidal breathing
2. Four (4) deep breaths taken within 30 seconds
3. Eight (8) deep breaths taken within 60 seconds
The Oxygen uptake was exactly the same for Items 1. & 3 and also a higher efficacy than for Item 2. His work illustrates that breathing strategy is important.
Enter Nitric Oxide (NO), a colourless gas using a half-life of merely seconds. Nitric Oxide (NO) was named “molecule in the year” in 1994 by Science Magazine.
In 1998 the Karolinska Institute awarded the Nobel prize to US pharmacologists Robert F. Furchgott, PhD, Ferid Murad, MD, PhD, and Louis J. Ignarro, PhD because of their discoveries from the role of Nitric Oxide (NO) as a signalling molecule from the cardiovascular system.
NO relaxes the graceful muscle in arteries providing a greater flow area for blood, thus reducing blood pressure levels and bring more nutrients to where these are needed. The importance of NO inside the human bodily functions can’t be overstated. Even though a large number of research papers happen to be written, World research proceeds. NO is implicated in heart health, lower high blood pressure, better of sleep and in some cases erectile dysfunction.
NO is produced inside sinuses, the greatest being the maxillary sinuses either side from the nose. They are closed chambers except to get a small soft-tissue opening referred to as ossium that’s open the olfactory airways.
There isn’t right or wrong strategy to breathe – the autonomous brain function sees for it that you get adequate oxygen into the system. However, it is possible to breathe to acquire maximum NO into the system. Here are 7 pointers to assist get this amazing gas into the bloodstream.
1. BREATHE IN FAST THROUGH YOUR NOSE.
Nose hair and constricted nose ducting ensure there is really a negative pressure within the airways. This partial vacuum causes the sinuses to deliver a smaller amount of NO-laden air for your inhaled breath. The harder you breathe inside the more NO the sinuses will deliver.
2. BLOCK ONE NOSTRIL AND BREATHE IN.
Blocking one nostril and instead the other nostril will heighten the partial vacuum to cause NO-laden air for being injected for your inhaled breath.
3. BLOCK BOTH NOSTRILS AND TRY TO BREATHE IN.
Close both nostrils and then try to inhale. This creates the greatest volume of vacuum with your respiratory system allowing NO-laden air being sucked from the sinuses. Of course you can only do this to get a short time before resuming normal breathing.
4. BREATHE OUT SLOWLY THROUGH YOUR MOUTH.
NO needs time to get absorbed in your bloodstream. Accordingly it is great to hold your breath so long as it is convenient. Alternatively exhale slowly to allow for the lungs time for it to absorb the NO.
5. HUM OR SING
Lundberg et al showed in 2003 that humming increases exhaled NO by 700%. Other researcher found a much greater increase in exhaled NO during humming. Problem is that it is tough to inhale while humming. Thus the sequence suggested should be to hum for 3 seconds then immediately inhale..
6. PRETEND TO SNORE
To overcome the issue of simultaneously humming and inhaling, it’s suggested to pretend to snore, making the sound as you were snoring. The snoring sound frequencies are inside the range with the maxillary sinuses natural frequencies approximately 110 to 350 Hz. Allowing the maxillary sinuses to resonate will pulse NO-laden air to the inhaled breath volume. Because snoring can be an inhaling manoeuvre the NO will achieve the lungs in greater volume.
7. VALSALVA MANOEUVRE
During a descent procedure inside an aeroplane headaches tend to be avoided by use in the Valsalva manoeuvre. This manoeuvre involves closing both nostrils while seeking to exhale till the ear drums ‘pop’. This has the issue of pressurizing the sinuses which upon subsequent inhalation release for most and inject NO-laden air to the olfactory airways.