Remember to breathe
(better) Resolving to get healthier this year? A simple change can have a big payoff
Let’s face it. Most people find New Year’s Resolutions frustrating.
A recent study in the Journal of Clinical Psychology reports that fewer than half of Americans even bother making them, and those who do report a dismal success rate of eight per cent.
Men and women are equally likely to make New Year’s vows, though females incline more toward weight loss while men list quitting smoking more than women do. Getting organized is also near the top of the list.
Here’s an easy suggestion for a resolution: Improve your breathing. Since you have to inhale and exhale anyway, conscious breathing is not going to be timeconsuming like going to the gym, it costs nothing, and it could pay off with significant health benefits. Proper breathing may help reduce sleep apnea, which affects twice as many males as females, ease your snoring and reduce your blood pressure.
A reasonable place to start is to determine if you’re a chest breather or a diaphragm breather. I was recently in a class in Houston with Dr. John Demartini, a human behaviour and wellness specialist. He went around the room feeling our bellies to see if they pushed out during breathing, which indicates diaphragmatic breathing — a more efficient way to get oxygen to your cells.
You can practice it sitting in a chair or flat on your back, and the Canadian Lung Association suggests you start with five- to 10-minute sessions, several times a day. The association’s website, www.lung.ca, has full instructions and diagrams.
The next step up the healthy breathing ladder involves taking air in through the nose instead of the mouth. Experts say that most of us do too much mouth breathing, especially during strenuous exercise. In a recent column, Dr. Joseph Mercola suggests that 80 per cent of people in Western societies breathe incorrectly. “You may intuitively think that sucking in a large volume of air through your mouth would improve your oxygenation by sheer volume,” he writes. “But this isn’t the case — it actually decreases the oxygenation of your tissues.”
This is because of something called the Bohr Effect. Your blood becomes less efficient at releasing oxygen when its pH increases. This can happen when you don’t have enough carbon dioxide. Dr. Mercola writes that “the odds are that if you are breathing through your mouth during the day, you are also doing so at night, which can lead to several health problems like dehydration, snoring and sleep apnea.”
Mercola also provides evidence that mouth breathing can make exercise-induced asthma worse, especially in young patients. He suggests that, if left unchecked, mouth breathing in children can lead to crooked teeth, poor concentration and even altered face structures. Breathing through the nose, and more lightly, can help to avert these problems, and even reverse some ongoing symptoms.
Bringing air in through the nose also filters it and adds nitric oxide, a potent bronchodilator. But how do you become a nasal breather, short of worrying about it 24/7?
Most experts suggest setting aside some time each day to do breathing exercises, which will then become a natural habit. In the 1950s, Ukrainian physician Dr. K.P. Buteyko came up with a simple test to measure how well your body handles carbon dioxide. It involves taking in a small silent breath through your nose, then pinching the nose and holding your breath until you feel the urge to breathe. The number of seconds that elapse is called your “control pause.” It measures your tolerance to carbon dioxide. Full instructions are given at goo.gl/ JjA3Qn.
Most people come up for air in the 20- to 40-second range. Buteyko believed that times under 20 seconds indicated the likelihood of problems such as “coughing, wheezing, breathlessness, exercise-induced asthma, colds, chest infections and fatigue.” He suggested that people strive to get their control pause over 40 seconds, and that same website gives suggestions for accomplishing this goal.
No discussion of breathing would be complete without mention of the many forms of yogarelated breathing. Perhaps the best known is the alternate nostril technique called Nadi Shodhana Pranayama. It is said to calm and centre the mind and harmonize the two hemispheres of the brain. The iPhone and Android app stores are bursting with all sorts of guided breathing software. Some are “doctor recommended” and one, iPranayama, features novice, beginner, student, yogi and guru levels.
Diving into the yoga literature often leads to the sexual side of things, and the whole array of tantalizing Tantric breathing techniques. One involves synchronizing your breath with your partner’s during foreplay. An informal field study suggests this can lead to simultaneous orgasms as you “melt into each other.”
Still, before you and your beloved attempt the Position of the Moving Cobra, it might make sense to tackle the basics like nasal and diaphragmatic breathing. Like all health practices, it’s also wise to run your breathing improvement resolutions past your physician. As just one example, people who already have low blood pressure have been known to faint when they practice breathing techniques that have a blood pressure lowering effect.