Introduction – What is the breath?
In our lifetimes, we take about 600 to 700 million breath and consume about 15 to 17 million liters of oxygen in our lifetimes. We are oxygen machines, and we can live days or weeks without food or water, but only minutes without oxygen. Oxygen is the main fuel in the body for every cell.
We control our breath, and breathing strategies can be medicines and opportunities for improving our daily lives. Every aspect of our breath ,including the length of our inhale in relationship to our inhale, the speed of our breath, which nostril we use, and importantly, whether or not we breathe through the nose or the mouth, is available for pro-active management to get more oxygen into the body and manage our stress.
Being aware of our breath gives us the opportunity to have another great medicine in our healing and wellness toolkit.
The Science of Breath
Getting oxygen into the body is a two-part process. The first part involves having available oxygen in the body, and the second, is having carbon dioxide to release that oxygen from the red blood cells to the cells. Without carbon dioxide, we have no available oxygen.
The byproduct of breathing on the cellular level is the carbon dioxide we need to do just that. We breathe in oxygen and use some carbon dioxide to release oxygen, and some we simply exhale.
Story – Breathing Strategies can be a Medicine – My Story
During COVID, I got COVID and then got something called post-COVID asthma. COVID is very aggressive on the lungs. For the asthma diagnosis, I had rigorous testing to confirm this.
Using the technique of resistance breathing where there is resistance for exhaling, my lung capacity was brought back to normal, and my diaphragm was strengthened.
After a few weeks, I was again rigorously tested and deemed, asthma-free.
Story – Resistance Breathing – Lung Cancer Patients Story
Resistance breathing brings our lungs down even more, activating receptors for a relaxation response, as well as increasing the overall lung capacity.
One patient had half of his lungs removed due to a history of cancer and removal surgery. He could not walk upstairs without stopping at each step to literally, catch his breath. After using the device in image #1 for a few weeks, he improved the capacity of his remaining lungs so much so, he could walk up stairs normally and even commented, he forgot to stop at each step.
How Resistance Breathing Works
Resistance Breathing is where there is active resistance at the mouth, when exhaling and the best way to do this is with a simple device like shown in image #1, the relaxator device and its inventor, Anders Olsen. The device makes it slightly and safely harder to exhale.
That activity forces our diaphragm, a muscle and the manager of lung capacity, to work harder and get stronger. It is like doing pushups for the breathing system.
Slower rhythmic breathing like when there is resistance slowing down our breath, gives us more carbon dioxide which in turn, releases more oxygen.
Hyperventilation is when we have lots of oxygen, but no carbon dioxide, and we can even pass out since no oxygen is released by the carbon dioxide. We have lots of oxygen, but no carbon dioxide to release it into the blood.
Resistance breathing also causes a longer exhale. This can be done with the device as well as counting and exhaling twice as long as inhaling. The length of your breath, having a longer exhale, can impact your entire nervous system. Longer exhales than inhales involve the relaxation response, activation of the vagus nerve, and can calm us down and even resolve panic attacks as I have seen with patients.
More on Breathing as a Medicine
Resistance Breathing is great for improving overall lung heal but we should also consider two main types of daily breathing: mouth breathing and nasal breathing.
Our type breathing can determine our physical state of health. When one is a mouth-breather, they can have a weakened immune system, COPD, a CPAP machine, and overall poor energy and brain fog.
On the other hand, breathing through the nose supplies 20% more oxygen and gives much better clarity and overall health. Overall, when we have more oxygen, we have less inflammation, less disease, and even less cancer.
In the image (Image #3), we see identical twins. But, we can see that they are different and grew up to reflect the fact that one is a mouth breather, on the right, and one is a nasal breather, on the left. The entire structure of their face and jaw is different, with the twin on the right having her whole structure changed and narrowed..
Nighttime Nasal breathing
One of the most common examples of mouth breathing is when we are sleeping. This can even involve sleep apnea and snoring. To solve that problem, there is a simple technique. At night, wearing sleep tape over the mouth can force us to breathe through the nose instead of the mouth and can eliminate lots of health issues and help us get better sleep.
Conclusion – Breathing Strategies are Medicines
As we said, breathing is essential for life and there are many ways to manage this for improved health. Resistance breathing strengthens our lungs and increases lung capacity, and nasal breathing gives us 20% more oxygen and who wouldn’t like more oxygen in the body?
Avoiding mouth breathing when we are young, can even alter and preserve the structure of our jaws and teeth as you can see in image #3.
