is how you breath really that important?
There’s a lot of hoo ha around this topic right now, with books being published and apps being created for learning how to use the breath to bring about health and wellbeing.
But your body does its own thing with the breath… isn’t that enough?
So initially, when we see chronic changes in the breath, this may or may not result in dyspnea.
Dyspnea is a condition in which you experience or feel a shortness of breath, and it's also referred to as "breathing hunger" or "air hunger." Even so, you might not feel as though you're bringing enough oxygen into your body. But you could find this when you're feeling frustrated or when there's a deadline and you're nervous.
Even if you don’t feel that you’re struggling for breath, there are other symptoms that you may want to watch for.
Are you experiencing any of these?:
Mouth breathing (whole article on this one)
Chronic throat clearing
Constant sniffling
Regular yawning
Apnea
Snoring
So if you experience any of those, there is a real chance that it could connect to chronic breathing changes, and it may need some attention.
Symptoms of Dysfunctional Breathing:
Anxiety - The chicken or egg?
Symptoms of dysfunctional breathing include;
# Anxiety,
# Brain fog struggling to find words
# Feeling very flighty, jumping from one thought to another
# Nightmares
# Muscle cramps
# Feeling chronically exhausted
# Headaches
# Reflux
# Issues with your teeth
# Chronic throat infections or waking up feeling as though you've got a sore throat.
Learning how to breathe properly and train out the old habits of chest breathing was one of the biggest game changers for me when I was going through my glandular fever and chronic fatigue syndrome.
When you're working with your breathing exercises, it’s helpful to understand that we're affecting the centres in the brain that are responsible for breathing. Your medulla oblongata and pons are the brain parts where there's a lot of work done with the breath. Similarly to how we use yoga postures to shift the body and create new patterns of movement when we work with specific breathing exercises were working to create new neural pathways . It's almost like where we're calibrating these parts of the brain.
It's retraining that we're doing, which is why consistency is essential. Daily reminders for breathing is super useful and sometimes several times a day, especially if you've got quite significant patterns of short breathing, mouth breathing, and chest breathing, and we'll look a little bit closer at these.
Consider attaching your breathing exercises to some simple daily tasks, like drinking a cup of tea, or waiting for the kettle to boil. You can also set a little alarm on your devices to go off at the same time as a little reminder to breathe.
Of course there are a tonne of apps now on the market, using any of these is good, but you want to be able to develop your own awareness around your breathing.
The key thing is to action change.
Chronic Hyperventilation
There's a medical condition that’s called soldiers' heart, this was coined after World War I and what they found in soldiers coming back from the trenches was that they were experiencing an illness that wasn’t well understood at the time.
Initially, they thought it was a cardiac problem, but they discovered that essentially these soldiers were hyperventilating. This is interesting, and it makes absolute sense because one can only imagine what these soldiers went through and the traumas they experienced.
Shock and that trauma has the capacity to instantly change breathing patterns. The research has shown extensive physical and physiological changes from trauma and chronic stress.
Diaphragmatic Breathing
So if you struggle with any of the things that I've mentioned above, diaphragmatic breathing would be an excellent way to help ease some of these. Much research has now been done on the breath.
A good starting point is to aim for six breaths per minute. It needs to be diaphragmatic. So optimum breathing is diaphragmatic, meaning that you are utilising diaphragmatic movement.
Consider spending some time with a teacher who can really help you establish an effective breathing pattern.
There is a process to this and for optimum results you want to start with; proper training of the exhale, followed by proper training of the inhale, followed by lengthening or counting the breath. Then incorporating holds.
In my beginners courses… We start with class one… breathing, and that takes up the entire 60 minutes. Even then we revisit and add to it every week for 6 weeks. To give you some idea of how much emphasis and effort it’s given.
So we've talked about the idea that we're creating changes in neuroreceptors throughout breathing exercises and working with these habits.
How Diaphragmatic Breathing helps
Breathing for high blood pressure
Blood vessels being the key one here because when we're looking at the role of breathing exercises for blood pressure, this is where we start to see the link, right?
The research has shown that yoga has a role in helping to affect high blood pressure positively, and you know it's hugely linked to breathing.
When you breathe through your nose and using the diaphragm you create nitric oxide. This nitric oxide helps relax smooth muscle fibres in your body, and interestingly you have smooth muscle tissue in lots of places in your body, including your digestive tract and in blood vessels.
Headaches can also be due to the constriction of the blood vessels in the head. Something as simple as breathing effective diaphragmatic breathing through the nose can help with the relaxing of the blood vessels in the head and relieving headaches.
The list goes on, so you're not convinced how important breathing is, then I’m not sure what's going to do for you. Perhaps just try it for yourself 😉
When we look at how oxygen is carried around our body, it's moved around in our red blood cells attached to haemoglobin. The oxygen is released from the haemoglobin in the presence of carbon dioxide. So there is an optimum level of carbon dioxide in your body to help with oxygen release, the better the oxygenation of your cells the healthier your tissues, which is not what most people believe to be true.
This relationship between carbon dioxide and oxygen release is also relevant to brain function, there's been some research that have assessed brain scans. Looking at brain scans when they have increased the amount of carbon dioxide compared to brains with a lower amount of carbon dioxide in the system. They find up to 40% less oxygenation of the brain after one minute of hyperventilation.
So that's how significant the shifts are when we're doing these scans. Functioning with less oxygen to your brain cells, well I don’t need to go into the ins and outs of how that will impact your thinking and decision making right.
It’s why when stressed or anxious you want to put off any major decisions for a time when you’re calm and better oxygenated. To find out more on how stress affects your brain function head across to this article.
If you're breathing through your mouth, you're breathing into your chest. So head across to this article to find out more about that.
Remember this is something that you can work on and change with a little time and effort. The hardest time to practice this is when you’re in a state of high stress or panic so while you can remind yourself to breathe, it’s important to practice these breathing techniques at times when you’re somewhat relaxed. Before bed is ideal.
If you’d like to go through the entire process of breathing for health you can sign up the the online yoga platform and learn the entire process. Your first 7 days are complimentary and you can cancel out at any time.
Alternatively if you have particular concerns and want a personalised approach to your health and well being please complete the form below and request a one to one session.