“If I had to limit my advice on health to just 1 tip, it would be simply to learn how to breathe correctly.” – Dr. Andrew Weil
The human body can endure weeks without food and days without water, but only a few minutes without air. Throughout the ages, healers, and physicians, psychologists and spiritual guides have used the power of the breath to attain mental, physical and spiritual wellness. Today, their secrets are available to us as a pathway to a calm, focused mind, an energized, healthy body, and a peaceful spirit.
We breathe unconsciously by default, leaving the controls to our autonomic nervous center, which is regulated by the hypothalamus. The autonomic nervous center is also in charge of our primitive fight-or-flight response. When you perceive threat or danger, your fight-or-flight response automatically activates. Your body readies itself for the emergency by tensing your muscles, increasing your heart and breathing rate, dilating your pupils, and slowing down or stopping your digestion.
While this emergency reaction and the stressed breathing that accompanies it saved our hides back when we were constantly fighting off and running from predators, it does not serve us well now.
Unfortunately, this extreme physiological response can be stimulated by daily stressors such as commuting to work, undergoing an annual review, missing a flight, arguing with your partner―you get the idea. Basically, everything and anything that triggers stress can send your system into fight-or-flight overdrive. With stress levels being what they are in our fast-paced society, many of us walk around stress breathing―short and shallow breaths from our chests.
Compounding the effects of chronic stress are sedentary lifestyles, unhealthy diets, poor postures, lack of fitness and obesity, all of which further compromises our breathing and puts us at risk for serious health complications. Who knew that as society evolved, our basic physical functions such as breathing and moving would devolve to the point of us needing an intervention.
Breathing and Your Lifespan
“How well you breathe is the best indicator of how healthy you are and how long you’ll live.” ― Belisa Vranich, MD
The groundbreaking Framingham study that followed more than 5000 men and women for more than 3 generations found that the most significant factor in a person’s health, vitality and longevity is how well you breathe. Specifically, they focused on an individual’s forced exhalation volume (FEV1) and discovered that it was a reliable predictor of how long a person was going to live. The good news is that anyone, even those suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD), can easily improve their breathing style and increase their vital lung capacity.
Inadequate oxygen
At the cellular level, your body is fueled by oxygen. Poor breathing and lack of oxygen create an imbalance of oxygen in the body, contributing to and exacerbating many health conditions.
Stress breathing puts stress on all of your cells and wears them out faster, overloading your immune system and thus making you more susceptible to disease. As stressed cells accumulate, they shift your body’s pH and acid levels out of balance, disrupting homeostasis.
Inflammation and Disease
Breath (oxygen) is the body’s natural anti-inflammatory agent. Low-grade inflammation from chronic hypoxia (shallow breathing) can further compromise the function of your immune system. During inadequate oxygen intake or hypoxia, the body uses various mechanisms to compensate, which may induce inflammation. Specifically, the production of adrenaline, histamine, cortisol, norepinephrine, and epinephrine set off a cascade of inflammatory events.
Inflammation is a major contributor to many serious health conditions, including allergic diseases like asthma, arthritis and Crohn’s disease, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), certain cancers and certain infections. It is now thought that chronic inflammation may also play a role in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, and cardiovascular disease.
Imbalance
Oxidative stress is a term that describes the imbalance between the production of free radicals and the body’s ability to counteract or detoxify their harmful effects through neutralization by antioxidants. Oxidative stress is thought to play a role in the development of many diseases, including both types of diabetes.
Chronic stress breathing, oxidative imbalances, inflammation and a compromised immune system can leave your body weak, sick and susceptible to a range of serious health conditions and diseases, and a shorter lifespan. Simply by improving your breathing, you can help your body combat oxidative stress and flush out toxins, free radicals, and inflammatory molecules.
Sickness and Premature Death
―Paul Check, holistic health practitioner and C.H.E.K Institute founder
Aging
Low-grade inflammation in both the immune and central nervous systems is associated with aging and thought to contribute to many age-related diseases.
Arthritis
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is also known as inflammatory arthritis. The link between inflammation and insufficient oxygen is well established, which indicates that lack of oxygen may contribute to RA.
Asthma
Allergic asthma is also a chronic inflammatory condition that may be caused or worsened by inadequate oxygen.
Brain function, degeneration, and dementia
Twenty percent of the oxygen you breathe is for your brain and its optimal functioning. If you breathe poorly, you may experience difficulty concentrating and learning compromised judgment and memory problems. Oxygen deprivation to the brain is evident in all forms of dementia.
A delicate balance exists between your brain and your immune system. Normal activity promotes learning, memory, and neuroplasticity, which is the adaptability and ability to create new neuropathways. When low-grade inflammation is present, scientists believe it may play a role in the brain’s neurodegenerative processes.
Cancer
Scientists have linked hypoxia with the inflammation present in certain cancers.
Cardiovascular disease, coronary artery disease (CAD) and atherosclerosis
It is well recognized that inflammation plays a pivotal role in the development, progression, and complication of atherosclerosis. Commonly known as hardening of the arteries, this condition is characterized by the buildup of plaque inside the artery walls, which narrows the arteries and slows the flow of blood. Usually caused by atherosclerosis, CAD is the most common type of heart disease, resulting in arrhythmias, heart failure, and heart attack. CAD is also the leading cause of death in the United States. While the exact role of inflammation in cardiovascular disease has yet to be deciphered, it is present in patients who have suffered strokes and heart attacks.
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
One of the most important aspects of damage in COPD appears to be oxidative stress and the sustained activation and infiltration of other immune cells, which leads to damage and cell death.
Digestive dilemmas
Breathing muscles stimulate the processes of digestion and elimination. Chronic poor breathing makes you more susceptible to acid reflux, constipation, bloating, gas and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
Emotional health
“Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.”
– L. Frank Baum
People with poor breathing habits are more likely to experience anxiety, panic attacks, and depression.
Lethargy and fatigue
Stressed cells that are chronically deprived of oxygen underperform, as does the entire body that houses them. Without oxygen, the body goes into a slow-motion preservation mode to conserve the energy it has.
Hypertension
Under suboptimal oxygen conditions, the blood vessels constrict, which can lead to high blood pressure. Studies have shown that when people with hypertension practice breathing more slowly several minutes a day, their blood pressure goes down.
Infections
Scientists have linked hypoxia with the inflammation present in certain infections.
Insulin resistance and obesity
An oxygen supply and demand imbalance cause adipose tissue hypoxia (ATH) and an increase in inflammatory cell-signaling proteins in fat cells. Scientists believe this imbalance may play a significant role in a variety of disorders associated with obesity and with insulin resistance.
Headaches and migraines
Stress is a common trigger of both headaches and migraines. A tight neck and tight shoulders from shallow chest breathing can also contribute to the problem. De-stress techniques such as rhythmic breathing, deep breathing and visualized breathing can help relieve a headache and migraine symptoms and potentially help prevent their reoccurrence.
Pain
Your body’s inflammatory responses from inadequate oxygen can be involved in the development and persistence of pathological, chronic pain conditions.
Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and period pain
A recent study suggests that period pain, a key symptom of PMS, is caused by acute inflammation. As mentioned, low oxygen intake can contribute to such inflammation.
Sleeplessness
If you function in constant fight-or-flight mode, as many of us do, it stands to reason that good sleep is hard to come by. (And we know lack of quality sleep can further compromise your health and wellness and undermine your quality of life on so many levels.)
Weight management
“80% of fat leaves the body via the lungs.”
– The Daily Journal on research from the British Medical Journal
Chronic poor breathing means that our bodies are operating inefficiently, which could contribute to weight issues. As we improve our breathing, our bodies operate more efficiently, getting the nutrients it needs, digesting food better and oxidizing fat. Some breathing experts also maintain that better breathing increases your desire to drink more water and decreases your taste for processed food. If your body gains a healthier balance through proper breathing, and you compliment that with good hydration and nutrition, your healthy dividends will increase and your weight may decrease.
Breathing better for better health
“Air, even more, important than food or water for human survival, must also meet basic requirements.”
―Patrick McKeown, breathing trainer
Counteracting your body’s inappropriate fight-or-flight stress response is an absolute imperative for your health and wellness. The good news is that you can do this easily and simply just by controlling your breathing.
When you breathe using your diaphragm, which is the flat breathing muscle located at the bottom of your lungs and at the top of your abdomen, you tap into your body’s natural relaxation response. Researchers have demonstrated that slow breathing techniques activate the parasympathetic (inhibitory) nervous system (PNS), thus slowing down body processes that may be in overdrive and/or disrupting homeostasis.
By breathing properly, you can switch off your stress response and switch on your relaxation response, reduce your inflammation, balance your immune system, calm your mind and relieve your anxiety, enhance your health, improve your mental and physical performance, and re-energize yourself.
Too little (shallow, stress breathing)
“When you’re not breathing with your diaphragm …, you’re breathing just enough to survive but not enough to thrive.”
―Belisa Vranich, MD
When you breathe using the top of your body (neck, shoulders, and chest), as many of us do, you are using and overusing muscles not intended for daily breathing. The neck, shoulders, and chest are designed for emergency breathing during fight or flight. Aside from shorting yourself of the many health benefits of breathing correctly, you are likely to experience chronic neck and shoulder stiffness and pain. When you train yourself to breathe properly through your diaphragm, you reap the health benefits of optimal oxygenation without the neck and shoulder pain.
Too much (overbreathing and mouth breathing)
It is carbon dioxide that allows the release of oxygen from our blood. When we overbreathe, we exhale too much carbon dioxide. (Overbreathing is characterized by chronic mouth breathing.) It causes the airways to narrow and the blood vessels to constrict. This limits your body’s ability to oxygenate itself and reduces the blood flow to your vital organs and the rest of your body. Just 2 minutes of overbreathing can reduce blood flow throughout the body, including the brain. Have you ever hyperventilated and felt dizzy or lightheaded? Those sensations are the extreme results of overbreathing. Imagine how a lifelong pattern of overbreathing and mouth breathing can adversely impact your overall health and wellbeing.
Just right
Scientists concur that the ideal breathing rate range is between 3.5 and 6 breaths per minute. This is the sweet spot when the rhythms of the heart, lungs, and brain synchronize. Scientists also agree that breathing in and out through your nose is the most beneficial way to breathe. One reason why it is the best way to breathe is that nitric oxide is produced inside the nasal cavity, and this gas is important for blood vessel regulation, homeostasis, the transmission of neural messages and optimal immune defense.
When you tap into the healing power of your breath, you can slow down your heart rate, restore your energy reserves, reduce inflammation and nurture a healthy mind, body and spirit.
Conclusion
Breath is vital and life-sustaining. Getting the oxygen we need is essential to living our best life. By breathing properly, you can activate your natural healing processes, reconnect with your true self and experience a more meaningful life. By simply improving the way we breathe, we can replenish ourselves and help optimize our health and wellness, quality of life and relationships.
The Medical University of South Carolina demonstrated that doing 2 sets of 10-minute breathing exercises can significantly lower levels of 3 cytokines associated with inflammation and stress. Dr. Golubic of the Cleveland Clinic's Center for Integrative & Lifestyle Medicine is a strong proponent of using breathing exercises as a tool to help people with asthma, COPD and heart failure. If you are ready to lower your blood pressure, reduce your cortisol levels, combat anxiety, alleviate panic disorders and curb food cravings, Dr. Weil and other health practitioners suggest that you breathe them away.
Instead of reaching for sleep aids, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and energy drinks, take a deep breath and consider the power of your natural elixir. Giving relief from immediate stress and health symptoms and providing long-term health benefits, “just breathe” is a prescription we can all fill for ourselves. Just a few minutes of controlled breathing a day can be transformative.
Improve your breathing, and nourish your mind, body, and spirit
Small, simple changes practiced daily can boost your health and your happiness. Imagine waking up feeling rested, improving your digestion, reducing your blood pressure and cardiovascular risk without medication, boosting your immune system, fending off premature aging, recovering faster from hard workouts, and experiencing a calm mind and spirit.
“Just breathe.”
– Anna Nalick