Consequences of Shallow Breathing

You'll appreciate why deep breathing is so important for good health and well-being when you understand the long-term consequences of shallow, upper-chest breathing. So lets look at that now.

Breathing oxygenates every cell of your body, from your brain to your vital organs. Without sufficient oxygen, your body becomes more susceptible to all sorts of health problems. For example, in a study published in the Lancet, cardiac patients who took 12-14 shallow breaths per minute (six breaths per minute is considered optimal) were more likely to have low levels of blood oxygen, which "may impair skeletal muscle and metabolic function, and lead to muscle atrophy and exercise intolerance."

In contrast, deep breathing raises levels of blood oxygen, promoting health in many ways, from stimulating the digestive process to improving fitness and mental performance. Heart attacks, cancer, strokes, pneumonia, asthma, speech problems and almost every disease known to mankind is worsened or improved by how well we breathe. Deep breathing also has a direct salutary effect on obesity, since the cleansing, stimulating action of deep breathing improves metabolism and that, in turn, transforms deposits of fat into body fuel and added energy.

To function properly, our brain needs three times more oxygen than the rest of our organs, unless it's provided, the brain tries to get what it needs by drawing on the overall supply we provide through breathing. This is why so many people who sit on their butts all day doing mental work tend to have rundown bodies and a greater susceptibility to sickness and infections than people who lead vigorous lives. Sedentary people are permanently oxygen-starved. It's a condition that can be avoided with proper breathing.

We reach peak respiratory function and lung capacity in our mid-20s. But we start losing that capacity, from 9% to 25% every decade after that. So, unless we do something to maintain or improve our breathing capacity, it will decline, and with it our general health - and life expectancy. As we reach middle age, our lungs tend to become less elastic as years of shallow breathing begin to take their toll. Even the chest has a tendency to grow rigid, and one consequence of this deterioration in function is an accumulation of uric acid in the blood stream. That often leads to those vague, hard to pinpoint pains and general discomfort that doctors usually dismiss as being part of the natural aging process.

Given an optimal diet, the respiratory system should be responsible for eliminating 70% of our metabolic waste. The remainder is eliminated through defecation (3%), urination (8%), and perspiration (19%). This is an aspect of the respiratory process that we don't think about until we encounter someone with a major case of dragon breath. If you think that doing the bathroom thing everyday, and working up a good sweat every now and then, are important and healthy habits, you can imagine how important proper breathing must be.

If you are tired and cranky all the time, it's probably because you're worn-out and depressed from all the toxic gunk that your shallow breathing hasn't gotten out of your system. But don't worry! You will be well on your way to your old happy-go-lucky self as soon as you learn how to breathe properly.

Until next time - Peace.
Loriman Rhodell

When your friends are Friends

I'm going to digress from Health and Fitness, the primary focus of the blog every now and then, and talk about things that may not seem directly related. This post is about the importance of friends.

My "adopted little sister," Kseniya, sent me an email the other day asking me to sign up as one of her "friends" on FaceBook.com. Now I've always thought of those social network sites as Internet hangouts for kids. And while I'm not yet a complete curmudgeon, I am a bit long in the tooth to be hanging out anywhere. Registering at FaceBook.com is the sort of thing I would do on my own. But Kseniya, a thousand mile from here, reached out and asked me to do so - so I did.

That's an example of supporting a friend that's easy to understand; and it was easy to do. Here's another: Materials for this blog and a number of other projects are being researched, planned, and written from the home of a couple of Friends in Rockland County, New York. Lou and Alice. Quakers. I was talking with Alice as we sat at the kitchen table last night when Lou came in and handed me a framed statement printed on parchment. Here's what it said:

Receive Ye Welcome

Let the guest sojourning here know that in this home our life is simple: what we cannot afford we do not offer, but what good cheer we can give, we give gladly.

We make no strife for appearance sake. Know also, friend, that we live a life of labor, therefore, it at times we separate ourselves from thee, do ye occupy thyself according to thy heart's desire.

We will not defer to thee in opinion or ask thee to deter to us, what thou thinkest ye shall say, if thee wish, without giving offense. What we think, we shall also say, believing that truth has many aspects, and that love is large enough to encompass them all.

So, while ye tarry here with us we would have thee enjoy the blessing of a home, health, love, and freedom, and we pray that thou mayest find the final blessing of life - PEACE.

Reader, know that I am able to do what I do because I have had the wise counsel and loving support of friends today, and in days past; here and near-by. Some of them are many miles away; and some are on the other side of the world. But they all abide in my heart.

Be well, and Peace.
Loriman Rhodell

Breathing from their heels

One of my first martial arts instructors was an ex-marine who had studied karate while stationed in Okinawa. He knew enough to teach the basics, but we were a brunch of NYC 12-year old "know-it-alls." We could tell that he was no "Bruce Lee" and we had no problem telling him that whenever we had a mind to.

Maybe to support his rather shaky martial arts bona fides with us, he started dropping vague Eastern philosophical aphorisms during class, saying things like, "the sage Chaung Tzu says that most people breathe from their throats, but superior people breathe from their heels"

"Their heels!? Hey teacher, what were you talking about?" we would ask after class. He wanted us to call him sensei (which is what high ranking Japanese instructors are called), but he didn't look like a sensei to us. This was around the start of the martial arts craze in this country, and at the time we thought you had to be from Japan to be a real sensei; he was from New Jersey.

To us he looked just like one of the teachers at our junior high, so we called him what we called that guy, which was "Hey teacher." He stopped asking us to call him sensei and counted himself lucky that we just called him "teacher" when he heard some of the things we called a couple of the other instructors at the community center where we trained.

"Hey teacher, sounds like you've been reading those little pieces of paper they put in Chinese fortune cookies, again. Nobody breathes from their heels." Now if he were a "Bruce Lee" he might have been able to explain what the sage meant and perhaps showed us how to breathe from our heels as well. But he wasn't and he didn't. So I had to wait several years to learn how to do it. I'll tell you all about it soon.

Stay well and Peace,
Loriman Rhodell

Deep Breathing, The First Step Toward Fitness

Let's face it, getting fit and staying that way isn't easy. Just getting started can be difficult. That's why I decided to begin with "Deep Breathing." It's easy to learn, easy to do, and doesn't cost anything to practice. All you need is clean air and lungs, and you're good to go!

Remember that there are five life-sustaining processes that determine how fit we are:

Breathing (deep or abdominal, using the diaphragm),
Eating (a healthy diet),
Moving (sustained physical activities that increase the heart rate),
Resting (sleep, relaxation and meditation), and
Cleansing (fasting and detoxification).

All of these processes are inter-related. Once you've learned how to deep breathe, and made it part of your daily routine, you will effect positive changes in the other processes, because the breathing process impacts each of the other four directly.

So, of all the changes you may have to make to achieve an extraordinary level of fitness, changing the way you breathe is the easiest, requiring the least effort, and therefore should meet the least psychological resistance from you as you undergo the change. It's also a good place to start because so many of us - even those who make a conscious effort to take good care of ourselves - have unhealthy breathing habits.

We hold our breath when we shouldn't; we breathe high in the chest or in a shallow; uneven way. We breathe in patterns that have been unconsciously adopted or accidentally formed, and that are sometimes the result of an emotional trauma. Some of us have breathing patterns that can actually trigger physiological distress and psychological anxiety when we become stressed.

Most people here in the West just don't think that the way they breathe is important enough to be concerned about it. I can hear them now: "I feel fine" or "I'm in great shape." Then they give a litany of activities that they are engaged in that is supposed to "prove" that being a shallow breather is of no consequence: Run 2 - 3 miles a day; swim 10 laps; take a yoga class at the local "Y" 2 -3 times a week; lift weights 3 times a week; do pilates every day; and on and on... And then they say something like "and I've been doing this so-called 'bad' breathing , since... well forever."

So why should you take the time to learn how to breathe properly - even if it is easy to learn to do? After all, you're a weekend warrior, who runs a 2-minute mile; swim like a fish; does a perfect yoga headstand; bench-presses 200 lbs; and have a wonderfully sleek, toned pilates-look that's all the rage. Or maybe you're a couch potato fatty, who knows that it doesn't take a powerful set of lungs to change a TV channel - that's what the remote is for.

Like a lot of people, you probably feel that you are healthy if you are not suffering from illness or pain. The imbalances that are usually the root cause of many chronic illnesses manifested in middle-age, are the result of not breathing, eating, and moving correctly, or not resting and cleansing adequately over a long period of time. Unfortunately, most people just won't change the y do any of these things, including the way they breathe, unless they are compelled to do so. And while not breathing deeply doesn't appear to do any great harm immediately and directly, it does have its own long-term negative effects on the body. And that is the subject of my next post.

Until then, Peace.
Loriman Rhodell

When Lightening Strikes, Breathe Deep

I haven't finished writing about deep breathing yet. There are two, maybe three more installments to come before I discuss other practices that facilitate health and fitness. I was in the process of posting the next deep breathing article when we were hit by lightening. Well, we weren't actually hit, but it came close enough to necessitate an immediate change of plans - and put the fear of God in me.

Thunderstorms always seem to start somewhere else. You hear thunder, see lightening flashes and sometimes the rain in the distance, all long before any of it reaches you. Even when you are too busy to check the sky for signs of a storm, the increasing loudness of the thunder is usually a pretty good indicator that one is headed your way.

We pay close attention to the signs of thunderstorms around here. The lightening can wreak havoc on electronics like computers, so we routinely turn everything off at the first sign that a thunderstorm is headed our way. Surge protectors notwithstanding, it's better to be safe than sorry.

There were intermittent thunderstorms here the day I was ready to post the second breathing article. We would hear the sound of thunder in the distance, turn everything off, the storm would come, and after it passed on we would turn everything on again to squeeze in a bit of work before the cycle started again. It was during one of the lulls in the storm that I turned on my computer to post the article, when suddenly - without warning - the storm hit us again. And this time it was right outside the window. There was a simultaneous crack of thunder, loud enough to set my ears ringing, louder in fact than anything I can remember experiencing, and a blinding flash of lightening that produced a wave of electrical energy strong enough to disrupt our telephone transmissions. That was Thursday, July 21st, around four in the afternoon.

At first I thought that the lightening had hit the house or the ground near it, but the house wasn't damaged, and the wasn't a telltale scorch mark or grass fire outside. It was a tree across the road that got hit. It was blasted to bits, sending flaming pieces flying and starting a small fire on the roof of a neighbor's shed. The fire was quickly put out, the shed was saved, and we thought that that was the full extent of the damage, until we tried to get back online. The next day we learned the lightening strike had fried the modem. It took several days to get a new one, and several more days for me to get the laptop I use to access the new modem.

In the meantime, I used computers at the public library to check my email. I had gotten a lot of feedback from an initial group of 100 that I had invited to check out this blog. About 60 of you actually did take a look during the first 24 hours after I launched it. And some of you contacted me with observations and suggestions.

While most of you said that you liked the forest green motif, including the contrasting light green print against the dark green background, there were a few who said that that background made it difficult for them to read the text. That observation coupled with the fact that it is easier for search engines to read and index pages that have black text on a white background has prompted me to make some minor changes in the design. Now it should be easier for everyone, including search engines, to read the text.

In my next post I will tell you about long-term negative consequences of shallow, upper-chest breathing, as promised, that is, "God willing and the creeks don't rise." That's what my grandmother used to say whenever she made a promise to do something. Maybe grandma should have added "and if lightening don't strike" - but that's probably covered by the "God willing" part.

Until next time, Peace.
Loriman Rhodell