Runners know that the way you breathe is key to performance when doing athletic training or covering long distances. Exercising muscle groups that we use for breathing help many runners to perform better and not be totally out of breath by the time they cross the finish line. One problem that occurs, however, is that a lot of runners tend to breathe by expanding their chests rather than the abdomen. Improved breathing, not only for athletes and runners but for everyone, concentrates energy expended and wastes as little as possible. Breathing from the chest, however, which seems to come more naturally to us when we are actively exercising, tenses up the upper part of the body and causes the shoulders to rise and fall. That kind of expenditure of energy is better used in the effort you put forth in pressing forward on the run. We can improve breathing and focus energy better by concentrating regularly on how to allow the abdomen to expand rather than the chest. When we inhale, the stomach should fill up and the belly should swell out a little. The chest, on the other hand, should remain relatively still. Breathing this way consciously, in measured increments or periods of times, is an exercise that will not only gradually improve breathing, but also build up the stomach muscles that we need to use in order to breathe healthily. If we really want to improve breathing and enhance performance—not only in track and field, but in the ways we expend energy just going through our daily lives— we will make the effort to take the time to learn how to breathe correctly. Another factor that is important to consider is that when we seek to improve breathing techniques, we should not...

Sleep apnea can be a terrifying condition from which to suffer, not usually if you are the one who suffers from it, but for a family member who lives with and witnesses it. Usually, it is accompanied by snoring, light sleeping, or possibly other restless bodily movements. When it occurs, you simply stop breathing. Your spouse may suddenly notice you are no longer snoring and become alarmed. It may last a few seconds, or even as long as two minutes. Your body forces you, in effect, to hold your breath while you are asleep. Sleep apnea is one way your body tells you that there is something physiological occurring with your breathing, and there are numerous, sometimes extremely impractical and even painful medical treatments for it. It may be beneficial, however, to listen to what your body is saying rather than merely try to treat the symptoms. Sleep apnea is basically your body telling you that it is getting too much oxygen (that is also the reason you are snoring – mucus has developed in excess in your nostrils to try to slow down the oxygen flow). Oxygen is a good element and is necessary for organ vitality. But too much of anything isn’t good for anyone, and in the case of taking in too much oxygen, also known as hyperventilation, too much means that the carbon dioxide you don’t exhale isn’t allowed to do its job. While the process of using oxygen in your cells produces carbon dioxide that we exhale, some of it remains in our blood in order to regulate how much oxygen is used in our cells. When oxygen floods the system, the carbon dioxide that remains in the blood is overwhelmed, and not able to regulate effectively. For some...

Anyone who has ever had asthma knows that it is a serious and frightening disease, not only because of its symptoms, but also because of the terror and panic of not being able to breathe and the real possibility of death. It is estimated that every day in the United States about forty-four thousand people have an asthma attack. Nearly ten percent of those have symptoms so severe that they go to an emergency room. Around a quarter of those who have an attack are actually admitted to a hospital. And every day, nine people die from asthma. That means that there are more than three thousand and three hundred deaths from asthma every year in the United States. And according to conventional medicine, there is no asthma cure. Given these kinds of stark statistics, it’s obvious that asthma should not be taken lightly. Death rates due to asthma have increased in the last thirty years by 50% across all groups, while an increase of deaths for those who are under nineteen is a startling 80%. According to the economists, the toll that asthma has on the medical industry in the United States now exceeds $18 billion. Facts and figures such as these could cause someone with serious asthma to start hyperventilating, but panic and fear is probably not the best path. Nearly sixty percent of all those who have asthma claim that they find relief from their symptoms by not only using their prescribed medication, but seeking alternative treatments to help them cope with symptoms. While some treatments claim to offer an asthma cure, almost all research had indicated that sufferers who practice breathing exercises – whether they learn it from various strands of Yoga, meditation, or from specialists who teach people how...

Adenoids, not to be confused with tonsils, are made up of lymphoid tissue in the upper pharynx. Enlarged adenoids are often the precursor to other health problems and symptoms that may not only decrease quality of life, but can also lead to more serious health concerns. When adenoids become increasingly enlarged, they cause the bronchial pathways to narrow and trigger the creation of more mucous; allowing less oxygen to reach vital parts of the body. This often leads to recurrent respiratory infections, chronic cold-like symptoms, coughing and hacking, stuffy or runny nose, loss of sleep, headaches, grogginess and a reduced ability to focus or concentrate; as well as the potential for more serious health problems. Most often, the presence of enlarged adenoids occurs in children, and as breathing pathways are blocked, a common recommendation is surgery to remove the adenoids. Enlarged or infected adenoids can be very painful and cause a lot of hacking and coughing and misery, especially for children. The thought of just getting rid of them by adenoid surgery may seem like a logical choice, but unfortunately it isn’t always the best prognosis. Adenoids surgery is often not very effective. Recent studies have shown that children often improve and inflammation will decrease over time without surgery. Various alternative methods may be used to help alleviate symptoms of enlarged adenoids, as well, and at the very least can keep infected adenoids from spreading the infection to other parts of the body. Many people find good results from gargling with salt water, alternating between cold and hot water, in order to increase blood circulation near the adenoids and reduce swelling. Others report that mixing lemon juice with warm water and drinking it has helped some people to reduce the size of enlarged adenoids....

Have you ever tried to catch your breath? Possibly after exercising or running beyond the range of your endurance you have found yourself hunched over, gasping for air? The deeper you breathe, the harder it seems to recover? What could be the cause? When you have too much oxygen intake, the results can sometimes be dramatic. Too much oxygen in your bloodstream reduces the amount of carbon dioxide, which is necessary for delivering hemoglobin to the tissues that need it. As a result, over-breathing, otherwise known as hyperventilation, can have an adverse effect on all the organs of your body, which can disrupt cardiac and respiratory function, damage the nervous, lymphatic and immune systems, change your metabolism and disturb your overall health. Of course, not all of these symptoms will occur, and any that do occur will probably not happen immediately but over a period of time, months or years, a chain effect from hyperventilation (i.e., the reduction of oxygen delivery to vital tissues) can result in illness, disease and even the truncation of your lifespan. But breathing normally and with the optimal amount of oxygen intake isn’t how most people breathe. Breathing so that the right number of carbon dioxide molecules is present to assist in delivering oxygen-carrying hemoglobin to the cellular tissues that need it does not come naturally. Specialists who have studied the way people breathe and how it relates to the development of difficulties have seen improvement when people learn how to normalize their breathing through the use of breathing exercises. Learning how to take control of one’s breathing in such a way as to optimize its effect on the body, according to specialists, can lead to reversals in symptoms for many people who suffer from a broad range of...

In the 1950s, Dr. Konstantin Buteyko was working with sick patients when he noticed something…the breathing that they were doing was getting deeper and more pronounced the sicker the patients became. Over time, Dr. Buteyko began to actually measure the rate of breath of his fatally ill patients and this put him on the path to his life’s work, now known as the Buteyko Method. What His Experiments Found As Dr. Buteyko looked more closely at the way people were taking in air as they came close to death, he was able to accurately predict the day of death simply by measuring the way they breathe. What he found, after time and observations, was that it was quite possible that the amount of air we were taking in was actually having a detrimental effect on our health, yet so many health professionals tell people to breathe in deeper. He tried this hypothesis out on himself, as he was a lifelong sufferer of hypertension. Within weeks, his hypertension had disappeared. In order to check this hypothesis in the opposite way, he had perfectly healthy people practice deep breathing for a period of time. Every subject who was tested experienced dizziness, nausea, coughing, wheezing and eventually passed out. This became known as hyperventilation, or breathing too much. The Buteyko Method, Today These days, the Buteyko Method is widely practiced as a way to treat a variety of illnesses and conditions. Because it is simply a way to breathe in a different way, it is easy enough for anyone to use it. There are no medications involved in the Buteyko Method, nor any type of medical procedure. This is why it is preferred over other types of medical treatment, especially when children are involved. There are many...