IS OUR BREATHING NORMAL?

     Dr. Digambar Nai

            If we look at most of the medical books Breathing has been described as an automatic act controlled by the autonomic nervous systems. Breathing 12-18. times a day has been tagged as normal. A hell lot of research goes on breathing, all over the world and covid 19 pandemic has stepped up this research. Yes this scientific research has been looking at the breathing as the most important aspect of our life. Your health depends on how you breathe.                        

Going deeper into the research on breathing, we find a fascinating data which will change the way we live today.

Let us look at what is the best way to breathe normally. We understand today  the best way for normal breathing is ……..

1.....Breathe from the nose…. not from the mouth

        Being a function of autonomous nervous system, it was presumed that you can breathe any way that you like. Today you find a number of people are mouth breathers especially when they are sleeping. This is one of the reason for a number of problems involving all systems from the nose to the lungs to neurological, cardiovascular, Digestive, endocrine and many others systems. We doctors are busy in treating without going to the root cause.

The habit of mouth breathing needs to be changed and this can be done with little concentrated practice. Leave the mouth to its basic function of eating and talking. The best exercise for the development of good healthy oral cavity is mastication. Teach your children to eat normal natural foods that need to be chewed rather than processed foods

     When you breathe from the nose ,you pass the air through a longer route specifically built by the nature for the purpose, lined with a number of beneficial effects. First of all the air passes through the narrow nostrils into a big space. These spaces are lined with a number of protective mechanisms like hair,cilia,mucus, immunomodulators etc where the air is filtered and purified of a large number of antigens and sent to the lungs. Here it gets mixed with nitrous oxide which is a vasodilator which increases the blood supply in the lungs leading to better absorption of oxygen along with many more protective mechanisms. All this is not available to your breath if you are mouth breathers.

 

2) Breath slowly

Slower the breath better it is. Though the medical books say that a normal person breathes 12-18 times a minute, today's research in respiratory science shows, slower you  breath, better and healthier it is. You could be breathing as slow as 4-6 times per minute. It will need us a lot of practice to do that, but we can definitely work on our breath and reduce it below atleast 12 per minute. Slow breath means a good control over your autonomic nervous system. It means conquering your Vagus nerve which moves all over, especially the chest and the abdomen. The anxiety, depression and related diseases could just disappear, if you control your autonomic  nervous system which is possible just by controlling your breathing all the time.

3) Deeper the breath better it is.

         Upper part of lung has more dead space. The absorption of oxygen happens at the level of alveoli, The most distant part of the lungs. Obviously you need to take the air that you breathe as deeper into your lungs as possible. This also needs sufficient time. This is possible by practicing moving the lower part of the chest as you breathe in. The natural mechanism of breathing is by creating vacuum in to the chest and not by forcing air into the chest. Fortunately it is not too difficult to practice proper breathing and change your habit of rapid mouth breathing and live a much healthier life.

Remember the three aspects of breathing....Nose breathing...Slow breathing...Deep breathing. Practice these and improve and live a long healthy life.

 

            Here I am talking about NORMAL BREATHING. You have been trying a number of breathing techniques like different types of Pranayama, sudarshan Kriya, Various techniques of power breathing. These are different techniques for various benefits to your body.What I have described here is the way we should breathe normally day and night. It is possible to train yourself for this good normal breathing which will help you lead a much healthier life. To add to it, you should  practice your pranayama or power breathing.

IMPROVE YOUR NORMAL BREATHING AND ENJOY A LONG HEALTHY LIFE

Remember.....Nasal breathing....Slow breathing......Deep breathing

 

Dr Digambar Naik