Building and Rebuilding the Lungs

The average person reaches peak respiratory function and lung capacity in their mid 20's. Then they begin to loose respiratory capacity: between 10% and 27% for every decade of life!  So, unless you are doing something to maintain or improve your breathing capacity, it will decline, and with it, your general health, your life expectancy, and for that matter, your spirit as well. 

Heart attacks, cancer, strokes, pneumonia, asthma, speech problems and almost every disease known to mankind is worsened or improved by how well you breathe; the quality of your respiration.

With certain limitations as to genetic abnormalities, time and age of the individual, lung tissue can be revitalized.  We focus somewhat on emphysema here to show others that even it can be improved and to use it as a role model and source of inspiration even for those without lung disease.

The faster progress you wish the more of the below you need to utilize.  Shortness of Breath Program including the approaches in the BHLN are the most efficient and least expensive.

The Center for Disease Control, National Center for Health Statistics, showed that the fourth leading cause of death in this country in 1994 was emphysema and bronchitis. Elsewhere reported, asthma has increased 66% in the last ten years. When the oxygen supply lessens the heart must work harder. Germs, viruses, and bacteria are anaerobic. They cannot survive in high concentrations of oxygen.

"Curing emphysema is possible. The lungs that medical science thought impossible to reactivate can if fact be reactivated". 
Robert Nims, MD. Pulmonary Specialist. 

The main points to this page are that

1.      Lung tissue, just like brain and heart tissue thought previously lost to sickness or non use,  can be reactivated.

2.      Your lungs become less active and actually shrink in size if you do not use them properly or abuse them. If you want to live as long and as healthy as possible you need to offset that "shrinkage" with specific breathing exercises, lung expansion and diaphragm enlarging techniques and proper natural hygiene. 

3.      A small number of people with emphysema are born without a lung-protecting enzyme called alpha₁-antitrypsin. This makes them more likely to develop emphysema at an earlier age. This may make raw foods critical to optimal health but I am not sure which foods contain the above mentioned enzyme.

4.      Emphysema and chronic bronchitis are the primary COPD diseases.

"Dr. Robert Nims, M.D., now retired chief of pulmonary medicine at West Haven Veterans Hospital in Connecticut, who worked with Carl Stough, says this about the study:

"The standard teaching was that air trapped in the emphysematous lung was trapped and could not be exhaled. For this reason the diaphragm was pushed down to a flat position and the ribs were elevated. Now I told Carl in no uncertain words that he was ‘mildly demented’ to say that he could effect a rise in the diaphragm and a descent in the ribs, but we got rather spectacular results showing that he did do this."

During the Stough Institute Breathing Coordination study, every test known in the field was administered to the several hundred patients involved, documenting the success of Breathing Coordination. Every patient who participated in these tests improved in direct relation to the development of the diaphragm and its increased motion. Over the past 40 years, hundreds of lives have been saved and thousands of lives improved.

The Framingham study proved that smoking accelerates lung tissue damage by as much as 50%. It also proved that when smoking ceases, the acceleration stops. But most often by then the lungs have had severe loss of function.

Can this function be returned? A great deal of it? Absolutely.

You need to tackle this holistically with a complete program of nutrition, cleansing, Optimal Breathing® Development techniques plus general overall movement type exercises that activate the breathing system in a non stressful way such as low impact standing type aerobics, walking, dancing, butoh etc.

Even meditators sitting on zafus in what looks to be an erect posture can restrict their breathing. Any repeated activity may in some way restrict one’s breathing or assist it.

Dear Michael,

Thank you for sending the "Secrets of Optimal Natural Breathing" to me so promptly. I did get it in plenty of time to take it to Cape Cod with me. There I simply read it several times without trying to do any exercises or assessments.

In the past few days I have been trying to work with the exercises. I have also worked with the tape once. I intend to continue all this because already I have had some significant help.

I do plan to come up for some individual work in the next few months. I am quite taken back by your work. I recently finished a pulmonary rehab program at Vanderbilt University; and this morning when I walked (hobbled for a few blocks) I thought: "Well everything I did in that program was a kind of forcing; and now for the first time, I am glimpsing what it means to take a real breath."

When I got home my oxygen saturation jumped up to 99% for the first time.

Thanks a lot. I have a long way to go. In addition to my COPD I am now struggling to recover from a back injury. I will continue with your basic exercises for awhile and let you know when I might make a trip.

Thanks, Phyllis P

Dear Mike;

     "I read all of your information and pretended I was on the beach watching the ocean just like you said. When I received your study I tried each exercise. I visualized my lungs as hard and crusty and the only way to improve was breaths from my knees to the top of my head with long exhales and letting the in breath come in by itself.

With a little improvement each day I am attempting to stomach breathe while walking. The more I convince myself that the cause of my improvement is deep breathing -----the more I extend the time I deep breathe each day. I am walking up to one mile daily now. Many thanks Mike."

Recommended Program - includes exercises, rib cage expansion tool and techniques, diaphragm strengthening tool, information on nutritionals, herbals, homeopathics, cleansing etc.