Shortness of Breath - Allergies - Digestion - Emotions
A common cofactor is in the way we breathe.
My research leads
me to believe that for most people, the primary reason for many forms of
shortness of breath (SOB) and asthma is a combination
of 5 factors. But one of them (number 5) seems most prevalent:
1.
Toxic residues (toxemia)
2.
poor digestion,
3. unresolved emotions such as fear and grief, 4.
bad air, 5. The poor way they breathe (breathing
mechanics and physical restrictions 6. Various combinations of the above
Let's use asthma as an example as it is most commonly associated with shortness of breath SOB.
1. If: Toxic residues and out-gassing caused asthma by itself then with over 50,000 new chemicals in the world over the last 60 years most everyone would have asthma.
2. If:
Only poor digestion or food allergies did it, everyone with
poor digestion or food allergies would have asthma.
3. If: Unresolved emotions can cause asthma by themselves because they invite breathing constriction and unwillingness to inhale and feel the feeling/emotion. But everyone with unresolved emotions does not have wheezing and shortness of breath. Ask John Bradshaw or read Alice Miller about unresolved emotions.
4. If:
Only bad or polluted air,- including but not limited to smoking tobacco-
caused asthma, everyone who breathed bad air would have asthma.
Not so of course.
5. If: The poor way they breathe (breathing mechanics and physical restrictions) then all with UDB would have asthma. not so but more likely that the others.
With ALL 5 primary factors present I believe most would have symptoms of shortness of breath attributed to what science often calls asthma. But "science" often miss-diagnoses asthma. My observation is that there are many factors that are not being weighed properly. Asthma, like tomato catsup or soup may have 57 or more varieties.
Though they can be a good temporary or emergency solution, this makes is rather silly to try to address it with some sort of symptomatic solution like drugs and steroids.
A huge and heretofore unconsidered factor in many forms of shortness of breath including those indicative of asthma is that they are largely caused by an underlying condition of poor breathing mechanics ie; poorly balanced and coordinated breathing, tightness in the chest; shallow breathing; breathing feels stuck; labored or restricted, can’t take a deep breath; chronic cough; chest pains; are just a few of the signs of possible physical breathing restriction covered more fully on www.breathing.com/articles/udb.htm
When the breathing
is out of physical balance or coordination we are either often or always
low on energy or a little or a lot more nervous and produce excessive
adrenaline. More adrenaline causes histamine production to balance
it out; similar to sugar/insulin balancing. The histamine
causes engorgement of the airways. That is why we often take anti
histamines when having a cold;
To open the airway passages by reducing the histamine that swells
them up.
Unbalanced
Dysfunctional Breathing (UDB) causes excessive fear responses. When we feel fear or our
survival is threatened our breathing often changes to more of high chest
breathing. The nervous
system evolved that way because for survival purposes the flight, fight,
fear center (high chest) is closer to the take action part of the brain
then is to the rest, digest and heal center (in the lower abdomen). (if
we do not survive we do not need to heal).
There is very little lung volume in the high chest.
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The more we breathe up into the top of the chest and try to get breath from there, the more we feel anxious because the air supply becomes less and less available. So we try harder and harder to get breath in. The more we gasp, strain and breath-heave the more the breathing tightens up and the less we are able to breathe easily. This eventually can lead to extreme expressions of headaches, chest pains, panic attacks, asthma and even heart attacks. Then comes the emergency usage of inhalers and steroids to widen or reopen our airways. It is commonly known that steroids and inhalers do nothing for the cause of the shortness of breath and are actually over time, mostly harmful to the body. Forward this to a friend
DIGESTION
Poor digestion is both a cause of bad breathing and a byproduct of
bad breathing.
Every
activity of the body requires energy usage. Even breathing has an oxygen
cost. Poor breathing
inhibits the parasympathetic nervous system-PNS aspect of the nervous system that is
responsible for digestion. You digest your food best when you have
plenty of energy to do that with. That makes resting the best time
because you can use that extra energy to process your food.
If you cook your food you kill the enzymes so you must replace
them or you have to use your (metabolic enzymes) body’s internal
living and healing life force to process the already devitalized food: a
big reason people go to sleep after a big meal. See
an enlightening pdf for a graphic example of undigested food. This
feeds itself (pun intended) and the extra weight makes it harder to
breathe and burn off the weight.
Toxemia.
Calming, digestion, and healing go together.
The
calm,
digest, and heal breathing pattern is low abdominal (front side and back) with
chest involvement in proper proportion (next to none and only on deep
breaths) to the entire breathing system. Unbalanced or high chest breathing
inhibits the natural digestion process of the body. If we are in some
state of anxiety due to lack of proper breathing we inhibit our
digestion process. White blood cells collect in the form of mucous (snot or phlegm).
This is
a good example of sludge from the body’s reaction to undigested
proteins in the bloodstream or some other foreign body such as toxins,
germs or bacteria.
Our body’s interpret these
toxins in the
bloodstream as a foreign object and a threat to its proper function. Like dropping a live bleeding animal into a river full of piranha, they rush
to devour it and clog up the “river’s” flow with their multitudes
of super hungry
white blood cell bodies.
Toxemia also occurs from poor fecal elimination (toxemia) which of course has most of its origin in poor digestion and improper balance of liquids and soluble and insoluble fibers.
Three easy ways of telling if you are probably allergic to a food are:
1. Do you cough up phlegm after
you eat a particular food?
2. Does your
pulse speed up more than 10 beats per minute within 5-10 minutes
after food consumption?
3. Any signs of nervousness or drowsiness?
Emotions and
breathing?
The way you breathe drives the intensity of your emotions. Emotions
influence adrenaline. Anger and fear add to adrenaline production. This
causes constriction in the blood vessels and overtaxes the nervous and
endocrine system. Excessive stress adds to excessive adrenaline production.
On the flip side, laughter adds to endorphins which are associated with feeling good, and peptide
production associated with the natural healing/ emotional resolution
process.
The June 2001 Health Magazine reports
that Japanese researchers exposed 26 allergic people to cat hair and
dust, first while they watched a Charlie Chaplin film and again
while they gazed at a weather video. A good laugh cut the patients
reaction to irritants by a 75 percent.
A good cry can work a lot the same
way. The common denominator is …………..breathing.
When you stuff your emotions you often hide them with excessive eating and you often gain weight. The more weight you carry the more your breathing is restricted.
Hormonal factors can also be critical in SOB based asthma, including menses, use of exogenous hormones by women and hyperthyroidism. Hormonal factors invite pent up emotions and poor breathing which invites poor hormonal factors and each feeds off the other. Hyperthyroidism invites excessive sympathetic (fight flight freeze fake it ) nervous system response and high chest breathing and stress induced weakening of the thyroid gland.
MUCH of emotional stress can be reduced or neutralized with certain ways of breathing. Any emotion you can breathe through will lose its grip on you. It is NOT so much about the stress but rather about the way they are breathing during the stress ie; shallow and out of balance. The key of the stress aspect is in the breathing pattern.
RAPID PROGRESS
My last asthma client with poor breathing mechanics took eight puffs off her inhaler the day we had
the first hands on session. Three
months later she still had not needed the
inhaler. When the proper breathing
sequencing is re-established the drugs are
much less or no longer needed.
Forward this to a friend
MISDIAGNOSIS
The possibility of asthma’s misdiagnosis should be considered.
In my experience, when optimal breathing mechanics and
sequencing are
re-established, the vast majority of so called asthma based SOB
symptoms will reduce or vanish. Conditions that can accompany asthma based
SOB include bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, congestive
heart failure (the heart often fails due to long term poor breathing),
airway obstruction due to various causes, vocal cord dysfunction (has a
lot to do with UDB and food allergies) and esophageal spasm. When
the breath, supported with proper physical posture, is flowing strongly
enough through the esophagus, it helps to reform its optimally natural
shape, from the inside out.
Forward this to a friend
TESTING FOR SOB
Spirometric measurement at each office visit or routine use of a peak
flow meter by the patient is needed to confirm the effectiveness of the
treatment strategy. A reduction in Spirometric measurement of 20 percent
in the forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) from the best
baseline measurement is an accepted sign of the bronchial
hyper-reactivity of asthma. But this forced
exhalation needed for the test is the very action that can make
asthma SOB worse because it tightens up the airways due to the forced
exhalation. Try it five times in a row and you will probably see your
ability to breathe impaired. Breathing more easily,
balanced, optimal, should IMPROVE
your breathing, not reduce it.
I’ve read that because both doctor and patient often have a poor
perception of the severity and source(s) of the patient's asthma, objective
measurements are critical in evaluation of difficult-to-manage cases. In
my experience factors included in our
Fundamentals of Breathing Improvement Video/DVD, when taken together add up to
dependable objective, moment to moment breathing evaluation. If you have
not yet taken our Free
Breathing Test you are encouraged to do so.
Give yourself or a loved one every chance of developing optimal health and of avoiding, reducing, or eliminating any need for prescription drugs. If someone feels short of breath, check it out with a doctor to rule out a life threatening condition. Regardless of the diagnosis, get our primary breathing development program. Unconditionally guaranteed and make great birthday, un-birthday, or holiday gifts; the gift of the breath of life.
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