Okay, so good evening
everybody. My name is Patrick McKeown. And for the next 20
minutes or so, I'm going to go through all of the breathing
exercises as it would pertain to respiratory conditions. And I
know our motive for putting this together is based on the current
COVID crisis. Coronavirus, this is not the first time it
has been around. We did have a family strain of this back in
2003 2004. There was research back then published in 2005
looking at nitric oxide and how it could inhibit the replication
of Coronavirus and back then it was SARS. COVID-19 is also a
Coronavirus. COVID stands for Coronavirus, disease 19. Now, a
number of things that I'm going to go through. One is, what would
you do when your breathing gets labored? Number two, how can you
breath to improve oxygen uptake in the blood. So if you do have
issues with your lungs, what's the best way to optimize
ventilation, that if your lungs are compromised, and even if you
do have a pre-existing condition, what's the best way
to enhance alveolar ventilation. Another aspect that
we will look at is measuring your breath-hold time. And also
then practices that you can bring into your daily life. I've
been using these breathing exercises for almost 20 years
for people with respiratory complaints. And we've had many
many people over the years with asthma, COPD, bronchiectasis,
sarcoidosis, different lung issues and of course with that,
individuals with anxiety panic disorder as well. The first
thing that I would say to you is that, in order to get an idea of
respiratory function, your breath-hold time during rest
provides you with a good indicator. If there is an issue
with the lungs, your breath-hold is generally reduced. The length
of time that you hold your breath for is not going to be as
high as it should be. So one of the symptoms of COVID-19 is
breathlessness. And since 1975 researchers have known that
using breath-hold time, you can measure the degree of
breathlessness. There is a feedback of course from the
brain to your lungs, but also from your lungs back to the
brain. If your lungs are Bronco- constricted, or if your
breathing is not optimal, it will reflect in a lower breath-
hold time. So what I would say to you is keep an eye on your
breath-hold time. And the most important breath-hold time that
you would measure is the one that you measure first thing in
the morning. As soon as you wake up, sit on the bed. Allow your
breathing to recover and measure your breath-hold time.
If your breathing is labored, your breath-hold time is
reducing. An optimal breath total time will of course be 40
seconds. Does everybody have it? No. Functional breathing tends
to be when your breath-hold time is above 25 seconds. And sub-
optimal breathing is when your breath-hold time is less than
25 seconds. So in order to measure your breath-hold time it's
not the maximum length of time that you hold your breath for.
But it's the length of time that you're going to hold your breath
for comfortably until you feel the first definite desire to
breath or until you feel the first involuntary movement of
your breathing muscles. So to measure your breath-hold time
or control pause from Buteyko, the BOLT score from Oxygen
Advantage, you would need a watch with a timer or a second
hand. You take a normal breath in through your nose and normal
breath out through your nose. You hold your nose and you time it in
seconds until you feel the first definite desire to breathe.
Corresponding with that, you may feel that there's an involuntary
contraction of the diaphragm breathing muscle or you may feel
that there's some tension in the throat or you may feel the first
definite desire to breathe. So your breath-hold time. Keep an eye on
that in the coming days and weeks and months ahead. If you do have symptoms of
breathlessness, it's very important that you don't breathe
fast and shallow. And this is ironic because when you feel
breathless, whether you have an existing respiratory condition
and it's very common with people with asthma, very common with
people with respiratory conditions, that when you feel
breathless, of course you are feeling that you are not getting
enough air. There is a feeling of air hunger. And what that will
generate, is they'll automatically, people will start
breathing faster, they breathe more shallow, they often have
their mouth open. And that's only going to feed back into
your symptoms. So it's entirely the wrong thing to do. Anytime
that you are breathless, even if you have wheezing, if you have
coughing with asthma, if you have respiratory complaints, the
optimal way to enhance alveolar ventilation, in other words, the
amount of oxygen that's reaching down into the small air sacs in
the lungs, because ultimately, we breathe, that oxygen is taken
into the body so that oxygen can transfer from the lungs into the
blood. And with COVID-19, one of the recognitions is that when
there is a severity or a progression of the disease,
blood, oxygen saturation decreases. Now, so there is a
way to breathe to enhance blood oxygen saturation. It's not by
breathing fast and shallow. But it's by breathing very slow, and
breathing deep, in and out through your nose. So the best
way to think about breathing is that it should be light, it
should be slow, and it should be deep. And some of you will
remember it if I say the acronym LSD. So you're thinking about
light, you're thinking about slow, and you're thinking about
deep. And what I would like you to practice is, put your hands on
either side of your lower two ribs, just where your can feel
the base of your lungs, where it meets the abdomen. And
separating the chest from your abdomen is your diaphragm
breathing muscle. So it's by having your hands either side of
your lower two ribs, with your lips together, breathing in and
out through the nose, what I would like you to do is to
really slow down the speed of air coming into your nose. So
you're taking a soft, gentle breath in. And as you breathe
out, you're having a relaxed and a prolonged exhalation. And as
you breathe in, you should feel that your lower ribs are moving
out. And as you breathe out, you should feel that your lower ribs
are moving in. So as you breathe in, you should feel that
your lower ribs are moving outwards. And as you breathe
out, you should feel that your lower ribs are moving inwards. It
can be good to time it and especially during rest, an
optimal breathing pattern or rate would be six breaths per
minute. So you could breathe in, 234, out 3456, in 234, out 3456, in
234, out 3456, in 234, out 3456, in 234, out 3456, in 234, out 3456, in
234, out 3456. And if you continue like that, so you are breathing
in for a count of four seconds. you're breathing out for a count
of six seconds. But during rest you should not hear your
breathing. When we think about breathing, we have to think of
three pillars to breathing. The first is the biochemistry, the
biochemical dimension of it. The second is the biomechanical
dimension. And the third is cadence breathing. Each pillar
or each leg of a stool has its own merits. When you're changing
your breathing patterns, it's important that you don't
increase minute ventilation. Don't breathe harder than what
you feel you need to breathe. The harder you breathe, it can
contribute to broncho-constriction. And we
often see it with people with asthma. They feel that their
airways are getting tight, they feel that they are not getting
enough air. They start to breathe harder in an effort to
get rid of the feeling of suffocation. But this causes their
airways to cool and dry out and this feeds back into airway
narrowing. So when you're thinking about breathing, think
of breathing that, not to breathe more than what you need. Now of
course, if you are having symptoms, respiratory symptoms,
your breathing is naturally faster. But don't exaggerate
that. So when you feel breathless during rest, which is
a symptom, of course, of respiratory dysfunction, a good
way to help reduce the feeling of recklessness is to breathe
light, to breathe slow, and to breathe deep. So the sensation
of breathlessness is reduced, and alveolar ventilation is
increased when you reduce the respiratory rate. So when you're
thinking about breathing, breathing is not just about the
number of breaths per minute, but it's also about the size of
each breath, what's called the tidal volume. And the number of
breaths per minute, multiplied by the tidal volume gives you
the amount of air or the volume of air that you breathe in one
minute. You don't want to be breathing in excess of what you
need, because that in turn, as I said, is causing
broncho-constriction. The second pillar is breathing using the
diaphragm. Many people will talk about the benefits of taking a
deep breath. But they often misinterpret a deep breath to be
a big breath. A deep breath is not a big breath. A deep breath
is manifest by lateral expansion and contraction of the lower
ribs. So as you breathe in, the lower two ribs should be moving
out. And as you breathe out, your lower two ribs should be
moving in. Now why do we slow down the respiratory rate? Well,
the reason being is because every breath that you take into
your body, not all of that air reaches the small air sacs for
gas exchange to take place from the lungs into the blood. Every
breath that you take, 150 milliliters of that air remains
in what's called dead space, a certain amount of air will
remain in your nose, in your throat, your trachea, your
bronchi in your bronchioles. So, dead space. If you're breathing
fast and shallow, you're taking a lot more breaths per minute
and you're leaving a lot more air in dead space. When you reduce the respiratory
rate, you are not wasting so much air to dead space. The key
with breathing is to enhance alveolar efficiency. Breathe slow
breathe light, breathe deep. Now, when you are having feelings of
breathlessness, it is sometimes difficult to slow down your
breathing. And the reason being, is because your breathing is
already labored and there is a feeling of air hunger or a
feeling of suffocation. But a good way to help get your
breathing under control and to help calm your breathing is to
do many small breath-holds. So anytime that you have symptoms,
whether it's coughing, whether it's wheezing, whether it's
breathlessness, a good way to help control your breathing is
to do small breath-holds. And this goes as follows. Take a
normal breath in through your nose, a normal breath out
through your nose. Pinch your nose and hold your nose, 54321.
Let go but breathe in. And then you breathe normal for 10
seconds. And again, take a normal breath in through your
nose, a normal breath out through your nose, your pinch your nose
or your fingers, 54321. Let go but breathe in. Breathe normal for
10 seconds. And again, take a normal breath in through your
nose, a normal breath through your nose, pinch your nose and
hold your nose, 54321. Let go but breathe in and breathe normal
for 10 seconds. And again, normal breath in,
normal breath out. Pinch your nose and hold your nose, 54321.
Let go but to breathe in and breathe normal for 10 seconds.
It's important that the length of your breath-hold time
doesn't disrupt your breathing. And the rule of thumb is that
the length of your breath-hold time shouldn't be any more than
your control pause or the measurement of your breath-hold
time that you measured at the beginning of this webinar. If
your breath-hold time is six seconds, then the length of time
that you should hold your breath during this exercise is only
three seconds. In other words, we want to try and control
breathing but we don't want to hold the breath for too long
that it causes a loss of control of breathing. When your
breathing is labored, it's very important. Don't breathe fast
and shallow because that will only feed back into your
symptoms. So again with a breathing emergency exercise for
coughing, for wheezing, for labored breathing, take a normal breath
in and out through your nose, pinch your nose and hold your
nose, 54321, let go but you breathe in, and then you breathe
normal for 10 seconds. You will get a more detailed description
of this exercise on YouTube. If you put in the exercise 'how to
stop an asthma attack and panic attack by Patrick McKeown'. So
that's an emergency exercise that we use for those symptoms.
So typically people with labored breathing, including people with
asthma, but also people with anxiety. And if you are feeling
anxious at this point, there are two things that you can be
doing. And one is gently slowing down the breath, as we spoke
about at the very start. Don't breathe fast and shallow,
because it will contribute to agitation of the mind. There is
a link between your diaphragm and the emotions. And there's
also a link between the speed of your breathing and the emotions.
Fast and shallow breathing is fight or flight. It's a stress
response. So in other words, if you are feeling in a stress
response, you need to do the opposite. And don't take those
deep, big breaths that people normally tell you to do. If you
take big deep breaths, you are blowing off too much carbon
dioxide, and this will cause blood vessels to constrict. This
will cause what's called a left shift of the oxyhemoglobin
dissociation curve. But ultimately, the more air you
breathe, the less oxygen gets delivered throughout the body. Don't
have the belief that it's good to take more air into your
lungs. If you breathe hard, you will feel lightheaded. That's
not a sign of increased oxygen delivery to the brain. What has
happened there is that the hard breathing has got rid of too
much carbon dioxide from the blood through the lungs and the
loss of carbon dioxide reduces blood flow to the brain. So when
we did this small little breath-hold exercise earlier on,
by breathing in through your nose, by breathing out, by
pinching your nose for three to five seconds and then letting
go, you are helping to harness nasal nitric oxide in the nasal
cavity. Nitric oxide is produced in the
nasal cavity, it's produced in the nose, and it's also produced
in the paranasal sinuses. But nitric oxide has antiviral
effects. It's an antibacterial, it's anti microbial. It's not
produced in the lungs to the same quantity as it is produced
in the nose. And it's not produced in the mouth. The only
way to harness the antiviral properties of breathing is
through the nose. When you breathe through your nose, you
can harness from 50 to 200 parts per billion by nasal breathing.
But you can also enhance this to as high as 3000 parts per
billion by humming. If you look at the research by Professor
John Lundberg from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden,
he talks about humming increasing the production of
nitric oxide, or at least getting nitric oxide out of the
paranasal sinuses into the nasal cavity by humming. So you're
taking a normal breath in through your nose, and then
you're hhumming a prolonged exhalation and you want to
vibrate your sinuses. Then after you have your exhalation on the
hum, make sure you breathe in through your nose, the nitric
oxide produced by the humming, you need to carry that into your
lungs. Nitric oxide sterilizes the air but nitric oxide also
helps to redistribute the blood throughout the lungs. And it
increases oxygen uptake in the blood by about 10 to 15%. So
nitric oxide is the body's first line of defense against viruses.
Now despite this, World Health authorities are not talking
about the importance of nose breathing. And when I'm talking
about nose breathing, I'm talking about nose breathing
during rest. I'm talking about nose breathing during physical
exercise, and I'm also talking about breathing through your
nose during sleep. So people who are not infected, it's vitally
important that we do two or three things. One, make sure
that you are breathing through your nose at all times. Number
two, if you are in the presence of somebody who is coughing,
hold your breath. Don't take that air into the lungs. When
somebody is coughing or sneezing or even breathing if they are
infected. They are exhaling water particles into the air
which is like an aerosol can that's spraying. That aerosol can
travel one and a half to two meters. And if you were in that
proximity, you are inhaling these water particles into your
own body. When these particles but viruses come into your own
body, the virus can replicate. The person who is not infected
should absolutely make a concerted effort to breathe
through the nose, to hold their breath if they are in the
presence of people as members of the public. And also to breathe
as light as possible. And to give you an example, I've just
been traveling, and I only finished up, on the 17th of
March, I got home. And I was exposed to large groups of
people in trains, in planes and packed subways. And I did one
thing. Whenever I travelled, I make sure I breathe through my
nose, but I breathed hardly any air as possible. Now,
breathing hardly any air as possible is going to do two
things. One, you're not taking as much airborne air into your
lungs. Number two, the slower you breathe, the higher the
concentration... sorry, the slower you breathe, the
higher the concentration of nasal nitric oxide. If you
really slow down your breathing, and when I say slow down your
breathing, I'm talking about slowing down your breath to the
point almost that you feel hardly any air coming into your
lungs. So you're taking a really soft and slow gentle breath in
through your nose. And then you're having a relaxed and a
slow and gentle breath out. You should breathe almost to the
point that you hardly breathe any air. Now of course you are
breathing, and at the same time as you are breathing, take the
air into the lower regions of the lungs. The greatest
concentration of blood in the human lungs is in the lower
lobes. It's not in the upper regions of the lungs.
Mouth breathers are going to be breathing more air, they have no
defence, and also they are ventilating the upper regions of
the lungs, which in turn automatically reduces oxygen
uptake in the blood. Mouth breathing also can get rid of
too much carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is not just a waste gas.
The release of oxygen from the red blood cells to the cells is
dependent on the presence of carbon dioxide. Your blood
circulation is influenced by the pressure of carbon dioxide in
your blood. People who have cold hands, it indicates that they
have poor breathing patterns. Your hands should not be cold.
The blood vessels in your hands, your circulation in the hands
should be enough that you feel warmth in the hands. So going
back to when I was traveling in the tube, I felt air hunger for the
duration of the travel. I deliberately reduced the amount
of air that I was taking into the body. I slowed down my
breathing to harness a greater concentration of nitric oxide.
I'm carrying that nitric oxide into my lungs and it's a natural
bronchodilator. It sterilizes the air. It plays a role in the
production of surfactant and surfactant, the role of
surfactant in the lungs is very important for helping to
maintain the elasticity and movement of the lungs. COVID-19
impacts the production of surfactant. Nitric oxide improves
the production of surfactant. If you look at some of the new
patents and trials that are happening at the moment in the
United States I just published on Facebook. Some of these
trials are looking at the benefits of nitric oxide, inhaled
nitric oxide as a potent treatment for COVID-19. Our nose
produces this gas naturally, the key is to harness it. Now it's
not just enough for non-infected people to breathe through the
nose. We also need infected people to breathe through their
nose. And here is the reason why. When you breathe in through
your nose, your nose picks up moisture on heat and you're
taking that warm and moist air into your lungs. But on the
exhalation, your nose traps this heat and moisture from the
exhaled breath. Nose breathers emit less moisture into the
atmosphere than mouth breathers. If an individual is breathing in
and out through their mouth, they are emitting a lot of water
vapor and a lot of water particles out of their mouth.
There is a 42% greater water loss breathing out of your mouth
than from your nose. Your nose traps that moisture. So if an
individual, if any of you think that you may have symptoms and
if you are in the presence of other people, reduce your
breathing and keep your mouth closed, don't emit so many water
particles into the air, because those water particles are a
means of transmission of the virus. So to give you a few
pointers I would also say to you is make it a concerted effort to
keep your mouth closed during sleep. You need to protect your
airways, you should never wake up with a dry mouth in the
morning, you should always wake up with a moist mouth in the
morning. Even if you are say, for instance, long term, we've
always advocated nasal breathing during sleep. Mouth breathing
causes unrefreshed sleep, lighter sleep, increases the risk of
snoring and increases the risk of obstructive sleep apnea. We
have encouraged people to tape their lips, tape their mouth, so
that they breathe exclusively through their nose during sleep.
Now, I know some of you might be apprehensive about that. There
are different tapes on the market. What we have
traditionally used is you can buy in any pharmacy, 3M one
inch micropore tape. You place it across your lips. It's a very
simple paper tape, it's hypoallergenic, and you can get
it in a chemist, a drugstore or a pharmacy. Another tape that's
very good, and it's by a doctor in Colorado, is called lip
seal tape. And they are strips that are purpose-made for
placing across the lips in order to ensure nasal breathing.
Another tape that we have, we developed it for kids is called
Myotape. And Myotape simply works like this, you simply get
the tape, you press it around the mouth, and it's elastic, and
it brings the lips together. And that's Myotape. So you have
different options. If you are apprehensive about wearing the
tape across your lips, I suggest that you get Myotape. If you
are thinking about children, don't tape their lips. Myotape
would be a much better option because it's not going to
cover their lips, because it surrounds the lips. 3M
one inch micropore tape, this one, has served us very well for
20 years. Lip seal tape, lipsealtape.com has also served
us well. So I'm giving you three options there. And I'm just going to
close by doing a three or four minutes slow breathing practice.
And this is not just beneficial to do if you have symptoms of
breathlessness and remember, when you have symptoms of
breathlessness, it is difficult to slow down your breathing. So
when you have symptoms of breathlessness, you can try this
exercise, or try many small breath-holds. Or you could do it
by simply walking for a small amount of paces. So if you're
having symptoms, and I'm talking about symptoms of wheezing,
coughing, breathlessness, a good way to help get your breathing
under control, hold your breath for three to five seconds during
rest. And at the end of the breath-hold, make sure you
breathe in. So in other words, you take a normal breath in
through your nose, a normal breath out through your nose, you
pinch your nose, you hold your nose for three to five seconds.
Then you let go but you breathe in. You need to carry that
nitric oxide into your lungs. You need to harness the
antiviral effects of nitric oxide as a natural sterilization
of the air as it comes into the airways. After you hold your
breath for three to five seconds, breathe normal for 10.
Then hold your breath for three to five seconds, then breathe
normally for 10. If you're having symptoms, of course,
medical health is, this is not a replacement for medical health.
But what I would say to you is practice that exercise for up to
10 minutes every hour. And I know that sounds a lot. But when
people come into me with COPD, with severe asthma, with high
anxiety, I have them practice the small little breath-holds because I
want to get their breathing to a point where I can give them slow
breathing. So that's one exercise. The second exercise is
take a normal breath in and out through your nose, pinch your
nose and you hold your breath for between five and 10 paces as
you walk. Then let go, breathe in through your nose. Don't do if
you're pregnant. That's also a very good exercise to do. So
again, you take a normal breath in through your nose,
a normal breath out through your nose, you
pinch your nose, and you walk for five to 10 paces
holding your breath. But again, when you let go, you want to
breathe in. Now that exercise also is going to harness nasal
nitric oxide and it also will slightly increase carbon
dioxide in the blood, and it can have a bronchodilating effects
on the airways. And also it can help reduce the sensation and
perception of breathlessness. The very thing that we feel like
doing when we are feeling breathless, we want to breathe
more air, we want to breathe faster and shallow, it is
absolutely the wrong thing to
============================================== do. And if you look at the
recommendations coming from China, in terms of breathing
patterns, and somebody did send me on the PDF from doctors,
which are recommended with patients who are post treatments
of COVID-19. Number one, they are telling them to monitor
their blood oxygen saturation, you can buy these little devices
on Amazon, they are relatively inexpensive for maybe
$30, you put them on your finger, it's got a little red
light and an infrared light. And it tells you how fully loaded is
your blood with oxygen. To increase alveolar ventilation
and to increase oxygen uptake in the blood. You put your hands
again, I'm just giving you a repeat what we did earlier on,
either side of your lower two ribs, have your mouth closed,
you're breathing in and out through your nose, and then
start slowing down the speed of the air coming into your nose.
And at the top of the breath, you have a very relaxed and slow
gentler breath out. And the whole objective is that in terms
of slowing down the breath, you want to breathe slowly, and you
want to take the air down into the deeper regions of the lungs.
If you breathe slow, you are not wasting as much air in dead
space. Whereas if you breathe fast and shallow, you are not
ventilating your lungs as optimally as you should do. Now
that exercise too can be very helpful. And if you are not
having symptoms, it can be very helpful in terms of normalizing
your breathing patterns. So you breathe light, your breathe
slow, and you breathe deep. So you're really slowing down your
breathing. And at the top of the breath, you're having a relaxed
and slow, gentle breath out. Now, of course that
exercise is a lot easier to do when you are not having symptoms.
If you are feeling breathless, and as I said at the very start,
your breath-hold time that you measure does provide a good
indicator of the functioning of your lungs. If there's
bronchoconstriction or issues with the lungs, it will manifest
in the lower breath-hold time. If you are seeing that your
breath-hold time is reducing, it's really time to start doing
breathing exercises. And so, you know, it's it's uh, you know,
it's like, as I said, when you are
feeling breathless, if your respiratory rate is 30 breaths
per minute, you won't feel like slowing down your breath. But
I'm saying really try to do it. But you might find it easier to
do the small breath-holds because that's the emergency exercise.
So I gave you two small breath-hold exercises. You've
also got slow breathing. I'm also talking about the
importance of nose breathing, both during the day, and
physical exercise by the way, and during sleep. It's really
really, really vitally important. When we talk about breathing, the
worst type of breathing we can do is fast, shallow, and through
an open mouth, we have absolutely no protection. I
cannot make a claim that nose breathing is going to protect
against COVID-19. The disease is new but if you look at the
research of nitric oxide, it is plausible to say that whatever
chance you have of defending the body against COVID-19, you have
absolutely no chance if you're breathing through an open mouth.
And whatever chance you have, it is when you use your nose, both
to breathe in and out of the nose. And again in times that
when you are faced with individuals who you think they
are..if you see them coughing, hold your breath, walk away,
reduce your breathing volume if you can't hold your breath, but
keep breathing through your nose. And even if you feel air
hunger during that, don't worry about it because it's actually
good. We deliberately get people to slow down their breathing to
the point of air hunger to allow carbon dioxide to increase in
the blood and when carbon dioxide increases, they start to feel
warmer, they start to feel drowsy. It's a very good
exercise for insomnia. Its a very good exercise for people who
have agitation of the mind. And also you can..so by practicing
slowing down the breathing volume to increase carbon
dioxide in the blood, you know that carbon dioxide is increased
when you feel air hunger. But when carbon dioxide is
increasing, it can help to open up your airways, your blood vessels,
70,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body.
You can influence those, your blood vessels, not by breathing
hard. But by breathing light. It is not healthy to breathe hard.
Em, I know there's a belief often out there that the more
air you bring into the body, the more oxygen gets delivered to
this tissues, it is not correct. Em, if you want to look at the
physiology of it, look at the Bohr Effect discovered back in
1904, by a Danish physiologist called Christian Bohr. If you
want to go a little bit further look at the oxyhemoglobin
dissociation curve. And look at how the red blood cells release
oxygen to the tissues. The red blood cells release oxygen from
the blood to the tissues in the presence of carbon dioxide,
possibly nitric oxide, increased temperature and 2,3-diphosphoglycerate.
So all in all, if you wanted to bring your
breathing routine in, because I'm going to kind of, I wanted to
give you 20 minutes, and we've doubled it. But that's how it
goes. Em, you know, just really focus on your breathing. And we
will post this video up on our page on Buteyko Clinic.
So it's buteykoclinic.com/corona-virus,
or is it buteykoclinic.com I'm going to actually just post it
now so that you have it, because we won't be able to cope with so
many emails coming in. My colleague and Ana won't be too
happy. And so it's buteykoclinic.com/corona-virus.
And you'll see where I listed the science, the benefits
of nasal nitric oxide. And I talked about humming being a
tremendous means to increase nitric oxide. And I see somebody
here has put a post that they're in terms of, yep, there's
different yoga techniques, Om. Like, all of these things that
have often came from the East, Yogi's knew there was something
behind them, they knew that it worked, they mightn't have
known the science, the science is catching up. It's not about
taking big breaths. It's not about breathing hard. It's about
breathing subtle. It's about breathing light, using the diaphragm.
Slow light, deep breathing. And if you wanted to hum, I
would say hum between 60 to 80 times a day, four times a day.
And when you're humming, you're taking a very soft, slow, gentle
breath in through your nose. And then you are humming for a
prolonged exhalation. But then make sure you breathe in through
the nose. Because nitric oxide that's released from the paranasal
sinus into the nasal cavity, you want to carry that
NO (Nitric Oxide) into your lungs. There's no point in breathing in through
your nose, humming and then breathing in through your mouth.
That's no point. So you take the breath in through your nose, you
have a prolonged hum exhalation. And then at the end
of the exhalation, when you feel you need to breathe in, you're
having a breath in through your nose and you're carrying that
air slowly into the lungs. And that's what NO (Nitric Oxide) will do.
Okay, I'll just end by going if you're relatively healthy and if you
wanted to influence your immune system, we have very little
research on it. But breath holding can be a good way to do
it also. There was one paper by Kox looking at the Wim Hof
technique. We don't do hyperventilation, but we do
breath-holding. And so it can be good and also to decongest your
nose so that your nose is working better. And that
exercise is simply take a normal breath in through your nose, a
normal breath out through your nose, pinch your nose, and walk
holding your breath. And keep walking until you feel a medium
to strong air hunger. Then let go, but breathe in through your
nose. But if you're feeling breathless, don't do that. So in
a nutshell, to measure your breathing, measure your breath-
hold time, it gives you a good indicator of how well you breathe.
You want to be 25 seconds plus. The goal of course will be 40.
The second thing is, make sure that you are breathing through
your nose all of the time and breathe lightly which gentle
lateral expansion and contraction of the lower ribs.
The third thing, if you are feeling breathless, don't
breathe fast and shallow even that's the way you want to
breathe. Instead, breathe very slow, very deep, because that will
enhance alveolar ventilation. Also if you are feeling
breathless, it can be difficult to breathe slow. Then
do small breath-holds to try and calm down your breathing and to
harness nasal nitric oxide. If you want to do a slightly
different method to doing the small breath-holds, breathe in
through your nose, breathe out, pinch your nose and hold and
walk a few paces holding your breath. Then let go and breathe
in. If you want to have a practice to increase nitric
oxide, breath-holding does it, slow breathing does it and
humming does it. You've increased nitric oxide between
7 and 15 times by humming, but in between your humming, make
sure you nasal breathe. Have your mouth closed, at rest, during
physical exercise, during sleep. If you are in the presence of
somebody who's infected, breathe hardly any air. If you do have
the virus yourself, make sure you breathe through your nose
and make sure you keep your mouth closed. Try not to spread
water droplets everywhere because it does increase the
risk of other people taking it. If you want a little bit of the
science go to that paper, em buteykoclinic.com/corona-virus and I've put the
references at the bottom of the page so you can look into it a
little bit deeper yourself. Thanks very much, everybody. All
the best and good luck with that. Take care. Bye
