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Air

Deprive the body of oxygen and, within minutes, you will die. Without the breath, there is no life.

If you weren’t breathing you’d be dead. Right? Of course. So why do you need to read anything about how to breathe? A newborn baby can do it without a self-help manual, so why devote an entire chapter of a book to something that should be so instinctive?

The reason is that somewhere between that first gasp of oxygen into our tiny infant lungs, growing up and becoming adults who barely have time to catch their breath between one task and the next, most of us have forgotten how to breathe properly.

During an average day, you will take 12 breaths a minute. That adds up to 17,280 breaths each and every day of your life. In a healthy person, the diagphragm is responsible for up to 70% of respiration, leaving the rest to the chest and other respiratory muscles. That means, if I ask you to take a deep breath and you puff out your chest, you are not breathing as nature intended, using the full and generous capacity of your lungs which, if spread over a flat surface, would cover an area roughly the size of a tennis court.

One theory which tries to explain the growing number of degenerative diseases people suffer in the West is that many of them are caused by insufficient oxygen reaching the body’s tissues and organs. In recent years, cosmetic and alternative therapies based on oxygen-therapies have mushroomed.

If you stop, right now, and simply become aware of your own breathing you will see how just by paying attention to something you normally do subconsciously, it automatically changes. Once you start to concentrate on your breath, it will probably slow down, which is what happens in deep relaxation and meditation. You may have a strong urge to sigh and release a build-up of tension that you have now only just become aware of, even though it has been there throughout the time you have been reading this.

Let go of this deep sigh but keep your mouth closed so that the air escapes down through the nose. Lots of people teach breathing techniques where you breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth. In yoga, which is where I re-learned how to breathe properly, we never let air in or out through the mouth but always rely on the nose, which has special filters or microvillae (minute hairs) to filter out pollutants and prevent the worst of them from getting into the lungs. It also means the air must travel further to reach the lungs and so gives it the chance to warm up to body temperature and humidity en route.

The fact is, we pay scant regard to our pattern of breathing throughout our normal daily activities, and it is only when someone brings it to our attention that we realise many of us ‘shallow breathe’ our way through life most of the time. Try to take that deeper breath and the chances are your shoulders will rise, you will puff out your chest and draw the air from somewhere in the region of the back of your throat.

This is because you are only using the upper regions of the lungs. What you should be doing is breathing in from the diaphragm. Unless you are a musician, you probably won’t know where this is, let alone how to use it, and because of this you will probably be using less than a third of your entire lung capacity.

Learning how to breathe properly again not only helps calm and quieten the mind but has also been shown to strengthen the immune system and improve the cardiovascular supply so that more oxygen is delivered around the body. People who run regularly, and so breathe deeply, also suffer all the usual age-related complaints at a much slower rate than non-runners.

Healthy lungs use only 3% of the body’s total energy. Diseased lungs will suck up more than a third of your energy reserves. Thankfully, learning to breathe properly is both enjoyable, since it is so soothing, and easy. As well as nourishing all our body’s tissues and fuelling it’s different systems, air keeps the mind sharp. The brain uses three times more oxygen than other organs, so if you are feeling sluggish, get breathing.

How to Breathe

A true breath starts by expanding the muscles of the diaphragm down and out. Then pushes them up and in again. This enables the lungs to expand to their full capacity, allows air to rush into them and helps it to be vigorously expelled. Breathing this way, even for a short while, is very re-energising.

Few forms of Western exercise attach any importance at all to how you breathe, but in yoga the breath and a rhythmic pattern of breathing is so important that a whole discipline is devoted to it: Pranayama. Prana means life and yama means it’s cessation.

The average volume of air you take in with a single breath is about 328 cubic centimetres. This can vary, of course, depending on your size, sex, posture, emotional and physical state and your environment. What the pranayama yogi teachers believe is that by re-learning how to breathe, you can increase this volume to 1640 cubic centimetres – a five-fold rise.

The lung tissues grow less elastic with age, but deep yogic breathing can reverse this deterioration and boost the body’s overall metabolism. It is so effective that there are now specialised Pranic healers who do nothing but teach the value of proper breathing to cleanse and strengthen the physical and spiritual body. The yogis believe that prana is a special, almost spiritual force which circulates with the oxygen and which travels through the body via a series of complex energy channels called the nadis. These are similar, in pattern, to our physical nerves and blood vessels but are governed by the chakras (see Chapter 10).

Yogic Breathing

In yoga, practitioners say that where the breath is, you’ll find the mind. What they mean is that if you can begin to control the breath, you can also begin to marshall the mind and free it from the stresses and strains of everyday life and it’s demands.

One of my favourite breathing exercises comes from the Sivananda discipline, one of the yoga schools which treat prana – the breath of life – with as much, if not more respect as the asanas or positions which are also practised to tone the body, cleanse the mind and massage the internal organs.

One of the simplest of these is called Anuloma Viloma, or alternate nostril breathing. It is very calming and helps rebalance energy throughout the body. There is no substitute here for experience, so try it and see how quickly you begin to feel back in tune with your body and, even better, re-energised.

Prepare by sitting comfortably on the floor. Try and keep the spine straight and, if you can sit in the lotus, half-lotus or cross-legged position, then do so. The important thing is to feel comfortable (sit on a chair if you like) so you can concentrate on the breathing instead of worrying, say, about that pain in your knee.

You must be careful how you seal off the right-hand nostril to start this breathing exercise. The yogis believe that different parts of the nostrils link subtly but directly with the chakras or energy centres in the body, and that clamping the nostril without regard for this can have an adverse effect.

Use the thumb and third finger of one hand to seal the nostril gently and remind yourself, before you start, there is no need for any force to be used. Now try it yourself.

To begin, gently seal the right-hand nostril with your thumb and breathe in through the left-hand nostril to a slow count of four. Hold the breath in the lungs while you switch to close the left-hand nostril with the third finger of your right hand, then release the air to a slow and controlled count of eight. Keep the left-hand nostril closed and breathe in through the right-hand side to a slow count of four. Hold the breath again as you switch nostrils and seal the right-hand side while you slowly release the air to a count of eight. If you cannot keep the breath controlled for a count of eight, cut back to four or six counts and build back up to eight. The breath control and quality are more important than the number you can count to.

To begin with, try and build up to 10 rounds of this breathing practice. You will feel the benefits immediately. As well as calming your mind and clearing blockages, both energetic and physical, this breathing exercise seems to reassure the body that everything is functioning as it should be.

Deep Breathing

In their excellent book Breathe Free (see Bibliography), the herbalist and nutritionist (respectively) Daniel Gagnon and Amadea Morningstar say that even the simplest forms of deep breathing help to ventilate the lungs and stimulate lymphatic drainage to speed up healing.

There are methods, particularly the Russian technique devised by Professor Konstantin Buteyko, which recommend the opposite. He argues that the root cause of some 200 conditions, especially asthma, is hyperventilation, where we take in too much air and breathe out too much carbon dioxide. It is true that some asthmatics who have embarked on the Buteyko programme have reported relief through shallow breathing exercises but as a non-sufferer and a keen student of yoga I am happier myself to practise techniques that have been tried and tested for thousands of years. Each day, whatever I am doing, I make a point of trying to remember to take three or four deep breaths every hour as recommended by Gagnon and Morningstar.

Dolphin Breathing

I used to swim every weekday morning before going on to my desk at the Sunday Times where I edited the Lifestyle health and fitness section of the popular Style magazine. Before too long, I twigged that whenever I was under particular stress, the nature of my swimming would change. I would forget about lengths or laps and find myself concentrating, instead, solely on the breath. It was as if I found a great release of tension by moving my swimming body in a rhythm with my breath. It might not look pretty to anyone dawdling about at the side of the pool, but what I found was that I gained even more relaxation, almost meditative benefits when I exaggerated this breathing pattern and spouted air, at the surface of the water, like a dolphin.

Imagine my surprise then when I stumbled across confirmation that there is no better way to release tension and relieve stress than breathing like a dolphin in water. In his book Animal-Speak, the animal expert and shamanic healer, Ted Andrews, confirms what I had discovered by accident, that breathing like a dolphin can bring great benefits. In a description of the power of dolphin medicine, he says the breath holds the key.

It can also, apparently, do wonders for your sex life. ‘Water is essential for life but so is breath,’ Andrews reminds us. ‘There are many different techniques for breathing and learning to breathe like a dolphin can not only help you become more passionate and sexual, it will also heal your body, mind and spirit.’

For the release of tension and stress, Andrews recommends you simply imitate the spouting breath the dolphin uses as it surfaces from the deep.

Keeping Lungs Healthy

Once you have improved the quality of your breathing, you can begin to investigate how diet and supplements can help keep strong lungs healthy. As well as vitamin C, another of the nutrients that is key to protecting all the membrane surfaces inside the body is vitamin A, which stimulates the immune system and which can be used in high doses – 30,000-100,000 international units (iu) – for no more than five days to beat a cold. For prevention, though, take just 10,000 iu a day.

An alkalizing nutrient which accelerates healing, vitamin A also has soothing properties that will ease an irritated throat. This is because it works to rebuild the mucosal lining of the lungs, promotes the lubrication of tissues and strengthens epithelial cells. Good food sources include carrots, dark leafy greens and sweet potatoes. In Ayurvedic medicine, pungent foods such as onions, garlic, leeks, ginger and chilli peppers are often used to help decongest the lungs.

How Minerals and Fish Oils Can Help

Minerals now being investigated by scientists who want to work out how nutrition can help prevent respiratory problems, especially asthma, include magnesium, selenium, sodium, copper, zinc and manganese. There is now a well-established link between a high sodium diet and an increase in asthma attacks. One of the jobs sodium does in the body is to help maintain nerve and muscle function. When there is a dietary sodium overload, the lungs of asthmatics have been shown to become supersensitive to the allergens that can trigger an attack. What researchers have also found is that a low sodium diet can improve healthy bronchial activity 1.5 times in men. (The same has not yet been shown with women, but then there are still only a small number of these studies.)

Magnesium is closely linked with sodium in the body. Raise the levels of one and the other will drop to compensate. In acute asthma, clinicians have found magnesium, which is destroyed by processing foods, has a dramatic effect; the scientific literature is now starting to catch up with this experiential evidence. For example, when a patient is admitted to casualty in the throes of an asthmatic attack, there is no difference in recovery rates when either magnesium or ventalin are given. In other words, this mineral can confer the same brochodilatory benefits as the normal prescription drug.

Blood serum levels of selenium, a powerful antioxidant which is believed to help protect the lungs, have been found to be low in asthmatics and, according to new research, taking paracetamol can decrease levels of another natural antioxidant called glutathione, which protects the lungs.

Researchers who compared aspirin and paracetamol in 664 asthmatics against it’s use in 910 people with no asthma found that those who took paracetamol every week were 80% more likely to have asthma than those who never touched it. They concluded that the paracetamol acts in some way to decrease levels of glutathione, resulting in less protection for the lungs. If you have any kind of breathing difficulties, then alcohol, which is a bronchcoconstrictor, will also be unhelpful.

A less well-known but highly promising mineral that can help keep lungs healthy is germanium, which not only helps deliver more oxygen to the body’s tissues but actually works to generate oxygen production inside the cells. It boosts the immune system, which supports lung function, helps the body get rid of debilitating toxins and is now being used in cancer therapy, since if there is one thing cancer cells hate it is a rich supply of oxygen. They need an anaerobic, or oxygen-free, environment to multiply, which means germanium has the potential to starve a malignancy to death.

You can find germanium in garlic, chlorella and the immune-boosting Reishi and Maitake mushrooms, but if you decide to investigate a more reliable supplement source, practitioners say you must make sure you buy the purest form, which is called germanium bis-carboxyethyl sesquioxide-132 (thankfully shortened to Ge-132.) Cheaper versions may be tempting, but less pure forms have caused two fatalities and have been linked with kidney damage. As a result, germanium has been voluntarily withdrawn in the UK. You can, though, find it in cosmetics including face creams and bath oils (see Resources); it is also available in homoeopathic form.

The role of fish oils in keeping lung function good boils down to the fact that they inhibit the synthesis of leukotrienes, which the body needs to heal wounds and injuries but which, in excess, are believed to cause inflammations in conditions ranging from asthma to arthritis and lupus. Low levels of vitamin E have also been linked with high leukotriene production, so taking a good antioxidant that includes vitamins A,C, E and selenium, plus fish oils from an unpolluted source, should help keep the lungs in good working order.

Finally, if you suffer recurring respiratory infections, a supplement called Oralmat will help, especially if the transition between climates when travelling causes problems for you. It contains extract of rye grass, which is very effective for a range of breathing complaints, including sneezing, bronchitis and asthma. One patient, who knew her attacks were being triggered by environmental pollutants whenever she travelled by plane, described the remedy, which has been tested by researchers in Melbourne, as ‘miraculous’.

As well as rye, which is said to clean and renew arteries and which is used in Traditional Chinese Medicine to reduce damp, watery conditions in the body, Oralmat also contains energy-giving co-enzyme Q10, which is found in every cell in the body, and an immune-supporting substance called squalene which, in Oralmat, is taken from shark’s liver but which is also present in olive oil.

Dirty Air

The air you breathe in contains about 21% oxygen and 0.04% carbon dioxide. The air you breathe out contains a fifth less oxygen and ten times more of the waste gas, carbon dioxide. If the air you breathe in is dirty, then the inside of your lungs will be dirty too. Pollution, which is now being blamed for the dramatic increase in asthma (in some regions, as many as one in four children now suffers), has also been linked to heart conditions and lung problems. And it is not just a problem of the traffic-clogged inner cities.

In the UK, for example, families who have deliberately left those smog-filled towns to find cleaner air for their young children to breathe were shocked recently to learn that even outside urban areas, air quality has dropped sharply. The environment charity Friends of the Earth has described the findings of increased pollution in rural areas as devastating – especially since, in Britain for example, some of the worst figures recorded and analysed were sadly taken from a popular nature reserve.

In your lifetime, your lungs will filter billions of litres of air. Tiny hairs in the nose are the first line of defence, but microparticles such as benzene and hydrocarbons can slip through, and any form of exercise in a polluted environment will exacerbate the problem. Cycle in the city, for instance, and much of the air you are breathing in (at the rate of 50 litres a minute if you are cycling fast) will actually bypass the nose filters and go straight to the lungs.

The lungs do have their own protective and cleaning mechanisms, but fine particles deep inside are difficult to flush out. Once lodged in the fibres of the lungs, these pollutants have been linked to cancer, bronchitis, emphysema, general breathing difficulties and a range of other health problems. Lung cancer is now the biggest cancer killer in the United Kingdom, and pollutants – mostly tobacco but including air pollutants – are to blame for an estimated 95% of all cases.

There is no real scientific evidence that trendy pollution masks will protect you unless you are exercising vigorously, and you may laugh at those who wear them to hoover the house or jog around the block, but if you are exercising in a polluted environment then anecdotal evidence from users suggests that they can help filter out some of the worst of these particles. (For suppliers of pollution masks, see the Resources chapter.)

Easy Air Pollutants Guide

Benzene/hydrocarbons: Hydrocarbons, including benzene, are emitted by car engines, but are also present in cigarette smoke. They have been linked with cancer.

Carbon monoxide: A potentially lethal gas produced by incomplete combustion, it disables oxygen-carrying red blood cells.

Lead: Effects build up over time and may hit the central nervous system. Some research suggests it can have an adverse effect on children’s IQ.

Nitrogen oxides: Both nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide are the products of fossil-fuel combustion. Sources range from cars and lorries to power stations. Both are constituents of that horrid inner city petrochemical smog and dissolve in water to make strong acids which corrode tissues. Effects include sore throats and runny noses.

Ozone: We may worry about the holes in the earth’s atmosphere that leave us unprotected from the worst of the sun’s harmful rays, but on the ground ozone itself counts as a pollutant which forms when nitric acid from nitrogen dioxide reacts with hydrocarbons. A reaction encouraged by sunlight, the effects range from a runny nose and sore throat to lung disease.

Sulphur dioxide: A nasty, acidic gas produced when coal or oil is burnt and which is part of the winter smog cocktail. Effects of high levels, particularly in asthmatics, include coughing and a feeling of chest tightening. Bronchitis, emphysema, lung inflammation and blood clotting have also been linked to this pollutant.

Suspended particles: Tiny solids found in diesel and coal smoke. The bigger bits get trapped by the body’s defences, but tiny particles penetrate the lungs. Can be carcinogenic.

PCBs/dioxins: Generated by widespread incineration of solid waste. May be carcinogenic and may also have an effect on the central nervous system.