Let’s face it. Most people find New Year’s Resolutions frustrating.
A recent study in the Journal of Clinical Psychology reports that fewer than half of Americans even bother making them, and those who do report a dismal success rate of 8 per cent.
Men and women are equally likely to make New Year’s vows, though females incline more toward weight loss while men list quitting smoking more than women do. Getting organized is also near the top of the list.
Here’s an easy suggestion for a resolution: Improve your breathing. Since you have to inhale and exhale anyway, conscious breathing is not going to be time-consuming like going to the gym, it costs nothing, and it could pay off with significant health benefits. Proper breathing may help reduce sleep apnea, which affects twice as many males as females, ease your snoring and reduce your blood pressure.
A reasonable place to start is to determine if you’re a chest breather or a diaphragm breather. I was recently in a class in Houston with Dr. John Demartini, a human behaviour and wellness specialist. He went around the room feeling our bellies to see if they pushed out during breathing, which indicates diaphragmatic breathing — a more efficient way to get oxygen to your cells.
You can practice it sitting in a chair or flat on your back, and the Canadian Lung Association suggests you start with 5 to 10 minute sessions, several times a day. The association’s website, www.lung.ca, has full instructions and diagrams.
The next step up the healthy breathing ladder involves taking air in through the nose instead of the mouth. Experts say that most of us do too much mouth breathing, especially during strenuous exercise. In a recent column, Dr. Joseph Mercola suggests that 80 per cent of people in Western societies breathe incorrectly. “You may intuitively think that sucking in a large volume of air through your mouth would improve your oxygenation by sheer volume,” he writes. “But this isn’t the case — it actually decreases the oxygenation of your tissues.”
This is because of something called the Bohr Effect. Your blood becomes less efficient at releasing oxygen when its pH increases. This can happen when you don’t have enough carbon dioxide. Dr. Mercola writes that “the odds are that if you are breathing through your mouth during the day, you are also doing so at night, which can lead to several health problems like dehydration, snoring and sleep apnea.”
Mercola also provides evidence that mouth breathing can make exercise-induced asthma worse, especially in young patients. He suggests that, if left unchecked, mouth breathing in children can lead to crooked teeth, poor concentration and even altered face structures. Breathing through the nose, and more lightly, can help to avert these problems, and even reverse some ongoing symptoms.
Bringing air in through the nose also filters it and adds nitric oxide, a potent bronchodilator. But how do you become a nasal breather, short of worrying about it 24/7? Most experts suggest setting aside some time each day to do breathing exercises, which will then become a natural habit.
Click here for the full story by EVDS Professor Tom Keenan in the Calgary Herald.