Nutritional supplements and workout aren’t the only method to boost NO in your body. Far from it. There are numerous easy-to-do actions that you can take to enhance your body’s manufacture of NO. And merely like eating more NO-enhancing foods and taking NO-enhancing supplements, these easy techniques will let you prevent or reverse the many diseases linked to low NO such-as high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke-the diseases that get rid of the majority of Americans.
Now a large number of additional NO-boosting strategies aren’t all that astonishing (though one or two are). In the end, how many times have you been told by stress experts to breathe deeply by exercise experts to exercise every day, by nutritionists to drink more water. What is surprising, however, is that now we understand one of the main reasons why these oft-repeated health suggestions work-because they increase NO!
Let’s take a glance at these extra NO-boosting strategies one by one.
Breathe Deeply: Breathing is pretty, well, basic. It is possible to stop eating for a couple of weeks and stay alive. You can stop drinking water and survive for a few days. But stop breathing-” -and you’ll be dead in a matter of minutes. The obvious reason: your body requires oxygen to work, and it requires it now.
“To breathe is to live,” is how Dennis Lewis, author of The Tao of Natural
Breathing, summed up the situation for us. “To breathe fully is to live fully,” he added. However, he went on, few of us actually breathe fully. And maybe that’s why we’re gasping for good health.
“Our chronic shallow breathing cuts down on the working capacity of our respiratory system to only about one-third of its potential,” said Lewis. “Shallow breathing diminishes the exchange of gases, and therefore the creation of energy in our cells. It deprives us of the many healthful actions that breathing naturally would have on our inner organs. It cuts us off from Other real feelings. Shallow breathing promotes disharmony and ‘dis-ease’ at every level of our lives.” (If you feel tense after reading that description of all the bad things that shallow breathing can do to you-take a cahning deep breathl) Science provides support for many of Lewis’s statements.
Lowering high blood pressure
For example, research shows that regular practice of slow, deep breathing-l0 to 15 minutes a day, for three to four weeks-can lower blood pressure (hypertension).
In one study, Israeli researchers conducted an experiment with 17 people who had “resistant” hypertension-high blood pressure that isn’t lowered by medications. They put all the hypertensives on a daily regimen of 15 minutes of slow, deep breathing,’ using a device called RESPeRATE. After eight weeks, 14 of the 17 hypertensives had responded to deep breathing. The average di~p in blood pressure iit~asured in the docto?~l office was 12.9 systolic and 6.9 diastolic, and the average drop measured at home was 6.4 systolic and 2.6 diastolic-a very significant decrease in blood pressure. (Measurements of blood pressure at the doctor’s office are typically higher, because most people are somewhat anxious at the doctor’s, a phenomenon called white coat hypertension.)
In a similar study 66 people with type 2 diabetes and hypertension were divided into two groups: 33 practiced slow, deep breathing and 33 didn’t. After eight weeks, those practicing deep breathing had a drop of blood pressure of 10.0 systolic and 3.6 diastolic; there was no change among those in the other group. The outcomes were published in the Journal of Human Hypertension. Lower blood pressure is just one gain from deeper, slower breathing; . there are many others.
Anxiety. A regimen which includes deep breathing lowered anxiety levels by 57 percent, report physicians at the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine in Toronto.
Arrhythmia. Despite the fact that often harmless, these infrequent heart rhythms can raise the risk of a heart attack if you have heart disease. In a study in the Internationallournal of Cardiology, physicians documented that slow, deep breathing reduces one type of arrhythmia (premature ventricular contractions [PVCs] , or “skipped beats”) by at least 50 percent.
Asthma. Asthma patients who acquired information and training on deep breathing had less severe symptoms of asthma and decreased their need for medications, reported a team of Canadian researchers in the journal Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Plus research in the medical journal The Lancet, asthma patients who were taught slow, deep breathing had stronger lungs, fewer symptoms, and used less asthma medication.
Heart attacks. Researchers in Korea studied 58 individuals with cardiovascular disease who had undergone an angiography (a surgical procedure to unblock and widen a clogged artery). Thirty received instruction in stress management, including deep breathing; 28 didn’t. Those who learned deep breathing had” fewer heart attacks, lower artery-clogging LDL cholesterol, and better” overall “quality of life,”
Low back pain. Canadian researchers studied 75 people with chronic back pain, providing 39 of them with non-drug treatments that included deep breathing. After three months, the deep breathing group had 62 percent less back pain. The breathing group also had a much better mental outlook (not surprisingly, since they were in less pain), more spinal flexibility-and even lost more weight!
Smoking cessation. A study in the journal Addictive Behaviors reported that deep breathing decreased withdrawal symptoms in people trying to quit smoking: craving for cigarettes, irritability, and tension.
Why is deep breathing so effective in blowing away bad health?
For one thing, shallow breathing makes the blood more acidic. (Your body is constantly maintaining a balance between two types of basic chemical compounds-acids and alkalis-in order to keep your body fluids slightly alkaline.) Acidic blood makes the kidneys less efficient at rernoving sodium from the blood-and that extra sodium can trigger high blood pressure.
For another, slow, deep breathing stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, the section of our nervous system that permits us to calm down and relax after stress-and excess stress is important in.dozens of conditions and diseases, from colds to heart disease.
But this is what a lot of people don’t know about deep breathing: it increases NO.
The greatest concentrations of NO in your body are located in the nasal passages, in the back of the nose. When you breathe deeply through your nose, your transport NO to your lungs. That extra NO opens up the lungs; allowing you to absorb oxygen and explore carbon dioxide. (It’s a small but very impactful – 3 percent increase.) Also, since this is an NO-mediated effect, breathing from the NO-rich nose can make all the difference in the positive effects: scientists discovered that nose breathing led to a 10 to 15 percent higher oxidation of the blood than mouth breathing. That’s right: the same quantity of breath-but much more oxidation, because of NO.
How to breathe deeply
To learn the simplest way to breathe for breathing benefits, follow these tips – “The simplest and most direct form of stress management is to change your shallow, stressed breathing into belly brearhing.”
Here are his six-step instructions. (Remember: to make sure deep breathing is NO~producing, follow these instructions inhaling and exhaling through your nose.)
1. As you inhale, imagine that your belly is a big balloon that you’re slowly filling with air.
2. Place your hands on your belly while you slowly inhale.
3. Watch your hands as they rise with your in-breath.
4. Watch your hands fall as you slowly breathe out, letting the air out of the balloon.
5. As you exhale, make sure your belly stays relaxed.
6. Take at least two or three more slow and deep breaths, making sure to keep your attention on the rise and fall” of your belly.
Make sure you practice every single day. You can breathe deeply when you’re sitting in your car, watching TV, walking for exercise, or sitting at the computer at work. You can also sometimes breathe deeply for as long as 5 to 10 minutes.
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