Deep Breathing to Boost the Immune System

Exercise is known to boost the immune system. It also is a great stress reducer which can help if you are doing too much quarantine snacking out of being stressed.  Go for long walks or runs if you can do it safely, staying 6 feet away from people.  Do yoga from home.  I use an app called down dog that I pay for but since March has been free and continues to be free during the quarantine.  The same company also has free apps for Barre and HIIT which is important for you to get your heart rate up and your lungs working harder.  We actually want to exercise the lungs.  I never thought about exercising an organ until the coronavirus hit and pulmonologists shared that it would help preventatively to do deep breathing exercises to strengthen the lungs.  Before the pandemic I only thought of people with trouble breathing as needing breathing exercises.  

So on a daily basis I want you to do lung exercises both preventatively and if you are feeling symptoms.  Make sure when you do lung exercises you breath by first pushing out your stomach, filling the bottom of the lungs first and then the chest.  Don’t pick up the chest first when breathing, because then you aren’t using the diaphragm to breath.  The diaphragm is the only breathing muscle in the body.  If you don’t use it you are then using the trap and other shoulder muscles to pick up the rib cage and this is why so many of us have knots and tension in our shoulders and neck.  But if you breath using the diaphragm is allows the lungs to expand automatically.  You see the diaphragm is a muscle that sits at the bottom of the rib cage, over the stomach and when looking at the body is an upside down U shape that when inhaling, flattens, enlarging the rib cage allowing the lungs to expand.  When the diaphragm moves like this it applies pressure on the stomach, almost like a massage that is good for digestion.  

The deeper the breath, the more oxygen can come in per breath.  The amount of oxygen that we inhale through our breathing, influences the amount of energy that is released into our cells. On a molecular level, this progresses all sorts of chemical and physiological processes. Breathing is controlled by the autonomic nervous system.  The part of our nervous system we don’t have to think about that makes our heart beat and digests our food.  There are two parts to the autonomic nervous system, sympathetic and parasympathetic.  These two parts control different things in the body.  The parasympathetic controls the breathing, digestion, sleep and libido.  This is the part of our nervous system that makes us feel relaxed and that is why breathing is so good to do during stressful times. It helps get us out of fight or flight mode. Breathing is also the easiest part of the autonomic nervous system to control and navigate. In fact, the way you breathe strongly affects the chemical and physiological activities in your body. It’s amazing what you can do when you can control your breath.  I’m not just talking about how long you can swim under water for but Wim Hof has developed special breathing techniques that keep his body in optimal condition and in complete control in the most extreme conditions. The breathing technique is first and foremost premised on inhaling deeply and exhaling without any use of force!  With his controlled breathing the heightened oxygen levels hold a treasure of benefits, more energy, reduced stress levels, and an augmented immune response that swiftly deals with all germs.

Wim Hof got his nickname “The Iceman” by breaking a number of records related to cold exposure. His feats include climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in shorts, running a half marathon above the Arctic Circle on his bare feet, and standing in a container while covered with ice cubes for more than 112 minutes.  Patients who have used his method say that it helps with stress and it even helped one patient heal from his eczema.   

In 2011 researchers at Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands brought Hof into a laboratory and started poking and prodding him, trying to figure out how he did what he did. At one point they injected his arm with an endotoxin, a component of E. coli. Exposure to the bacteria usually juices vomiting, headaches, fever and other flu like symptoms. Hof took the E. coli into his veins and then breathed a few dozen  breaths, willing his body to fight it off. He showed no sign of fever, no nausea. A few minutes later he rose from the chair and got a cup of coffee.  There's all the proof you need to know how deep breathing boosts your immune system!

To practice the Wim Hof‘s breathing method, start by finding a quiet place and lay flat on your back with a pillow under your head. Relax the shoulders, trunk, and legs. Take a very deep breath into the pit of your stomach and let it back out just as quickly. Keep breathing this way for 30 cycles.  It should take about 3 minutes if you are breathing about 6 seconds in and 6 second outs.  If possible, breathe through the nose; if the nose feels congested then breath through pursed lips. Each breath should look like a wave, starting with the stomach lifting, then the chest. You should exhale all the air out in the same order. At the end of the 30 breaths, exhale naturally, leaving about a quarter of the air left in the lungs, then hold that breath for as long as possible. Once you reached your breath hold limit, take one huge inhale and hold it another 15 seconds. Then exhale and start the 30 cycles of breathing again. Repeat the whole pattern three or four rounds and add in some cold exposure, cold shower, ice bath, a few times a week. The controlled breathing and then breathing all out, then not at all, getting really cold and then hot again is the key to the body’s magic. It forces the body into high stress one minute, a state of extremely relaxation the next. The body becomes more adaptable and flexible and learns these bodily responses can come under our control.

Wim Hof sees this controlled breathing as being able to create amazing physiological responses with the body.  His feats speak for themselves.  But I think it’s not just about biochemistry.  There’s more going on then we can see under a microscope or find in a college textbook.   In energy medicine (which I guess can be partly found in a quantum physics textbook) we see pumping the lungs with breath like this isn’t just about oxygen and carbon dioxide molecules moving in and out but it’s also about the movement of the chi, prana, kundalini energy, chakras,  or the meridian system. It’s all the same. This life force goes by many names.  Chi has it’s origin in Chinese medicine and is used by acupuncturists.  Japanese call it ki, Hebrews call it ruah, Greeks call is pneuma.  The Iroquois even had a word for it, orenda. Prana has it’s origin in yoga and comes from the Hindu culture.  Chakras are energy centers of this life force.  Kundalini is the name of the life force energy that is stuck at the bottom of your spine.  Guess what you do to get it unstuck? You use breath.

I'm not waiting for science to catch up to tell me to use breath to be able to hold more life force in my body.  I see the results with my patients and you can too.