Breathing Remedies

asthma anxiety sleep fatigue

  • BREATHING
    • Breathing Assessment and Buteyko course
    • How I help – About Buteyko breathing
    • Symptoms of Disordered Breathing
  • POSTURE
    • Postural alignment therapy (Egoscue): conditions treated
  • FAQ
  • Success Stories
    • Asthma allergies sinusitis
    • Anxiety panic stress
    • Snoring sleep apnoea insomnia
    • ME/CFS
    • Dysfunctional Breathing
  • CONTACT

Do you ever feel out of breath or dizzy or exhausted after only minimal exercise? How are you breathing?

February 19, 2014 by info@breathingremedies.co.uk Leave a Comment

The previous better breathing blog post was all about the importance of breathing through your nose, but even before you focus on nasal breathing, you have to cultivate good awareness of your breathing; many people tell me they breathe through their noses, but I observe them mouth breathing without realising. If you have never thought it mattered, why would you notice? I used to be the same. I certainly did not notice that I was taking in gasping breaths through my mouth when I was speaking. Now I can breathe in calmly through my nose when speaking, most of the time anyway.

Remember that the MORE you breathe, the LESS oxygen you are getting.
So it is important to know how you are breathing when you feel dizzy or tired, as you may have INCREASED your breathing (hyperventilation – breathing more than you need).
I remember I must have learned from my mother that you had to pant through your mouth when mopping the floor. Well you don’t have to. I remember I used to have to rest every few minutes mopping like that, but when I found out about better breathing, I had much more stamina and could keep going for longer if I did the housework while breathing all the time with my mouth closed.
Another time you may feel faint or tired is when bending, for example emptying the washing machine or picking things up of the floor or gardening. Are you emptying your lungs? Are you breathing out a massive out breath and then a massive breath back in? This large volume breathing can deplete the body of oxygen (NOT increase it!) and make you feel dizzy or tired. I remember before I knew about disordered breathing, I could not bend to pick up a stick and throw a stick for my dog more than two or 3 times without feeling weak and exhausted, yet I watched an old lady (probably 30 years my senior) bending and throwing a ball for her dog many times with no ill effects. Eventually when I understood about healthy breathing, I was able to change my habits and increase my stamina.

But my nose is blocked so I have to breathe through my mouth?
A lot of people think this, but Dr Buteyko taught us that the nose blocks up because of the over breathing or hyperventilation caused by mouth breathing. In fact for the majority of people, it is easy to unblock the nose using a simple breathing exercise. However, the nose will soon block up again unless you learn how to breathe well ALL the time. 

It is impossible to breathe through your nose when exercising isn’t it?
Well NO, you should be able to learn to do it, it took me about 2 weeks and I could walk up my local High Peak hills breathing through my nose. Once someone asked me why I wasn’t out of breath! But I have learned to pace myself so that I can live life at the pace that I can breathe through my nose. So I might not win any races, but I can now walk for miles up and down hills, something at one time I thought I would never be able to do again. You can see the not very flattering selfie of me at the top of a local hill, an hour’s steady climb. You may feel that you have to go frustratingly slowly to begin with, but it may just be worth it. And you may not be walking up hills for a while, but try just when standing up from a seated position, or climbing stairs in your house- go as slow as you need, but be in better shape when you get there!
And here is someone at the other end of the fitness spectrum, an Olympic athlete who learned Buteyko breathing and wins, looking so relaxed! I will leave you to work out which one she is (you can click on the picture to enlarge it).

And some more inspiration, watch Charlie dancing here, all that stamina, and his mouth closed the whole time.

I may be labouring the point here a bit, but here is Mireille Mathieu, singing and nasal breathing about 80% of the time.

Any more excuses?
In short there are few excuses. I even know of a man in his 60’s who had been kicked in the nose by a horse when he was a child, and had been a mouth breather since. Even he was taught to breathe through his nose again by a Buteyko breathing educator. However, changing the habits of a lifetime can be challenging, I know.
Perhaps I sound a little obsessed with nose breathing, but some of my clients have had noticeable improvements in some of their symptoms just by focusing on nasal breathing.
Give it a try, you have nothing to lose (but your symptoms?). Oh and don’t forget to let me know how you get on.
If you would like an email alert for new blog posts, please sign up below:

Subscribe to our mailing list

 

Share

Filed Under: Better breathing and better health, Nose breathing is important Tagged With: breathless, dizzy, hyperventilation, nose

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

About me, Buteyko breathing educator

Janet Winter breathing and posture educator (Buteyko and Egoscue)

Dr Janet Winter (PhD)

Hello, I am Janet,  a  Breathing educator (Buteyko), and Posture specialist (Egoscue).

I help people recover from asthma, allergies, sinusitis, anxiety, sleep problems, headaches, IBS chronic fatigue (ME/CFS) and more, by improving their dysfunctional breathing.

Listen to a client’s (Suzy Glaskie, functional medicine health coach at Peppermint Wellness) 15 minute podcast on how Buteyko helped her.

I teach natural health control with no drugs, gadgets or manipulation. You can sign up to my newsletter here.

Phone me 01663 743055 (Dr Janet Winter) or contact me here.

What I do

Breathing education gently retrains a disordered breathing pattern and helps people naturally recover from breathing-related health problems.

The Buteyko Method relieves asthma symptoms, and has been listed in the UK Asthma Guideline since 2008.
I am a member of the Buteyko Breathing Educators Association and am fully insured.

I am also a qualified postural alignment specialist (PAS) Egoscue method. Good posture is essential for good breathing and proper function in general.

My background

I was involved in healthcare/biomedical research for 30 years although previously in a very different role: before training as a Breathing educator, I spent 20 years in drug discovery looking for new painkillers for a major pharmaceutical company based in a London Institute.
I worked as a neuroscientist and cell biologist, directing a team of bench scientists. (So I am not a medical doctor but I have a PhD in Neuroscience) I authored or co-authored more than 50 journal articles and reviews on my research.  My professional profile can be seen here on LINKEDIN.

Why I became a breathing educator

If you are reading this because you have CFS/ME, I know what you are going through. I know what it is like to hold onto a job by my fingernails, worried about how we would feed the family if I lost my job, come home and eat and sleep and spend my weekend recovering.

I had no social life. I was lucky to quickly get to a consultant who diagnosed me with candidiasis, and anti-fungals and a yeast and sugar-free diet helped a lot, but not enough.

I felt I had been “written off” and had nothing to offer. I was a mum, partner and employee with massively reduced physical and mental output compared with previously.
For me (after trying many different avenues, cranial osteopathy, chiropractic, mercury amalgam filling removal and more – I became a “fat-folder patient”).

How I got sick

I suspected my symptoms were “stress related” but they did not ease when I left my stressful job and moved out of London to the countryside.

Looking back on my history I can clearly see my own physical and emotional stresses accumulating, from a very traumatic bereavement, on-going work and family stresses, then a really bad summer respiratory infection and cough that was not shifted by two different antibiotics (but they probably contributed to unbalancing my gut flora, hence the fungal overgrowth/candidiasis).

A cough seems to be one of the best ways to mess up your breathing pattern, and many of my clients tell me “I was fine until I had that cough/chest infection, and I never really got my health back!!”

The breathing centre in the brain gets to think that big volume breathing is normal and unless you know about it, it is sometimes hard to recover. Luckily you CAN retrain your breathing by doing a series of gentle exercises and making some life style changes, and you CAN have hope of better health.

My recovery

Changing my breathing back to a more normal pattern really helped me. It was a big missing piece of my health puzzle, and one I had frankly never considered. One definition of stress is “anything that makes you breathe more”. And I know now that breathing too much can actually deplete the body of oxygen. And stress can be emotional or physical.

So that is why I do what I do and why I am passionate about it; I found a way to improve my chronic fatigue by better breathing and I trained as a breathing educator so I could help others with this devastating disease. There is so little help out there for them (you?).

Then chronic backache made good breathing impossible, and I discovered postural alignment therapy (Egoscue) to help with that. And I am still amazed at the progress I am making -it’s wonderful to have decreased pain and increased function when I had accepted decline at my age was inevitable. It’s not!


ambassador_blue

Share

Follow me

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Recent Posts

  • Facemasks against coronavirus; tips
  • How to breathe for immune health: self help for Coronavirus protection
  • Breathing quotes; why it might be worth learning to breathe well…
  • Is yoga breathing damaging your health?
  • The importance of nasal breathing: 11 reasons to breathe through your nose
  • ME/CFS, POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome), joint hypermobility, teenagers and anxiety
  • Smiling and snoring; humming, posture and sinusitis.
  • Posture and breathing
  • Records of three better breathing success stories
  • The microbiome in asthma and ME/CFS
  • Self-compassion to reduce the stress response in ME/CFS/SEID
  • Is ME/CFS/SEID linked to disordered breathing/overbreathing/hyperventilation?
  • A new name “systemic exertion intolerance disease” (SEID) for ME/CFS?
  • Self-improvement is a big job. Breath retraining requires personal discipline and effort.
  • ME/CFS/fibromyalgia/anxiety: are you stuck in fight or flight?
  • How did we get a disordered breathing pattern/hyperventilation in the first place?
  • Better breathing enhances sports performance
  • How hyperventilation harms: part 3 hyperventilation can unbalance the blood gases and reduce transfer of oxygen from the blood to the organs and tissues that need it.
  • How hyperventilation harms: part 2 hyperventilation can narrow the blood vessels and reduce blood and oxygen supply.
  • How hyperventilation harms: part 1 hyperventilation can narrow the airways.
  • Five health benefits of breathing with your diaphragm
  • Three more good reasons to breathe through your nose and not your mouth.
  • I know how to breathe or I would be dead wouldn’t I? –5 Interesting responses I have had when I tell people that I am a breathing educator!
  • My Blog Tour – meet Viviann, Gillian and Nicola – all three have inspired me
  • The disease of deep breathing? Three dysfunctional breathing patterns; have you got one?
  • ME/CFS/fibromyalgia? You are not broken: Never give up hope, I recovered, so can you.
  • Unhealthy breathing patterns and low oxygen: link with ME/CFS and fibromyalgia?
  • Five ways that chronic cough can damage your health; and how better breathing helps
  • Do you ever feel out of breath or dizzy or exhausted after only minimal exercise? How are you breathing?
  • Seven reasons why you should always breathe through your nose

latest tweets

  • Voted for "Breath" in the Final Round of the 2020 #GoodreadsChoice Awards https://t.co/TQQsIJO11f via @goodreads November 24, 2020 20:53
  • Help slow the spread of #COVID19 and identify at risk cases sooner by self-reporting your symptoms daily, even if y… https://t.co/e4pv7aYMJG September 23, 2020 09:36
  • I downloaded a free policy template from @Termly_io to keep my business legally compliant. #Termly #GDPR https://t.co/4wyBTcanAP August 6, 2020 12:42
  • follow me on twitter

Tags

abdominal breathing asthma belly breathing blocked nose breathless bronchodilation carbon dioxide chest breathing chronic cough Coronavirus cough deep breathing diaphragm dizzy fibromyalgia fight or flight hyperventilation ME/CFS nose orthostatic intolerance oxygen poor circulation red alert self compassion sinusitis threat yoga breathing

Asthma allergies sinusitis

Anxiety stress panic

Snoring sleep apnoea insomnia

Sports performance

Facial development/ crooked teeth

Copyright © 2021 · Beautiful Pro Theme on Genesis Framework ·

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.Ok
This site uses cookies: Find out more.