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How to breathe for immune health: self help for Coronavirus protection

April 2, 2020 by info@breathingremedies.co.uk 1 Comment

Here are some breathing tips from experts, that might help protect you from Coronavirus  (SARS-CoV-2). You will see a lot of overlap, so these experts are all agreeing!
General use of face masks may not be recommended yet (watching, WHO may change their recommendations) but whether or not you wear a face mask, but we believe that good breathing could help protect you.

Recent reports, such as the majority of a choir catching the virus after a choir practice (even though they avoided contact, kept a social distance and washed hands), suggests that the virus may be spread more easily through air than thought. Breathing through your nose can help, but you can’t avoid breathing out through your mouth when singing or speaking! This suggests that not just coughing and sneezing, but singing, speaking and even mouth breathing may help to spread virus.
I hope these great blogs/articles will help convince you that you can help yourselves with social distancing, hand washing AND GOOD BREATHING!

Firstly:

Here are some of the main recommendations from Patrick McKeown’s presentation. He explains a lot of the background and science behind this in the video. It’s 40 mins long but comprehensive; worth watching it all.

• Breathe through your nose all the time (day and night – 3 options described in the video to help keep your mouth closed at night) whether you are uninfected or INFECTED

• Nose breathing is both to reduce the chance of getting the virus AND reduce the chance of passing it on as more water droplets fly out of your mouth than your nose).

• Only if you breathe in through your nose will nitric oxide (a natural virus killer) in the nose and sinuses be able to work. (Humming releases much more nitric oxide, but you must breathe back in through the nose after humming). If you breathe in through the mouth, virus can go directly into your lungs.

• Breathe less, LSD (light, slow and deep) when you feel breathless or anxious (NB deep does not mean big, it means low down in the lungs, not high in the chest). This is the opposite of what you feel like doing but there is scientific proof for it, it gets you MORE oxygen where it is needed and opens the airways.

• If this is too difficult, try short breath holds where you breathe out normally, then hold for 3-5 seconds, then breathe in through your nose, breathe normally for 10 seconds then after the next normal outbreath, pause for 3-5 seconds again then breathe in through your nose.

• If someone near you is coughing, hold your breath, move away and breathe as lightly as possible.


 Secondly:  breathing tips to protect against Coronavirus from colleague Anders Olsson

Thirdly: a scholarly article from Dr Rosalba Courtney 
Immune Protective Effects of Nasal Breathing and Nitric Oxide for Coronaviruses – Self care Potential


Fourthly: another breathing educator, Melody Mitchell, writes about how to protect yourself from the anxiety surrounding the Coronavirus


“Right now, anxiety levels are reaching overload as people are worried about COVID-19 and the effects of this illness. Individuals cannot always “plan” during disasters, and people with anxiety disorders often rely on routines and planning to help them cope better.

Advice right now (to everyone!) who needs to feel calmer immediately: Breathe gently, focus on where you are: right now, in this moment, what is happening? what are your surroundings? what can you be grateful for right here, and right now? Work? Friends? Family? A home? Health? Birdsong outside the window? Rain? Sunshine? The smell of coffee? The laughter of children? Or perhaps the Quiet? There’s so much to be thankful for, focus on this.

Listen to your breathing and allow it to calm as you inhale and exhale. Observe. Be. No Self Judgement. You can’t be your best under constant criticism – Be Kind to Yourself, and then be kind to others.

As your breathing starts to become more rhythmic, let it relax even more. Enjoy the sensation of your breath entering your nostrils and exiting your nostrils. The Lower and Lighter, the easier it feels. Allow breathing to be regular, easy and effortless. Give yourself the permission to take these few seconds to restore – and feel how your body is slowly able to release tension. Do this as often as you need to.


Stay Safe, wash your hands, self isolate if you can…and breathe gently. You got this”

If you would like to have a comprehensive breathing assessment, call me on 01663 743055



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Filed Under: Nose breathing is important Tagged With: Coronavirus

Comments

  1. Timothy says

    April 11, 2020 at 23:46

    One of the big things in intensive care that we’re seeing with a lot of patients,’ says Ghafur, “is you have to put them on a ventilator in what we call a prone position, which basically means you’re lying on your front. It’s not in any recommended guidance for patients who are not in intensive care, but if you’re able to lie on your front for a while that can help breathing.” There’s no harm in trying it, she says, but only if you’re generally fit and healthy. Do not try to lie on your front if you are older, infirm, have mobility problems or are pregnant.

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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!


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