Improve Physical Condition By Changing Breathing (2/4)

The function of lungs is peak at the age of 20 and gradually decreases. That means the amount of oxygen taken in decreases.
 
Two types of bad breathing we tend to do
 
1. Mouth breathing
 
Why is mouth breathing not good?
Because immune strength lowers.
 
Mouth breathing lowers the function of two filters which protect our body. What are the two filters?
 
(1) Nose hair blocks the foreign substance in the air and viruses. If you breathe from your mouth, the function of nose hair as a filter doesn’t work so viruses such as a cold and flu invade our body more easily.
 
(2) Cilia which are microscopic, hair-like structure located in the throat or trachea. Cilia block bacteria or viruses. But mouth breathing decreases the function of cilia because mouth breathing dries cilia. At the time of nose breathing, inside of nose is wet with secretion such as nose mucus so the air is moisturized. On the other hand, mouth breathing dries cilia and cilia can’t block viruses, becoming susceptible to infections such as a cold or flu.
 
There is an easy technique to make nose breathing a habit.
That is humming doing something.
If you hum doing something, your breathing becomes nose breathing naturally.
 
2. Shallow breathing
 














​Fig. 1 shows the X-ray of a person whose breathing is good and a person whose breathing is shallow. The location of the diaphragm of the shallow breathing person is higher than the good breathing person’s. This small difference makes a big difference of the function of lungs. The lung capacity of the person with correct breathing is 4500 cc and the lung capacity of the person with shallow breathing is 3500 cc. How they always breathe makes 1000 cc difference.
 
If you feel like getting easily tired, having neck and shoulder tighter or being difficult to lose weight, there is a possibility that these symptoms are caused by lack of oxygen due to shallow breathing.
 
If there is not enough oxygen, our body can’t break down nutrition to produce energy. That is like driving a car with the gas tank almost empty so you can’t move your body like you think, you easily feel tired, blood circulation becomes bad and neck and shoulder tightness gets worse.
 
To break down fat, a kind of enzyme, lipase is necessary. Lipase can burn fat with the help of oxygen. So if the amount of oxygen taken in is not enough, lipase doesn’t work well, making the body difficult to lose weight.

---