What Really Works: The Insider’s Guide to Complementary Health. Susan Clark
of eight. If you cannot keep the breath controlled for a count of eight, cut back to four or six counts and build back up to eight. The breath control and quality are more important than the number you can count to.
To begin with, try and build up to 10 rounds of this breathing practice. You will feel the benefits immediately. As well as calming your mind and clearing blockages, both energetic and physical, this breathing exercise seems to reassure the body that everything is functioning as it should be.
Deep Breathing
In their excellent book Breathe Free (see Bibliography), the herbalist and nutritionist (respectively) Daniel Gagnon and Amadea Morningstar say that even the simplest forms of deep breathing help to ventilate the lungs and stimulate lymphatic drainage to speed up healing.
There are methods, particularly the Russian technique devised by Professor Konstantin Buteyko, which recommend the opposite. He argues that the root cause of some 200 conditions, especially asthma, is hyperventilation, where we take in too much air and breathe out too much carbon dioxide. It is true that some asthmatics who have embarked on the Buteyko programme have reported relief through shallow breathing exercises but as a non-sufferer and a keen student of yoga I am happier myself to practise techniques that have been tried and tested for thousands of years. Each day, whatever I am doing, I make a point of trying to remember to take three or four deep breaths every hour as recommended by Gagnon and Morningstar.
Dolphin Breathing
I used to swim every weekday morning before going on to my desk at the Sunday Times where I edited the Lifestyle health and fitness section of the popular Style magazine. Before too long, I twigged that whenever I was under particular stress, the nature of my swimming would change. I would forget about lengths or laps and find myself concentrating, instead, solely on the breath. It was as if I found a great release of tension by moving my swimming body in a rhythm with my breath. It might not look pretty to anyone dawdling about at the side of the pool, but what I found was that I gained even more relaxation, almost meditative benefits when I exaggerated this breathing pattern and spouted air, at the surface of the water, like a dolphin.
Imagine my surprise then when I stumbled across confirmation that there is no better way to release tension and relieve stress than breathing like a dolphin in water. In his book Animal-Speak, the animal expert and shamanic healer, Ted Andrews, confirms what I had discovered by accident, that breathing like a dolphin can bring great benefits. In a description of the power of dolphin medicine, he says the breath holds the key.
It can also, apparently, do wonders for your sex life. ‘Water is essential for life but so is breath,’ Andrews reminds us. ‘There are many different techniques for breathing and learning to breathe like a dolphin can not only help you become more passionate and sexual, it will also heal your body, mind and spirit.’
For the release of tension and stress, Andrews recommends you simply imitate the spouting breath the dolphin uses as it surfaces from the deep.
Keeping Lungs Healthy
Once you have improved the quality of your breathing, you can begin to investigate how diet and supplements can help keep strong lungs healthy. As well as vitamin C, another of the nutrients that is key to protecting all the membrane surfaces inside the body is vitamin A, which stimulates the immune system and which can be used in high doses – 30,000-100,000 international units (iu) – for no more than five days to beat a cold. For prevention, though, take just 10,000 iu a day.
An alkalizing nutrient which accelerates healing, vitamin A also has soothing properties that will ease an irritated throat. This is because it works to rebuild the mucosal lining of the lungs, promotes the lubrication of tissues and strengthens epithelial cells. Good food sources include carrots, dark leafy greens and sweet potatoes. In Ayurvedic medicine, pungent foods such as onions, garlic, leeks, ginger and chilli peppers are often used to help decongest the lungs.
How Minerals and Fish Oils Can Help
Minerals now being investigated by scientists who want to work out how nutrition can help prevent respiratory problems, especially asthma, include magnesium, selenium, sodium, copper, zinc and manganese. There is now a well-established link between a high sodium diet and an increase in asthma attacks. One of the jobs sodium does in the body is to help maintain nerve and muscle function. When there is a dietary sodium overload, the lungs of asthmatics have been shown to become supersensitive to the allergens that can trigger an attack. What researchers have also found is that a low sodium diet can improve healthy bronchial activity 1.5 times in men. (The same has not yet been shown with women, but then there are still only a small number of these studies.)
Magnesium is closely linked with sodium in the body. Raise the levels of one and the other will drop to compensate. In acute asthma, clinicians have found magnesium, which is destroyed by processing foods, has a dramatic effect; the scientific literature is now starting to catch up with this experiential evidence. For example, when a patient is admitted to casualty in the throes of an asthmatic attack, there is no difference in recovery rates when either magnesium or ventalin are given. In other words, this mineral can confer the same brochodilatory benefits as the normal prescription drug.
Blood serum levels of selenium, a powerful antioxidant which is believed to help protect the lungs, have been found to be low in asthmatics and, according to new research, taking paracetamol can decrease levels of another natural antioxidant called glutathione, which protects the lungs.
Researchers who compared aspirin and paracetamol in 664 asthmatics against it’s use in 910 people with no asthma found that those who took paracetamol every week were 80% more likely to have asthma than those who never touched it. They concluded that the paracetamol acts in some way to decrease levels of glutathione, resulting in less protection for the lungs. If you have any kind of breathing difficulties, then alcohol, which is a bronchcoconstrictor, will also be unhelpful.
A less well-known but highly promising mineral that can help keep lungs healthy is germanium, which not only helps deliver more oxygen to the body’s tissues but actually works to generate oxygen production inside the cells. It boosts the immune system, which supports lung function, helps the body get rid of debilitating toxins and is now being used in cancer therapy, since if there is one thing cancer cells hate it is a rich supply of oxygen. They need an anaerobic, or oxygen-free, environment to multiply, which means germanium has the potential to starve a malignancy to death.
You can find germanium in garlic, chlorella and the immune-boosting Reishi and Maitake mushrooms, but if you decide to investigate a more reliable supplement source, practitioners say you must make sure you buy the purest form, which is called germanium bis-carboxyethyl sesquioxide-132 (thankfully shortened to Ge-132.) Cheaper versions may be tempting, but less pure forms have caused two fatalities and have been linked with kidney damage. As a result, germanium has been voluntarily withdrawn in the UK. You can, though, find it in cosmetics including face creams and bath oils (see Resources); it is also available in homoeopathic form.
The role of fish oils in keeping lung function good boils down to the fact that they inhibit the synthesis of leukotrienes, which the body needs to heal wounds and injuries but which, in excess, are believed to cause inflammations in conditions ranging from asthma to arthritis and lupus. Low levels of vitamin E have also been linked with high leukotriene production, so taking a good antioxidant that includes vitamins A,C, E and selenium, plus fish oils from an unpolluted source, should help keep the lungs in good working order.
Finally, if you suffer recurring respiratory infections, a supplement called Oralmat will help, especially if the transition between climates when travelling causes problems for you. It contains extract of rye grass, which is very effective for a range of breathing complaints, including sneezing, bronchitis and asthma. One patient, who knew her attacks were being triggered by environmental pollutants whenever she travelled by plane, described the remedy, which has been tested by researchers in Melbourne, as ‘miraculous’.
As well as rye, which is said to clean and renew arteries and which is used in Traditional Chinese Medicine to reduce damp, watery conditions in the body, Oralmat also contains energy-giving co-enzyme Q10, which