Thursday, September 20, 2018
Why You Should Practice Slow Deep Breathing Daily.
Many fitness watches on the market today come with deep breathing features that prompt you to take a moment to focus on your breath and practice mindfulness. Controlled breathing began in eastern cultures as pranayama or yogic breathing. Although, this practice has recently gained much popularity in our western world. However, physiological effects have hardly been examined in our medical community. Less than a year ago, a research investigation discovered a variety of benefits deep breathing has on the body, positively affecting your respiratory, cardiovascular, cardiorespiratory, and autonomic nervous system. Controlled deep breathing was found to increase ventilation efficiency and pulmonary gas exchange in the respiratory system. Moreover, deep breathing increased venous return, which increased cardiac output, which helped synchronize pulse fluctuations with the heartbeat. Last, focusing on your breath increased vagal activity, causing parasympathetic dominance in your peripheral nervous system. Enhancing vagal activity from the study was shown to improve the autonomic nervous system’s ability to react to physical and mental stress. Overall, the study found these physiological systems improved heart rate variability (HRV), which is controlled mostly by the autonomic nervous system. Therefore, improved heart rate variability preserved autonomic function, which has been shown to decrease mortality and thus increase longevity among the general population. HRV reached its optimal level at a respiratory rate of six breaths per minute. In other words, the best effects of deep breathing on your body result from focusing your breath to a rate of six breaths per minute. Being a month into fall semester, I imagine many of us might be looking for ways to reducing or controlling our stress. Deep breathing could be your answer for reducing your stress in the short term and increasing longevity in the long term.
Russo, M. A., Santarelli, D. M., & O’Rourke, D. (2017). The physiological effects of slow breathing in the healthy human. Breathe, 13(4), 298–309. http://doi.org/10.1183/20734735.009817
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ReplyDeleteI didn't read anything in the article that discussed how long the slow deep breathing exercises would be to have a significant effect in reducing stress. Does a few deep breaths a day improve stress relief? Naps can be beneficial in that it helps memory consolidation, preparation for subsequent learning, and a boost in emotional stability stated in the review article Exploring the Nap Paradox by Mantau and Spencer. Would an one nap be more beneficial than say a few minutes of deep breathing? In this study, they also doing activities like tai chi to control breathing to de-stress, but I would think that running or boxing would also, to a certain level, accomplish the same task of controlling breathing and it is used as a stress management technique for some individuals
ReplyDeleteThis kind of practice sounds like meditation. There has been much research around the potential benefits of reducing stress through mindful meditation as a long term practice. This article https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29933746 discusses the hopeful findings from practicing mediation and how it can overall lower stress, depression, and anxiety. In addition, the authors discuss how the risk for aging populations can decrease for Alzheimer’s disease if medication is utilized, because the disease itself stems from mental health and the well being of the patient. The authors specifically discuss how training on cognition, especially attention and memory, the brain is overall exercising the frontal and limbic structures in the insula. As we begin to delve into health care professions, we are beginning to incorporate holistic practices integrated with evidence based medicine. As a future health care provider do you think this is a step forward?
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