Chest Breathing Causes Health Problems - How Diaphragm Functions Artour Rakhimov

How & Why Chest Breathing Causes Health Problems – Functions and Benefits of the Diaphragm

This video begins with Dr. Artour Rakhimov showing you how to conduct a simple ‘Chest Breathing Test’.

The route of breathing test can be done as follows:
- Place one hand on your chest and one over your belly button or navel.
- Without thinking too much about how you ordinarily breathe, begin to take, slow, deeper breaths.
- Then, monitor which of your hands moves the most, if you breathe more into your chest than into your belly or diaphragm, then the hand on your chest will move more and vice-versa. Usually your breathing pattern will be evident after 1-3 breaths.

Dr Artour Rakhimov then goes on to explain how despite the fact that most medical and physiological text books clearly state that 80-90% of our breathing should be done using the diaphragm – with the upper chest playing a much smaller role – probably 90+% of people are breathing predominantly with their upper chest, during sleep, at rest, and throughout most of the day.

When watching healthy people with ‘normal breathing’ we can see that they have very little visible movement in the chest at all, with perhaps a small movement in the 2 lower ribs, which is hardly noticeable and typically inaudible.

Even when someone is breathing 2-3 times more than the norm it would still be difficult to notice based on the sound alone. Usually if a person is breathing 4 times the norm (hyperventilation), it would become evident audibly.

So, are there any negative effects of chest breathing? Can it create suffering?

There is no simple answer to this question, as it is not such a popular point of discussion. But in this video Dr. Rakhimov hopes to shed some light on the subject, as he shares the information that he found from several medical studies.

- Problems with chest breathing and their causes: http://www.normalbreathing.com/index-chest-breathing.php
- Relaxed diaphragmatic breathing exercise: http://www.normalbreathing.com/l-relax-diaphragmatic-breathing.php

There are 2 scientific reasons and benefits why diaphragmatic breathing is much better for us than chest breathing:

1) Using the diaphragm expands your lungs down – allowing many more alveoli (tiny air sacks inside the lungs) to stretch out and get a fresh air supply – meaning the whole lung gets fresh air. As opposed to when we breathe into the chest, which only allows fresh air to reach the top half of the lungs. Due to gravity, the upper part of the lungs, have 5-6 times less blood flow than the lower part. Meaning that even someone who breathes 2-3 times more than the norm will still not be absorbing less oxygen, just due to chest breathing. (For some reason this effect is stronger during sleep – “Nocturnal Hypoxemia”)

2) 50-60% of all lymph nodes are located just under the diaphragm. Lymph nodes are important for clearing the body of toxins and waste products and can only be moved around the body by compression. Most people, who are barely using their diaphragm to breath, will have a build up of toxins from the pancreas, liver, intestines and other organs, just sitting underneath their diaphragm, unable to move due to the lack of movement in the area. Once they begin diaphragmatic breathing, these toxins can be pushed out of the body as nature intended. This is another advantage of having abdominal or diaphragm respiration.

Pages in Spanish:
- Función de diafragma: Beneficios de respiración diafragmática: http://www.respiracionnormal.org/diafragma-funcion/
- Respiración diafragmática : Técnicas e Instrucciones: http://www.respiracionnormal.org/respiracion-diafragmatica/

Our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/ArtourRakhimov

The YouTube URL of this video is:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9DmVcqK6_A/.

The video features Dr. Artour Rakhimov, health educator, writer, Buteyko breathing teacher and trainer of practitioners, and the author of 11 bestselling Amazon books and the website www.NormalBreathing.com.

Measuring Body and Brain Oxygen Levels (Devices and Simple DIY Test)

Measuring Body And Brain Oxygen Levels (and how to increase brain and body oxygenation naturally since your breathing is the main factor for oxygen transport to tissues and cells) Measuring Body & Brain Oxygen Levels (and how to increase brain and body oxygenation naturally since your breathing is the main factor for oxygen transport to tissues and cells)

How much oxygen is in the body? And how can we test how much oxygen is in the body? Here is the link to the page that discusses this topic in more detail: http://www.normalbreathing.com/body-brain-oxygen-content.php/ .

Believe it or not, you don’t have to go to the hospital for an expensive test in order to get an idea of how much oxygen is in your body. (Of course if you are unwell and suffering, you should always go to the doctor for a check up)

As you may already know, using PET scans to measure body oxygen levels in the brain and other organs is probably the most common method used among doctors today. But when solely using these scans, it can be difficult to get a clear picture of your total body oxygen level.

Here is more about body and cell oxygen levels: http://www.normalbreathing.com/co2-cells-oxygen.php

This is due to the fact that the distribution of oxygen around our body is usually very inhomogeneous, or unevenly distributed, and can change from moment to moment depending on which part of the body needs the most oxygen at that time.

For example, the stomach and intestines would use a lot more of the body’s oxygen during digestion than at any other time throughout the day, so taking a scan with the intention of reading body oxygen levels at that time, could leave you with misleading results.

Fortunately, Dr. Buteyko - leading Soviet physiologist who was a Manager of the Respiratory Laboratory for spaceship research in the 1960s - did a wide variety of tests, measuring oxygen levels in the body tissues and their correlation to breathing. From these tests, he was able to create a much simpler test.

In this video, Dr. Artour Rakhimov is here to explain how Dr. Buteyko’s simple test works, and how anyone can do the test in less than a minute (on average - with the exception of deep-sea divers and the like).

In order to do this simple ‘Breath Holding Test’ or ‘Body Oxygen Test’ you will need to:
- Rest for 5 min. - To ensure that you are calm and that your blood pressure is at a ‘normal’ resting rate)
- While seated, begin to monitor your regular breath (trying not to change it from its usual pattern)
- When you are ready, and after an exhalation, pinch your nose and begin holding your breath
- Start timing your breath hold, from the second you pinch your nose
- Hold only until ‘first point of stress or discomfort’ – i.e. not for as long as you possibly can, that would be a very different number
- Then, release your nose, ensuring that your breathing pattern is the same as it was before the breath hold.

If you feel as though you are gasping for air after the hold, this means that your breathing pattern was disturbed. In this case, the number you counted was not your true CP (Control Pause or Body Oxygen Index) and you should repeat the test after 2 minutes.

Our YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/artour2006/
The URL for this video is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AeF2eY_t5s .

This video is created by Dr. Artour Rakhimov, an international educator and writer, breathing teacher and trainer of practitioners, an author of bestselling Amazon books, and the creator of www.NormalBreathing.com.