S E23: Ep 23 – How You Breathe Matters More Than You Think

Hello and welcome to the Pain Free Living Podcast with me, your host, Bob Allen.

I'm an osteopath.

I started the Pain Free Living podcast because it's a way of giving people advice about their well being that they would struggle to get by using docs, Google or surfing the Internet.

We've covered a range of topics in the past.

Today we're going to be talking about breathing.

And I'm going to hand you over now to my co host, Claire Elsby, who will do a little introduction for herself.

Hello, everyone.

My name's Claire Elsby.

I'm trained in positive psychology and I'm a neurodiverse inclusive therapy coach.

So my angle, whereas Bob is very much the physical, my angle is really the mindful how we can influence our well being through managing our mental health.

Okay, thank you, Claire.

As I said, we're going to talk a bit about breathing, how we do it, why we do it, different types of breathing.

It's going to be a lot of things that you've probably never thought about, but they're very useful things to know and understand.

So first we're going to talk about is how many breaths do you take per day?

Probably go, no idea, Bob.

The answer is somewhere between 17 and 20,000 breaths per day.

That doesn't include when you're exercising, that sort of thing.

That adds up to around 6 million breaths a year.

And you've been doing that ever since you were a little.

So breathing, quite important.

I always like to see my clients breathing.

I find that it's very beneficial to their health.

So what we're going to talk about today is the different types of breathing.

Breathing is a very complex process.

It's part of the what we call the autonomic nervous system.

I'm not going to go into the nervous system today because I haven't got the time.

But if you go back to one of my previous podcasts, I cover a lot about the mechanics of breathing in that.

So breathing is controlled by the autonomic nervous system, but it's one of the few things that you actually have conscious control over.

You can't really control your heart rate.

There's a lot of things in the autonomic nervous system you can't directly control, but breathing is one of them.

And after we talk about it, you're probably breathing slower because you're thinking about your breathing.

There's different types of breathing.

People can be chest breathers or they can be belly Breathers.

So a chest breather tends to breathe up in their chest.

It can be called diaphragmatic breathing as well.

Belly breather tends to breathe lower into their abdomen.

There are advantages to one and more advantages to the other.

So during quiet breathing, where we're sat, we're reading a book, we're doing some work, during quiet breathing, it tends to just involve the diaphragm, the diaphragm.

If you're listening to this, you won't be able to see it, but the diaphragm is kind of around ribs 7, 8, 9, 10.

It's a curved muscle.

And when the diaphragm contracts, it creates more space in the chest cavity, which is then filled by air.

When we breathe out, the diaphragm relaxes, the muscles contract a little bit more, and then breath goes out.

That's during quiet breathing.

During exercise, if the sympathetic nervous system, fight and flight mechanism is kicking in, we tend to breathe faster.

And what happens then is that the, what we call the accessory muscles, because normally they shouldn't be used when you're breathing.

And those are the muscles in the neck.

I'm pointing to my neck, if you're listening to this again.

So there are muscles in the neck.

There's the sternocleidomastoid, there's the upper trapezius and chest muscles, pectoralis muscles.

That's what happens when we're exercising.

And basically what those muscles do is they increase the opacity of the chest even more, so we can take more air in, which means that we bring in more oxygen to fuel those muscles, and we are expelling more carbon dioxide as we breathe out.

So that's quiet breathing and breathing during exercise.

Now, the disadvantage of being a chest breather is that when you're a chest breather, you tend to breathe a little bit shallow, so you're not taking as much air and oxygen as you would otherwise.

But also you're using those accessory muscles that I was talking about before.

Now, because they're accessory muscles, they shouldn't be working all the time, and they can fatigue.

Now, if those muscles fatigue, as I said, it can make breathing more difficult.

But also if there's increased tension in those muscles, the brain associates tension in the accessory muscles as you're in a more stressful situation, which then means that it can trigger the release of cortisol, which can then increase your metabolism, which can then lead to metabolic stress.

Your brain thinks that the body is stressed, so it releases stress hormones, which can make you even more stressed.

So Chest breathing isn't ideal.

Belly or diaphragmatic breathing is better and that tends to trigger more of a relaxed part of your metabolism, almost.

Claire's going to talk to you a lot more about the mental health aspects of breathing, but those are kind of like the basic mechanics of breathing and the difference between belly breathing and chest breathing.

The other thing that's worth a mention as well is there is nose and mouth breathing.

Breathing through the nose, lots of benefits from doing that.

It filters the air going into your lungs, it warms and moistens the air going into your lungs so you can absorb more oxygen and expel more carbon dioxide.

It also increases the concentration of a substance called nitric oxide in the upper airways.

And what nitric oxide does is it dilates or opens up the blood vessels, which means that you can actually absorb more oxygen into the lungs.

If that mechanism is working, it can be a difference of around 10% in the absorption of oxygen into the lungs.

So nose breathing, lots and lots of benefits.

In addition to the gas exchange bit of it, you realise the importance of breathing through your nose when you can't.

So if you've got a cold, nose is streaming, you know that it affects your sense of taste, it affects your sense of smell and it also affects your voice.

So.

So nose breathing, really, really, really important.

The alternative to that and what some people do is they breathe through their mouths.

Now, mouth breathing, I couldn't really find any benefits of mouth breathing, to be honest.

Breathing through your mouth dries up your mouth.

It can affect the bacteria in your mouth and can cause bad breath.

It can contribute to tooth decay.

Mouth breathing can contribute to sleep apnea, which is where, when you're asleep, sometimes you can stop breathing completely and then it starts again.

So sleep apnoea, not good.

It can also encourage the development of things like type 2 diabetes and various other issues.

So there are a few negatives towards mouth breathing.

Some of the triggers for mouth breathing can be as a child, you've had an infection and you've not been able to breathe through your nose, so you then start to habitually breathe through your mouth.

One of the other downsides of it, which tends to affect children, is that mouth breathing can actually affect the shape of your face.

I can put a link to in the show notes to take you to a study that goes into that in more detail, but mouth breathing, not recommended.

Having said all of that, if you are a mouth breather, you have always been a mouth breather, it's not a major problem.

If you can work on not breathing through your mouth, breathing through your nose.

Again, Claire will go through some of the issues, some of the benefits of being.

Being a nose breather.

We've talked about some of those earlier on in the podcast.

So can you change it?

Yes, you can.

Is it easy?

No, it's not.

It's habitual.

You, you, like I said, you breathe between 17 and 20, 000 times a day.

Changing habit, which is also unconscious, you don't think about it most of the time.

Changing that habit, it's very difficult to do, but it can be done.

So I think that kind of covers all of the issues around breathing, the different types and the mechanics of, and the benefits and potential downsides of the different types of breathing.

And I'm going to hand you over to Claire now who's going to talk about benefits from a mental health perspective.

Yes.

Yeah, definitely.

I mean, from my perspective when I'm talking to clients, I think being able to mindfully breathe, because when you were talking a lot breathing, there I was being very conscious of my breathing.

What am I doing?

Am I breathing through my nose?

Am I chest or belly breathing?

Yeah, but most of it is unconscious because we live busy lives and we're going about our business and we don't even think about it.

But actually, to be able to mindfully breathe is a really useful tool for your mental wellbeing toolbox.

And the reason why I say that is everything is fine when you feel good and we all know what we're like when we feel good, we know we feel good.

But when things aren't going quite so well and we start to feel what I would call emotionally dysregulated, in other words, we start to feel a little bit anxious, we start to feel a bit worried.

What we do notice is that our breathing gets shallower and it probably gets quicker.

And as that is happening, it's actually having been in a situation where I've hyperventilated myself, it's really difficult to get out of that.

Sorry.

Claire, can you quickly just tell people what hyperventilation is?

Well, in my experience, it's literally where you cannot stop.

It's fast, shallow breathing, and you just can't bring yourself well, I couldn't breathe.

I didn't have the skills then to bring myself out of it.

It could, at an extreme, lead you to a panic attack.

That's the danger.

And the panic attack, for people who don't know, actually feels like a heart attack.

So it's actually not a great place to be, but it's not Dangerous in terms of actually your heart.

But that's what it feels like.

That's what it absolutely feels like.

So it's a really useful tool to be able to know that you can control your breathing, but like everything else in life, you have to actually practice it.

And the practice of breathing is known as breathwork.

And I'll put a link to a chap that I know called Jeff Craig in the show Notes, who's a really a big advocate for breath work and runs all sorts of workshops.

If this is something that is of interest to you.

But I talked about dysregulation, so that is emotional dysregulation.

That's where you're feeling.

You're definitely out of your comfort zone, or you're approaching being out of your comfort zone.

And what we want to do is to be able to bring ourselves back.

So we've had some sort of trigger or something's happened to put us into deregulation.

And so what we need in our toolbox are various ways of breathing that Bob has referred to.

So there's one called box breathing.

There's one called alternate nostril breathing, which is really popular.

There's another one which is cooling breath.

But so, for example, box breathing would be.

You would breathe in for a count of four, you hold it for a count of four, you breathe out for a count of four, and you just hold it for a count of four.

And you do that to a point where you start to feel your breathing get more regulated.

And what that does is that initiates the parasympathetic nervous system, which starts to then calm you down.

And effectively it brings you back into the room, makes you feel as if, oh, right, okay, I'm back here now.

I can cope with things.

But that's why breathing, and mindful breathing particularly, is really important.

And of course, the ancient civilizations knew all about this.

So if you look at China or Asia, there's, you know, Tai chi, yoga, even Pilates.

It's very much about blending the breath with movement in the body.

And so if breath work as such isn't for you, then maybe something like Pilates.

Tai chi yoga might be a gentle introduction to mindful breathing, but it is a really useful tool to have in your toolbox.

And it's free, and you've got it with you everywhere.

Thank you, Claire.

I mean, that sums it up pretty well.

Breathing, as we know, really, really important.

There's different aspects of it.

And if we wanted to, we could go really in depth into the link between the sympathetic nervous system, parasympathetic nervous system.

So a lot of what Claire was alluding is where the sympathetic nervous system, the fight, flight and freeze response takes over.

Breathing is part of that mechanism because basically it's your body getting you ready to run away from something, to fight it, or to just hide in a corner somewhere.

It's the stress response.

And the best way to manage the stress response is exactly, as Claire was pointing out, mindful breathing.

Because mindful breathing stimulates the vagal nerve, amongst other things.

And that can all be used to down regulate your systems.

And like I said, we could talk a lot more about this and we may do another podcast at some point with it going into it in a bit more detail, but for now I think we've probably blown your minds enough.

Do you want to add anything to that, Claire?

No, I think you've covered it and you've taught me a lot.

I'm going to be much more aware of my breathing.

Okay, excellent.

So if you have any questions, got any comments, please drop them in the link below.

And if there are any aspects of breathing that you, you are interested in, you want to know a bit more depth, please get in touch and we'll put a link to the podcast we did on the nervous system.

If you're really interested in what the sympathetics, parasympathetics, autonomic nervous system, the enteric, et cetera, et cetera, we can do, we've got a podcast that covers all of that.

So that's about it for this, this episode.

Yeah, leave us five stars.

That'd be great, thank you.