Clean air, water and food are the basics of good health. My senior client with lung health issues had been using a lot of strong household cleaning chemicals and had been over fatigued in the last months. Their corporate health insurance was dropped and they have to fill out long forms for another health insurance. She is now 86 and her husband, 91 yrs old. She was also the caregiver for him. Together,  they have been married for more than 65 yrs.

The first time I saw her I noticed dry skin, heavy breathing and lack of water. Older adults sometimes forget to drink/sip warm water with pinch of sea salt, ginger and garlic to cleanse their body every hour especially when the body’s lungs are not in good health.

Checking out her lifestyle and house keeping, I noticed that she used a lot of chemical sprays.  As I talked to her, I massaged her arms as she complained about some pain near the shoulder and reminded her of nose breathing and proper belly breaths. I am reminded of how my father complained of his back pain, a year before he died of lung cancer.

So the next morning, I brought eucalyptus oil, sea salt, magnesium EPSOM salt for foot soak, coconut oil, Vitamin C, organic apples, avocado, papaya, ginger, garlic, lemon grass, beef bone soup and fresh pineapple.  I will be teaching the new caregiver on how to care for her, massage her to bring her back to good health.

Connie Dello Buono, Motherhealth Caregivers for bay area homebound seniors 408-854-1883 motherhealth@gmail.com

http://www.clubalthea.com

The following information are from Dr Mercola.

The Effects of Nitric Oxide

Nitric oxide is found in your nose, so when you breathe through your nose, you carry a small portion of the gas into your lungs. As explained by Patrick, nitric oxide plays a significant role in homeostasis, or the maintaining of balance within your body. Nitric oxide is also:

• A significant bronchodilator
• An antibacterial agent that helps neutralize germs and bacteria
• A vasodilator

This is one of the amazing aspects of Buteyko therapy that I noticed. As you breathe exclusively through your nose and abandon mouth breathing, your nose starts to water and you frequently have to blow it. But amazingly your nasal passages eventually expand quite dramatically and it becomes much easier to get all your air through your nose rather than your mouth. This is true even for high intensity exercises like Peak Fitness. It may take a few months to work up to it, but once you are there you will rarely if even need to breathe through your mouth again, even under the most extreme circumstances.

Asthmatics typically breathe through the mouth. They also tend to breathe heavier and have a higher respiratory rate than non-asthmatics. According to Patrick, there’s a feedback loop, in that the heavier breathing volume that’s coming into your lungs cause a disturbance of blood gasses, including the loss of carbon dioxide (CO2). Contrary to popular belief, carbon dioxide is not merely a waste gas. Although you breathe to get rid of excess CO2, it’s very important that your breathing volume is normal, in order to maintain a certain amount of CO2 in your lungs.

“If you’re breathing too heavily, you lose carbon dioxide, and smooth muscles surrounding your airways constrict. Another factor from an asthmatic point of view is dehydration of the inner walls of the airways. It’s a combination of these factors that cause the airways to constrict. Heavy breathing is causing the loss of carbon dioxide. And carbon dioxide also helps to relax smooth muscles surrounding your blood vessels. So, it’s not just the airways which constrict when you’re breathing too much, but it’s also the blood vessels.”

As your airway constricts, there is a natural reaction to breathe more intensely as a compensatory mechanism. However, this causes even greater loss of carbon dioxide, and cooling of your airway causes it to close even more. In other words, asthma symptoms feed back to the condition.

You can test this out by taking five or six big breaths in and out of your mouth. Most people will begin to experience some light-headedness or dizziness. While you might reason that taking bigger breaths through your mouth allows you to take more oxygen into your body, which should make you feel better, the opposite actually happens. This is because you’re getting rid of too much carbon dioxide from your lungs, which causes your blood vessels to constrict—hence the light-headedness. So, the heavier you breathe, the less oxygen that’s actually delivered throughout your body due to lack of carbon dioxide, which causes your blood vessels to constrict.

“Also, when you breathe too much, your red blood cells hold on to the oxygen and don’t deliver so readily to where it is needed throughout your body. It’s called the Bohr effect; discovered in 1904 by Christian Bohr,” Patrick says. “In order for oxygenation to take place, we need the presence of carbon dioxide. Heavy breathing causing the loss of CO2 is not only causing blood vessels to constrict, but it’s also causing a greater affinity of the red blood cells with oxygen.

… If you were to look at the basic premise of breathing, we should not hear our breathing during rest. We should see very little movement from the chest and tummy. Ideally, most of our breathing is diaphragmatic, but we shouldn’t see it. The mouth should be closed, breathing should be regular, and breathing should be effortless.”