Fixing diet is pointless before you have fixed your breathing

TheSir

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1. Sir would die in 2 months without food.

2. Sir would die in 4-6 minutes without breathing.

Question: is it therefore more important that Sir breathes correctly, or that Sir eats correctly?

A vast amount of suffering in this community could be alleviated if its users simply learned to breathe right. No dietary intervention is going to provide lasting benefit so long as you keep breathing wrong. No amount of pregnenolone, OJ and liver is going to elevate your wellbeing as high as proper diaphragmatic breathing will. Indeed, almost all diseases are either completely or partially, either directly or indirectly caused by a lack of cellular oxygenation, which in turn is caused by dysfunctional breathing pattern and a general lack of physical conditioning.

Consider that energy production begins with oxygen and glucose. Of what use is glucose if oxygen can't enter the cell due to a lack of co2? How will you ever have enough co2 if you keep forcing your lungs to expel it all out by breathing with the wrong muscles? Your diaphragm, together with the bottom of your lungs, are like a pouch that stores co2 for your body to use. Woe to the poor Peater who doesn't keep their pouch full! Woe to the numerous ailments that will follow them to the grave!

Diaphragm the most important muscle you have. By honoring your diaphragm, you honor your body. It's your key to health, longevity and prosperity.
 

gaze

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proper nutrition allows deep breathing and relaxation. A chronically stressed person might be able to relax for a short time by focusing on breathing, but he will quickly fall out of it and gasp for oxygen and quicker breaths. The body needs energy and nutrition to be able to relax enough to breath properly
 
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TheSir

TheSir

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proper nutrition allows deep breathing and relaxation. A chronically stressed person might be able to relax for a short time by focusing on breathing, but he will quickly fall out of it and gasp for oxygen and quicker breaths. The body needs energy and nutrition to be able to relax enough to breath properly
Breathing and diet no doubt are a two-way street. However, no amount of proper nutrition is going to fix posturally dysfunctional breathing. Rather, a physical hands-on approach is required. Everyone thinks they're a diaphragmatic breather, yet only a very small portion of people breathe solely with the diaphragm. Others utilize additional muscles in the process. Consider that as many as about 10% of professional athletes have asthma! Asthma is strictly a manifestation of dysfunctional breathing. In other words, were they breathing right, they would not suffer from it. If even a considerable portion of professional athletes are breathing wrong, how confident should anyone be about their ability to breathe properly?
 

AndrewGesell

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Breathing and diet no doubt are a two-way street. However, no amount of proper nutrition is going to fix posturally dysfunctional breathing. Rather, a physical hands-on approach is required. Everyone thinks they're a diaphragmatic breather, yet only a very small portion of people breathe solely with the diaphragm. Others utilize additional muscles in the process. Consider that as many as about 10% of professional athletes have asthma! Asthma is strictly a manifestation of dysfunctional breathing. In other words, were they breathing right, they would not suffer from it. If even a considerable portion of professional athletes are breathing wrong, how confident should anyone be about their ability to breathe properly?
I feel this way too. Pulmonologist diagnosed me with 70% breath capacity for my age group. Tried Transcendental Meditation which is amazing by the way. But every time I got into a state of deep restfulfullness I began to suffocate because my diaphragm didn’t work

What suggestions would you have? Back and spine doctor? Massage therapy?
 
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TheSir

TheSir

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I feel this way too. Pulmonologist diagnosed me with 70% breath capacity for my age group. Tried Transcendental Meditation which is amazing by the way. But every time I got into a state of deep restfulfullness I began to suffocate because my diaphragm didn’t work

What suggestions would you have? Back and spine doctor? Massage therapy?
It could be that in that state of deep restfulness you begin to slouch so as to compromise the functioning of your diaphragm. Have you tried if the same thing occurs while meditating lying down?

As for learning to breathe with the diaphragm, practice guiding the inhalation downwards towards the hips. The correctly performed inhalation can be felt with your hand a little above your genitals, even a small inhale. You may have to tense your abs a lot before you learn to drive the inhalation downward. In the beginning it may help to keep the abs overly tensed whenever you're moving around. The abdominal muscles create a kind of a tunnel against which the diaphragm is driven downward. You can visualize it as breathing vertically through the lungs, rather than into the lungs, the latter of which is what many chest breathers do -- ultimately your chest should not move during the breathing cycle at all.

Diaphragm is in such a central role in body posture that severe postural issues can be fixed by using the breathing musculature to guide the body into alignment. There's a book about a young child even correcting her scoliosis with forceful breathing. When the diaphragm becomes competent, the rest of the body seems to fall into proper posture almost by itself.
 

cjm

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Diaphragm the most important muscle you have. By honoring your diaphragm, you honor your body. It's your key to health, longevity and prosperity.

I'm with you. A block in the diaphragm has systemic effects. Hiatal hernia has been called the insidious disease because it mimics so many other disease states.

It's not easy to overcome with exercise and repetition alone. Good breathing develops from good sensation in that area. "Trying" to breathe well, even thinking about breathing for long, has been a waking nightmare at times for me.

This review of Theodore Baroody's book, Hiatal Hernia Syndrome: Insidious Link To Major Illness, on Amazon is a short testimonial of a grueling 19 month journey to overcome hiatal hernia. He had to convince his wife he wasn't insane the whole time.

There's a book about a young child even correcting her scoliosis with forceful breathing. When the diaphragm becomes competent, the rest of the body seems to fall into proper posture almost by itself.

Forceful breathing for me quickly became too exhausting. I couldn't push through when it became emotional overwhelming.

"A quick reduction of carbon dioxide caused by hyperventilation can provoke an epileptic seizure, and can increase muscle spasms and vascular leakiness"

Protective CO2 and aging

But it is definitely recommended as a means of re-establishing rhythm. Painscience is the blog of a massage therapist turned researcher which is a good resource on this topic and others:

The Respiration Connection: How dysfunctional breathing might be a root cause of a variety of common upper body pain problems and injuries - Painscience.com

~~~

Look how the diaphragm sits right over the liver, cushioned by a bunch of connective tissue. (Ray has said hernias are caused by weak connective tissue.) Imagine a fibrotic, dehydrated, chronically contracted diaphragm in this diagram, just sucking like a vampire on the liver, all day, every day, for years:

1617718692020.png


~~~

I think you're on the right path to sway folks away from reckless supplementation by virtue of focusing on diet (keeping the gut clean would keep the liver happy would keep the diaphragm relaxed), but I would advocate some simple Peat interventions to help makes the exercises not as painful, i.e., relaxing blood vessels and tissues, eliminating chronic vascular and muscular spasms. Kudos to those that can push through unassisted, I have been in need of help. Baking soda and thyroid are indicated. Here Ray is talking about the brain but there's no reason not to generalize to other tissue:

(I love the story about the soda water vs. bicarbonate of soda in water curing a stroke after 6 months)

In a nutrition class, in the late 70s, I described the way metabolically produced carbon dioxide opens blood vessels in the brain, and mentioned that carbonated water, or "soda water," should improve circulation to the brain when the brain's production of carbon dioxide wasn't adequate. A week later, a student said she had gone home that night and (interpreting soda water as bicarbonate of soda in water) given her stroke-paralyzed mother a glass of water with a spoonful of baking soda in it. Her mother had been hemiplegic for 6 months following a stroke, but 15 minutes after drinking the bicarbonate, the paralysis lifted, and she remained normal. Later, a man who had stroke-like symptoms when he drank alcohol late at night, found that drinking a glass of carbonated water caused the symptoms to stop within a few minutes.

Realizing that low thyroid people produce little carbon dioxide, it seemed to me that there might be a point at which the circulatory shut-down of unstimulated parts of the brain would become self-sustaining, with less circulation to an area decreasing the CO2 produced in that area, which would cause further vasoconstriction. Carbon dioxide (breathing in a bag, or drinking carbonated water, or bathing in water with baking soda) followed by thyroid supplementation, would be the appropriate therapy for this type of functional ischemia of the brain.


Stress and Water
 
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StephanF

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Probably, if you have a big belly, diaphragm breathing will be difficult...
 

redsun

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Breathing is involuntary, and is controlled by the body mainly based on carbon dioxide levels. Increase in ventilation rate can also be triggered by stress (catecholamines), sympathomimetics (caffeine), higher metabolism (because oxygen consumption is higher). Your not supposed to control your breathing.

Your body knows how much it needs to breathe. If you ventilate fast that means you need to, the body does not make mistakes. It always tries to keep CO2 and O2 levels normal.

Some people are beyond ridiculous drinking many cups of coffee a day and are breathing like crazy and they think the solution is to try to control their breathing. Its comical really.

Poor posture in breathing could be a problem for some people I suppose. But trying to slow breathing rate through meditation or some other method is a mistake.
 

vetbusd

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Thank man, this offered a new insight I never considered.
I will focus on my beathing!
 

Uselis

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Breathing is involuntary, and is controlled by the body mainly based on carbon dioxide levels. Increase in ventilation rate can also be triggered by stress (catecholamines), sympathomimetics (caffeine), higher metabolism (because oxygen consumption is higher). Your not supposed to control your breathing.

Your body knows how much it needs to breathe. If you ventilate fast that means you need to, the body does not make mistakes. It always tries to keep CO2 and O2 levels normal.

Some people are beyond ridiculous drinking many cups of coffee a day and are breathing like crazy and they think the solution is to try to control their breathing. Its comical really.

Poor posture in breathing could be a problem for some people I suppose. But trying to slow breathing rate through meditation or some other method is a mistake.
I kind of feel the same tbh. All my attempts to control breathing even using as gentle effort as I could still ended in mild stress response.
 

Uselis

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1. Sir would die in 2 months without food.

2. Sir would die in 4-6 minutes without breathing.

Question: is it therefore more important that Sir breathes correctly, or that Sir eats correctly?

A vast amount of suffering in this community could be alleviated if its users simply learned to breathe right. No dietary intervention is going to provide lasting benefit so long as you keep breathing wrong. No amount of pregnenolone, OJ and liver is going to elevate your wellbeing as high as proper diaphragmatic breathing will. Indeed, almost all diseases are either completely or partially, either directly or indirectly caused by a lack of cellular oxygenation, which in turn is caused by dysfunctional breathing pattern and a general lack of physical conditioning.

Consider that energy production begins with oxygen and glucose. Of what use is glucose if oxygen can't enter the cell due to a lack of co2? How will you ever have enough co2 if you keep forcing your lungs to expel it all out by breathing with the wrong muscles? Your diaphragm, together with the bottom of your lungs, are like a pouch that stores co2 for your body to use. Woe to the poor Peater who doesn't keep their pouch full! Woe to the numerous ailments that will follow them to the grave!

Diaphragm the most important muscle you have. By honoring your diaphragm, you honor your body. It's your key to health, longevity and prosperity.
You've been contributing well on this forum and I always enjoyed reading your posts so please don't take this as an attack. I am genuinely interested.

Did all this theory worked in practice for you? If so could you list significant changes in your overall health because of it?

Thanks
 

cjm

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Breathing is involuntary, and is controlled by the body mainly based on carbon dioxide levels. Increase in ventilation rate can also be triggered by stress (catecholamines), sympathomimetics (caffeine), higher metabolism (because oxygen consumption is higher). Your not supposed to control your breathing.

Thank you for summing up succinctly what I took half a page to say. Peat's newsletter is just a bimonthly how-to guide on getting more CO2 into the body, making respiration happen. All our tissues and cells breathe on their own!
 
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cjm

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I kind of feel the same tbh. All my attempts to control breathing even using as gentle effort as I could still ended in mild stress response.

Same, even the gentlest effort became toxic in a sense. Because even if the physical effort was minimal, my intent to find and nurture physical sensation never materialized and made me worried I was doing something wrong. It was worse than doing nothing.
 

cjm

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As for learning to breathe with the diaphragm, practice guiding the inhalation downwards towards the hips. The correctly performed inhalation can be felt with your hand a little above your genitals, even a small inhale. You may have to tense your abs a lot before you learn to drive the inhalation downward. In the beginning it may help to keep the abs overly tensed whenever you're moving around. The abdominal muscles create a kind of a tunnel against which the diaphragm is driven downward. You can visualize it as breathing vertically through the lungs, rather than into the lungs, the latter of which is what many chest breathers do -- ultimately your chest should not move during the breathing cycle at all.

Nice visual! This is really helpful.
 
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TheSir

TheSir

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Forceful breathing for me quickly became too exhausting. I couldn't push through when it became emotional overwhelming.
I should have clarified that by forceful breathing I didn't mean hyperventilation, but a type of breathing in which your breathing muscles are deliberately engaged with higher state of tension than they would necessarily need to be engaged with, so as to allow one to get a better feel for the proper muscle activation, kind of like performing a heavy lift with a meticulously slow motion. Interesting points in the rest of your post, never thought about the liver connection!
Breathing is involuntary, and is controlled by the body mainly based on carbon dioxide levels. Increase in ventilation rate can also be triggered by stress (catecholamines), sympathomimetics (caffeine), higher metabolism (because oxygen consumption is higher). Your not supposed to control your breathing.

Your body knows how much it needs to breathe. If you ventilate fast that means you need to, the body does not make mistakes. It always tries to keep CO2 and O2 levels normal.

Some people are beyond ridiculous drinking many cups of coffee a day and are breathing like crazy and they think the solution is to try to control their breathing. Its comical really.

Poor posture in breathing could be a problem for some people I suppose. But trying to slow breathing rate through meditation or some other method is a mistake.
Think what you will of breathwork, programming the right diaphragmatic function into the subconscious is crucial in any case for anyone who has lost this ability along the years. While the nervous system knows how much the body needs to breathe, it has no ability to override an anatomically dysfunctional breathing pattern -- it can merely respond to the consequences of such dysfunctionality (which, as you may agree, is a sub-ideal situation).

I kind of feel the same tbh. All my attempts to control breathing even using as gentle effort as I could still ended in mild stress response.
+
You've been contributing well on this forum and I always enjoyed reading your posts so please don't take this as an attack. I am genuinely interested.

Did all this theory worked in practice for you? If so could you list significant changes in your overall health because of it?
(and @cjm) It's important to prioritize relaxation in any breathwork. The first reason for this is that the chemoreceptors are unwilling to accept elevated co2 levels as the new baseline when the body is stressed, yet will gladly do so when the body is relaxed. The second reason is that fighting to breathe less to the point of stress paradoxically leads to increased breathing. So, in short, increasing relaxation is the way to increase co2 tolerance. You know that you are on the right track when your body begins tingling pleasurably and your extremities warm up. You may not necessarily even have to intentionally focus on your breathing so long as you keep relaxing more and more. The body in a sense relaxes into better health, which is a very Peaty way of looking at it too.

Thank you for the love. I'm aiming a little further than mere correct use of the diaphragm, i.e. to increase my co2 baseline. I wrote in another thread how this has helped my extremities to remain warmer throughout the day. Other effects are increased energy levels, better sense of wellbeing, less need for sleep (from 9 hours to 7-8) and better blood sugar regulation. Interestingly there is less of a white coating on my tongue now, which I'm not sure on how to interpret, but it could be the result of improved bowel function, strength of saliva or efficiency of the immune system.
 

S-VV

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Do you have a book/reference to learn the specifics of this kind of breathing?
 

cjm

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I wrote in another thread how this has helped my extremities to remain warmer throughout the day.

Awesome this is working for you. Speaking of temps, I got one of those nifty infrared thermometers and noticed my hands and feet wouldn't register a reading, just "Lo." I did get a 93F reading on the back of my wrist. Forehead temp was 98.6.
 

pauljacob

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Excellent resource. Thank you for sharing.
From my own experience a major source of upper body problems and deformations is years of hunching forward over a laptop. No amount of proper breathing can fix that.
Also from my own experience bi-focal glasses caused me to lift my head up while reading or watching videos on PC, causing neck problems.
Also stress has a major role in mental and emotional suffering.
However, to me the most diabolical and physically-damaging force is EMR. I don't use wifi, I connect to my router through a cable. I live in studio apartment, and when my next door neighbor turns on his wifi, I feel it. My body becomes tense and weak.
 

cjm

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However, to me the most diabolical and physically-damaging force is EMR.

Neurasthenia is still around. It was first called "radio wave sickness."

Death of neurasthenia and its psychological reincarnation

"Neurasthenia accounted for 6–11% of total discharges from the late 1890s to 1930, when it virtually disappeared. Men accounted for 33–50% of cases... Neurasthenia did not disappear, but was reclassified into psychological diagnoses."

~~~

I "re-programmed" my cell phone one time -- the thing where you call a number and it recalibrates the towers it's pulling from, or something -- but I felt an instant de-pressurizing effect during the call. Like the phone had been lightly electrocuting me.
 
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TheSir

TheSir

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Do you have a book/reference to learn the specifics of this kind of breathing?
Konstantin Buteyko's work is a good place to begin from, as I don't think any single person has ever studied breathing as extensively as he did. Buteyko had a multimillion dollar laboratory built to him by the Soviet government during the space race, in which he connected people to machines that logged dozens of different parameters, it was from this data that his method was born. Modern Buteyko teachers have come up with all kinds of fancy exercises which unnecessarily complicate the process though. It's most convenient to just learn to breathe right and rack in an hour or two of light cardio every day. Then on top of that you can do a couple of >15 min sessions of designated relaxation in the way I instructed above. It typically takes about 15 mins of elevated co2 levels for the co2 setpoint to change, and about an hour of daily cardio/breathing exercise to make progress.

From my own experience a major source of upper body problems and deformations is years of hunching forward over a laptop. No amount of proper breathing can fix that.
It's kind of a two-way street: poor posture leads to dysfunctional breathing and dysfunctional breathing to poor posture. Ideally your breathing musculature would give support to the whole upper body.
 

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