Just Breathe

 

Hi Natural Health Family. Imagine you are doing well enjoying the sunshine as it is coming in. As the year keeps moving on we will face various situations, ones that make us feel more at ease and others that throw us for a loop. With all that’s happened in the past couple years, we can now see how resilient we can be. Although the challenges are not over, learning what we can do to weather any storm is important for our own well-being. One key characteristic of our health is our breath and how it can help us become more adaptable.

Have you ever wondered about your breathing? Maybe what maintains a steady rhythm of breathing without your thinking of it. Or how much air goes in and out of your lungs in a day? Or why when I think of breathing do I start to notice that I have to control it? The average person roughly inhales and exhales an amazing 2,900 gallons of air. Your body is an amazing (for lack of better words) machine with different parts. The diaphragm which is a muscle in your body that when contracted brings air into the lungs helps the body maintain a steady state of air. As the diaphragm contracts bringing air in the lungs, the air is then used to oxygenate the blood. Then the oxygen rich blood is pumped through the heart and travels through the estimated 60,000 miles of blood vessels to every cell in your body. Are you getting the point of your body’s intelligence and how it can function? 

Now why is our breath and breathing important? It is one of the few things that works on an involuntary process that we can voluntarily control. You might be asking, what is he talking about? Let me clarify. Your breathing is functioning from communication of the brain and body. Just like your digestion, heart rate, blood pressure, and so on, breathing is a function that works regardless of our thinking about it. However, we can’t force our digestion to work in certain ways. It is our breathing that we can control to help regulate our body if needed. So just like our brain communicates through the nervous system to the body regulating our breathing, we can regulate our breathing to help balance the communication to our brain. This is how our breathing can be important to help us know how to regulate better and maintain our well being. 

Breath is a vital aspect to our health. In a short time, without it, we would not be able to live. When our brain and body are well balanced our health is restored or maintained. Breathing can be a great tool to help. So I encourage you that when life seems to be chaotic, like the world is falling apart, remember to breathe, relax and know that whenever it may seem like it’s all falling apart it may actually be that it’s all falling into place.

Dr. Chip