Sometimes life wants me to pay attention to something, so it repeats itself in different ways. For instance last week I read an article on a breathing study done on a giraffe. That sounds strange I know, but the idea is that no one has been able to figure out how a giraffe is able to get blood all the way up to its brain. Pumping blood uphill is a lot of work, and a giraffe’s head is really way up there. It should have a heart muscle 3 or 4 times the size of any other animal of similar size, yet the heart of a giraffe is the same size as any other animal of similar size without a head sitting up on a crazy high neck. Various theories have been proposed, but have all failed when tested.
The fellow doing the study researches breathing techniques for supporting health and consciousness change. He has had a theory for years that blood flow to the brain is hugely affected by a contraction of the diaphragm during breathing. This is hard to demonstrate in humans, but the extreme conditions in the giraffe could clearly demonstrate his theory. To make a long story short, the study was a great success and he did, in fact, show that the pressure created by the expansion and contraction of the diaphragm is a significant controller of the flow of blood in the brain.
Brain blood flow is super important every second. Any decrease alters control of the body and messes up your emotional responses to life.
The very next day I had a patient come in I had not seen in a couple of years. He asked if I could do anything about a light-headed dizziness he had been having trouble with for several years. All the regular doctors he had seen about it had told him that the problem was simply anxiety. That did not give him a handle on the problem. Thinking of the article on the giraffe, I tested his diaphragm. It was tight as a drum and all his breathing was isolated in his upper chest movement; there was no abdominal movement at all. I asked him about his breathing and he said he always breathes this way. I told him about the giraffe and explained that by breathing only from the upper chest he was not getting enough blood to his brain and this would create chronic anxiety. The brain is literally screaming that something is terribly wrong because it is starved for air.
A tight diaphragm acts as a core stabilizer for the abdomen, so we can run or fight in an emergency. The diaphragm is designed to only tighten up for a few minutes while we run away or fight to survive. The high physical activity causes us to breath heavily, which forces air down to expand the lower lungs and open the movement of the diaphragm once again. But in these modern times, we get stressed for hours at a time and never move into an action that resets the diaphragm movement. We get stuck in fight or flight mode and chronic anxiety due to the resulting lack of blood flow to the brain.
This information explained a lot for my patient and empowered him with something simple he could do to help his condition. It may sound simple, but breathing is something we just don’t do enough of. We seem to have become a society of breathing minimalists. Deep belly breathing is necessary for health, but instead people keep their abs tight so they can fit into their jeans. It might look good, but it locks us into functioning from the lower centers of our reptilian brain or the fight/flight/freeze centers. This keeps us in a chronic state of hyper-vigilance and anxiety. It starves our brain and sets us up for early degeneration of our higher brain centers.
So how should/could we breathe? Here is a simple clock program for pacing your breathing. Clock
This is super simple – inhale for 6 seconds, then exhale for 6 seconds. Breathe as deeply as you can, so the air fills your belly. Within just a few minutes you will feel completely different. There is a ton of scientific research on the physiological effects and benefits of something as simple as breathing this way, but the best reason is just how you feel, perhaps not immediately, but certainly over time.
With deep belly breathing you increase the oxygen to your brain which allows you full access you the functioning of your brain. A little known reality of your brain is that it does not operate at full capacity all the time. This is obvious when memory areas are not working well as you struggle to remember things. But we are usually unaware of when some part of our cognitive processing areas are not working. This is why drunk people are sure they can drive and their reflexes are fine, when they are seriously impaired. Your entire rational thought higher brain functions can be offline and you’re left thinking with only your brain stem reflexes and you won’t even know it. This happens more often then we would like to believe, and it is often due to decreased blood flow to the brain. In fact the latest view of Alzheimer’s disease is that as necessary nutrition and biochemical insult increases in the brain, higher functions like memory are sacrificed in favor of retaining the parts of the brain in the brain stem required for controlling our breathing and other necessary functions.
So the big take away from this article is that deep belly breathing is vital all the time to keep your brain functioning at full capacity. The chronic stress I see most people living under could be greatly relieved simply by everyone learning to breathe deeply all the time. Stress triggers the diaphragm to lock up, but then the lack of oxygen creates the chronic feeling of anxiety that makes everything feel stressful. Add on top of that your brain not functioning at full capacity and your ability to creatively adapt to life goes out the window. This makes life even more stressful because you are not able to keep up with the demands of life. The stress circle just goes round and round. You can interrupt this circle of pain by consciously breathing deep into your belly in a slow rhythmic manner. I know it seems too simple to be this powerful, but it is. But understand that you won’t feel the
effects of this in the moment because we are not aware of when our cognitive brain is not working. We don’t know when we are being stupid. But our life will reflect the difference in how well things work out for us when we have a whole brain to work with. So breathe anyway, even if you don’t notice the difference right away.