After reading Wim Hof and James Nestor a couple years ago during the pandemic, I used their techniques in full while battling long Covid.
I had a blood pressure monitor and pulse oximeter on my bedside table that I would experiment with doing these various techniques and seeing my heart rate go down, my blood pressure go down, my anxiety would disappear, lung/chest inflammation would settle, and even oxygen levels increase up to 5%.
I did this primarily because Covid reduced my average running mile time by around 20%. I was hopeful that I could make a full recovery which I did and then some.
This new tool I believe saved my life, and I’m excited to use it for the rest of it.
I got a pulse oximeter a couple years ago too, and it was eye opening (before COVID, and I didn't get COVID).
The realtime feedback is useful and actionable. Breathing more slowly, exhaling more than inhaling (counterintuitive), pausing, and breathing through the nose definitely make a difference for me.
But everyone is a little different so you have to experiment. Breathing is very multidimensional and hard to explain. The Nestor book is a good intro, and I've mentioned it on HN a few times before.
I'm a big believer now. It is almost laughably simple, and I have to cite the fact the fact that no company profits if you breathe better, sleep better, etc. It's a trite saying but true ...
You should get a sleep study as well. It's amazing how little oxygen you can get when you sleep. Cpap sucks to wear at night, but it forces you to take the same breathing techniques. Just avoid philips products and go resmed.
If your oxygen level is varying significantly while at rest, you are very out of shape aerobically, and you should be getting more exercise, not obsessing about your breathing patterns.
You say “their technique” and “this new tool”. For someone who hasn’t read Hof and Nestor, could you point to any resources explaining the specific techniques you are referring to? If I go down the Google/YT rabbit hole, I fear I’ll be confronted with hundreds of such techniques and just get utterly confused. Thank you.
I was curious too. Taken from [0], not my knowledge or opinions. (I'm new to all of this.)
- James Nestor - Breath:
"I love this book and it‘s more a kind of overview about different breathing systems and techniques. He writes about Wim Hof and also about Oxygen Advantage. It‘s a good starting point into the topic of breathing. Highly recommended."
"Breathe is like a pop sci intro to breathing. It covers a lot and not very deeply, but it is engaging, makes a good case, and have a few actionable things that have a larger payoff (mouth tape)."
- Patrick McKeown - Oxygen Advantage:
"The base of this book is the Buteyko method and Patrick follows a very scientific approach. He can explain all hows and whys without beeing to complicated. Also highly recommended. You will find breath holds and reduced breathing in different techniques. Focus is on sports and conditioning. Highly recommended."
"O2 Advantage goes a lot deeper and helps you systematically evaluate and improve your co2 tolerance and thereby improve your body's ability to use oxygen. If I only could recommend one of these three, it would be this one with Breathe as a close second (simply because it is so accessible). It gives clear guidelines, tests, and actionable steps to improve your breathing. It is a very useful book."
- Wim Hof - The Wim Hof Method:
"It’s basically about breathing, cold exposure and the mind. The breathing work is about overbreathing (hyperventilation) followed by a breathhold. There are times that I love it, but science is mostly against it. I guess nobody knows why this works. Pavel is against breath holds after hyperventilation by the way (SECOND WIND). But there are lots of people having success using the WHM. I can also recommend the newest book."
"Wim Hof. It mainly focuses on a intense breathing technique and cold exposure. I know a lot of people that swear by them. I've never had any benefits from them that I could tell. After talking to some people that were really into this, they pointed out that I'm way more stressed all the time than they are. Adding more stress when you are already at max doesn't exactly help and probably hurts (more info here). This is my least favorite of the three as it has a very narrow benefit and that benefit isn't applicable to a lot of people. since it is basically a book on how to increase stress levels through breathing and cold."
Thanks for this. My pensioner mother came back from the doctors yesterday with a chest infection, on top of this she has mild bronchitis. I've just sent her this exercises as I'm hoping it might improve her lung health. Although i did send her this one which is a bit easier: https://youtu.be/0BNejY1e9ik
But thanks for posting it, I never knew about this method. Just tried it myself and it rocks.
Wow, I can't thank you enough for posting this.
I've been struggling with hypertension and anxiety for a very long time. I just tried the beginner exercise and couldn't believe the effect.
Not only could I hold my breath for longer then I was ever able to on my first try but also I felt relaxed and happy at the end of the exercise.
The article is about IMST, which is strictly about muscle strengthening. This is maybe a side effect of the Wim Hoff Method, but the WHM also has other purposes because the main mechanism is hyper ventilation and breath holding. Here is good medical explanation of what happens when practicing the WMH (by a medical professional): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6EPuUdIC1E (summary at 33:46).
This is simply yogic Pranayama combining three exercises - Anulum Vilom(alternate nostril), hastrika(bellow breath) and Kapal Bathi(prefrontal cortex) cleansing. All positively impact the autonomic nervous system if done progressively and moderation.
Anyhow it is typical of westerners to co-opt open source eastern techniques to commercialise and pass as their invention. Same as Amazon taking open source and turning it into yet another AWS service.
Well, maybe. As in: sure, a lot of breathing techniques and sometimes even useful natural remedies are some of the oldest recorded ones if they are coming from "the east", but in the end that corpus of wisdom is mostly a spaghetti mess of helpful and harmful techniques that is really hard to disentangle from cultism, oogie-boogie and autocratic belief systems.
There's no shortage of stupidity in eastern "wisdom":
I for one prefer the clean extraction (or parallel invention/construction, whatever your take on that is) of single techniques based on double-blind evidence instead of being told that I can't just do breathing exercises properly without also listening to the incoherent ramblings of a random guru:
Yep, the Wim Hof method was original research too, but that guy basically just said: I tried some things, these seem to work, here's the proof, take it or leave it. Goes on to break some records and just STFU's otherwise.
You cite an NYT article "How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body". That is like citing an article "How You Can Hurt Yourself With A Kitchen Knife" to argue how the culinary arts are dangerous gobbledygook.
Yes, these practices can hurt you if you don't do them properly.
And there is nothing wrong with performing or following original research, as long as you credit the work upon which you build.
It's not difficult to find traditional eastern wisdom that have no known health benefits and can have adverse effects. Just look at Gua Sha for example. Not everything is good in TCM, a lot of it is not well tested following theories that are demonstrably false.
Does it mean that there's nothing of interest? No. There are some remedies based on Traditional Chinese Medecine that have proven to be beneficial. After all, this is how Artemisinin which is used as a cure for Malaria was discovered from a traditional herbal remedy from the 4th century. But, this is after trying multiple traditional remedies. Don't underestimate the value of curation when finding a working remedy from the multitude of non-working traditional cures.
This has happened with Pranayama before, when it was appropriated and rebranded as 'cardiac coherence breathing' [1] and 'diaphragmatic breathing' [2].
It doesn't matter one iota if someone claims it as their own, what matters is the benefit it brings. Do you think Patanjali (or whomever) would be protective of their techniques and trademark it, patent it, and extract wealth for it?
If they don't care then neither should anyone else, and perhaps this will help the techniques spread further, which I'm sure Patanjali et al again, would not be against.
It matters because the adopter may highlight only 3 out of 20 exercises and if you did not know the original source, you may never learn about the other 17. Not that you may need the others, but maybe if you were aware, you could explore further and use the variations that are already well known to slice and dice when one kind of breathing may make sense as compared to the other.
Someone posted this link, so I am just repeating it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdCmB8Tnvmw. This is an hour long video focusing on different kinds of breathing as part of yoga. Do look at the top comment (as of now) as it provides time-links to 12 different kinds of breathing - bhastrika, kapal bhati, bahya pranayama, agnisaar kriya, anuloma viloma, bhramari, udgeeth, ujjai, shitali, sikkari.
If someone develops 3 of the practices on their own, sure, they can describe only what they know.
But if they sourced (and productized) 3 of them from a known source, they should refer to the main source, no? Kinda like open source - use but credit.
If Jeff Bezos says he has invented a new operating system and upon a little digging it is discovered that he just tweaked and renamed Linux, then he should and will be called out, and it will hurt his reputation.
The problem is not with using knowledge to your benefit, that is why it is there. The problem is with plagiarism, misrepresentation and intellectual dishonesty.
Linux has a licence and relies on copyright law. If yogic breathing techniques did have a licence, the best you could hope for would be an MIT/BSD licence. I don't see how that advances your view.
Even if Linux were not subject to a license, a person claiming to have invented an operating system who in reality simply forked Linux without giving appropriate credit would be considered a plagiarist.
And to expect a sagacious progenitor of a millennia-old practice like Pranayama to have considered modern-day legal protections is absurd.
> And to expect a sagacious progenitor of a millennia-old practice like Pranayama to have considered modern-day legal protections is absurd.
Yes, reductio ad absurdum was the point.
> Even if Linux were not subject to a license, a person claiming to have invented an operating system who in reality simply forked Linux without giving appropriate credit would be considered a plagiarist.
To consider "modern-day legal protections is absurd" but forking an operating system is what? I'd go for special pleading.
But to the point. Plagiarism is important in academic circles, it is not for breathing techniques, whether given by yogis or not. *Please show me why Patanjali would care, if he would not then why should anyone else?*
No, plagiarism is important in every circle, not just academic circles.
If you copy your colleague's work at your FAANG job and claim it as your own, you will be in trouble.
If a contemporary politician claims he has come up with this novel idea where decisions can be made with "majority vote", he will be mocked out of the room.
> No, plagiarism is important in every circle, not just academic circles.
Please show me how it would be important to Patanjali, or even how it will reduce the good the techniques bring, how it will negatively impacted yoga teachers, or something other than FAANG jobs, politicians and academia that simply aren't relevant to this discussion.
> Cultural appropriation refers to the use of objects or elements of a non-dominant culture in a way that reinforces stereotypes or contributes to oppression and doesn't respect their original meaning or give credit to their source. It also includes the unauthorized use of parts of their culture (their dress, dance, etc.) without permission.
I await Patanjali to serve papers that use of his intellectual property isn't allowed, apparently because it reinforces stereotypes or contributes to oppression.
Maybe we'll hear about the Buddha's thoughts on copyright next and how derivative works are unauthorized.
It's not really cultural appropriation. It's simply false appropriation. Claiming another's works as your own fancy innovation. Claiming another's achievement as yours with no original attribution.
I wasn't aware that either Hof or Nestor were academics so I'm not sure how it's relevant.
As to the accusation that they've stolen an idea, someone should outline their accusation explicitly and then, far more importantly, explain why I should care. As I've pointed out, Patanjali wouldn't (or you can point out why he would, that would be interesting).
> I wasn't aware that either Hof or Nestor were academics so I'm not sure how it's relevant.
Classic Strawman Argument. Sad to see this on HN. I never claimed they were academics. Just that doing this in academics would get you banned.
They are journalists. The century-old Society for Professional Journalists has a simple statement on plagiarism in its Code of Ethics: “Never plagiarize. Always attribute.”
The outline has already been made clear by several posters in this thread.
“doesn't respect their original meaning or give credit to their source.”
See I can pick parts of a random definition off google the same way you do.
Have you heard of “beer yoga”? Or “goat yoga”? It’s the very definition of disrespectful of the original meaning etc. I’m guessing not, but feel free to be entitled to your opinion, it’s a free country after all
> See I can pick parts of a random definition off google the same way you do.
I shared the whole definition I found from the first result returned to me[1], and I didn't use Google. If you have a better definition then I would suggest that a better response would've been to share it instead of falsely accusing others of mistakes only you have made.
no, it does matter. Because once someone has appropriated it, they can block access to the original material.
Theft of the commons is one of the enduring themes of capitalism.
Could be soft-blocks, i.e. burying links to the original source so no-one finds it, reducing the number of teachers or the ability of those teachers to make a living, etc.
Could be harder blocks; say the new company patents it. Files takedown notices against alternative presentations. Yes, you could fight them on "prior art", but now you have a legal fight as well as the difficulties of promoting the technique.
And while I'll take your word for it that Patanjali et al don't mind one group spreading their techniques farther, are we so sure that Patanjali et al would feel about that one group claiming ownership and only allowing that group to access it? Perhaps Patanjali didn't try to trademark/patent (or the equivalent) their techniques because they were morally opposed to this?
That's a slippery slope argument, which may not be fallacious, not all are.
If we accept that Hof and Nestor have "appropriated" these techniques then the next question would be how has that led to the blocks you've outlined? When will I lose access to the authentic teachings?
> are we so sure that Patanjali et al would feel about that one group claiming ownership and only allowing that group to access it?
I reckon he'd be against it as Patanjali et al seem more focused on sharing the knowledge in order to benefit others but who's to know.
> Perhaps Patanjali didn't try to trademark/patent (or the equivalent) their techniques because they were morally opposed to this?
I think this point has been covered but I'll add that I've not noticed any form of communism in the system of yoga Patanjali systematised.
I've seen comparisons to traditional breathing practices like tummo and pranayama, but never any real proof of a connection. In fact from what I can see they differ a bit even if they get similar end results.
Tummo is closer to 'Kundalini' [1] than it is to Pranayama. Pranayama can be practiced safely with a little intro, but the others I believe require serious guidance.
> Anyhow it is typical of westerners to co-opt open source eastern techniques to commercialise and pass as their invention. Same as Amazon taking open source and turning it into yet another AWS service.
> Greed & ego - pure and simple.
Perhaps, but consider: in a sibling comment, codenlearn posted a link to Wim Hof's video, I watched it, and did ten minutes of breathing exercise. He shared some knowledge (open source spirit), it was free (no commercialization), and I would not even remember his username if I hadn't copied it for the sake of this comment (no ego).
I learned more from his comment than I did from yours. You could have shared a better guide, some resource to learn about the original practices, but you didn't. Instead your comment focused exclusively on your offense at the lack of recognition for you(r in-group). What is that if not ego? Group narcissism is still narcissism.
Wim Hof is really good, the calmness you feel after the breathing is unmatched.
There all these small techniques for managing emotions that are just not well known. If you need to calm down in the moment for example, doing a simple inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 2, exhale for 8 can make your stress melt away. Or in really stressful situations, try grabbing an icepack and holding it for a minute.
I'm hoping someone can answer a question to which I've never heard a really satisfactory answer: Why does human health benefit from exercise whereas any kind of simple machine wears out with exercise? For example, doing a hundred stretches per day improves my health whereas stretching an elastic band 100 times per day will cause it to lose elasticity and soon destroy it. So what's the low-level mechanism by which exercise improves health in people but not in simple machines?
When recovering after exercise, the body does something called overcompensating. It doesn't just repair the damage done but actually strengthens the area. Muscles undergo hypertrophy and bone becomes more dense. So when you challenge the body physically a moderate amount, something called functional overreaching, your body responds by actually strengthening itself. Obviously inanimate objects don't have this system so they simply wear out over time
The reason that our bodies do this, as opposed to making all muscles strong all the time, is to avoid wasting energy on muscles you aren't using. It is basically using what muscles were used recently as a heuristic for which muscles need to be strong to ensure survival.
With inanimate objects the same happens if you consider humans doing maintenance as part of the system: if some part gets damaged all the time because it's too weak we strengthen it or replace it with a stronger version.
An extension to that question: Why do people say elevating your heart rate is good in relation to exercise, and bad in relation to cocaine? People frequently say things like "stimulants stress your circulatory system", but so does exercise.
Not a professional, but the way I reason it is that pushing your heart to the limit causes it to grow stronger, and that additional capacity means it doesn't have to work as hard during the rest of the day. You basically bring down your average heart rate by making your heart stronger.
Caffeine raises your heart rate for a short(ish) time, but at least for moderate amounts of consumption that doesn't seem to have any negative effects. There are even some studies that suggest that one or two cups of coffee a day may have health benefits, including the cardiovascular system.
Cocaine on the other hand seems to raise your resting heart rate because it damages your cardiovascular system [1]. Your heart has to work more to achieve the same result, the opposite from what you want to achieve with exercise.
Just because the heart rate is elevated in both cases, that doesn't mean the context is the same. It's not the same cause, it's not the same result.
Exercise raising the heart rate is a consequence, that (the increased heart rate) is not the singular magic thing improving your health. With exercise there's a positive, body-comprehensive event going on.
Exercise strengthens the heart.
Cocaine (for example) damages the heart. It doesn't just elevate the heart rate, it does some vicious things to the heart, causing damage:
There are a lot of low level mechanisms that improve health with exercise. The basic breakdown is some things like digestion where optimized by evolution around the fact our ancestors moved. For similar reasons UV light in childhood are a requirement for normal vision exercise was simply universal for a very long time.
A lower level example is feedback mechanisms. Mechanical stress from motion are used to maintain bone strength. The cells involved in bone breakdown and repair can detect damage and reinforce where needed, but they also remove bone where it’s not needed. Without that kind of feedback our bones would either be weak or heavy.
The same thing happens with your circulatory system, you grow new capillaries in response to demand. Or for a “negative” example fat cells reproduce when you can store more energy.
Bodies heal unlike machines. Maintaining capacity of tissues has energy costs. The body does not want to waste energy maintaining capacity that it does not need. Therefore if your day to day existence does not demand a high level of fitness to function, you will decondition . You must provide stressful stimulus to the body to let it know the level of condition it needs to maintain to be properly adapted.
It is hard to give a short answer to your question but you will find the following books helpful (check reviews on Amazon and elsewhere on the Web);
1) Body by Science: A Research Based Program for Strength Training, Body building, and Complete Fitness in 12 Minutes a Week by John Little and Doug McGuff.
2) The Energy of Life: The Science of What Makes Our Minds and Bodies Work by Guy Brown.
Rubber band can't dynamically detect and repair weared off molecule clusters.
Mammals are highly adoptive by the design, a living organism consists of trillions programmed and partially controllable nanomachines.
Body has autonomous and centralised systems, which checks and sends hormonal signals and redistribute resources from other parts and could directly command specific cell groups to grow or change behavior in a chance to increase organism survivability.
The human body doesn’t shut down so much as idle. There are mechanical systems that don’t like to idle, like air cooled engines. Anything that maintains itself as part of vigorous operation (flushing out pipes, circulating lubricants or coolants) can get into trouble if not operated vigorously enough for too long. You need to “exercise” your car every few weeks or the battery dies.
My basic understanding is when we are strength training we are putting tiny tears in our muscle fibers. The body then uses protein to heal those tears and make the muscle fiber bigger as part of that process, allowing us to train even harder in the future.
In human body, new cells are created every day which is not case with elastic band. Best anology could be economy. If you keep creating wealth and not spending one day you reach your limitations. Continously churning and creating gives boost to economy.
Some tissues generate new cells every day, but tons of relevant things to exercise such as cardiac muscle cells and the fibrocytes making up things like ligaments and tendons really don't. This also goes for most of the other stuff on the inside of your body.
If you have a simple machine that wears out then someone will be along to fix it, if it's of any use to do so and you have the budget. The body uses the same idea.
If you want to learn more about breathing I recommend checking out the book The Oxygen Advantage by Patrick Mckeown. It's got a bunch of different breathing exercises and ways to measure progress. It basically reteaches you how to breath too, which is fascinating on its own. Worth checking out for sure.
Oxygen Advantage is a great book. I'd recommend James Nestor's - 'Breath' [0] as a first read, however. I feel like the book has more real world application and I picked up a number of things outside of what I learned studying Hof breathwork. I also studied, prior to both books, with Wim Hof in Poland in 2017 on one of his week long expeditions. The in person experience of group breath work is something to experience if you've never. It's so much different than working on it solo - especially if you're new to any of these methods.
Breath work and cold exposure have been a large part of my life after reading 'What Doesn't Kill Us' by Scott Carney [1]. That was the book that drove me want to experience it first hand.
Wow, you studied with Wim Hof in 2017, thats pretty damn cool! Its funny you say to start with 'Breath' because I was thinking you should start with Oxygen Advantage and then go to Wim Hof, but you sound like you have a much better background for legit recommendations. I had never heard of 'Breath' before. I'll definitely look into it. Is the Wim Hof experience just something one can sign up for? How did you end up there?
I loved reading 'What Doesn't Kill Us', and have been thinking about doing one of the week-long expeditions with Wim Hof. Did you do any prep before going on the trip, or was it your first experience with his breathwork?
Commenting on something you haven't read staring that it sounds like something isn't productive. Many of those reviews take statements from the book out of context. For example the one of those comments states the book claims a cure for ADHD. It doesn't. It's an anecdotal reference provided by Dr. Mark Burhenne. Just because a book gathers evidence in support of the books topic doesn't make it "psuedo science".
Please don't take this the wrong way, but is there a tl;dr? Often these "self-help" books are the same concept repeated for 200 pages that can be summed up in a paragraph.
Amazing book! My nasal breathing definitely improved from few simple tips from the book, and I wasn't even particularly diligent with following the program very far. I'm sure I could get even more benefits if I adhered to the exercises more consistently.
Anecdote. My mother had asthma since age of 30 and my father developed high bp at age of 50. Mother had a very strict diet ( inhaler weren't popular in Indian middle class) and father was supposed to take a pill for life.
They started following breathing exercises (Pranayam) as told by Indian yog Guru Ramdev on television for 30-60 mins a day and they have mostly controlled it now for last 18 years.
For anyone searching on youtube, he and other gurus make lot of tall claims and say irrational things, sell snake oil and are in general against western medicines, you'll have to ignore it.
> For anyone searching on youtube, he and other gurus make lot of tall claims and say irrational things, sell snake oil and are in general against western medicines, you'll have to ignore it.
That's the insidious thing about those gurus: they often couple genuinely healthful practices like mindful breathing and exercise and healthy diet with horrible things like snake oil remedies and religious intolerance - essentially using the former to try to legitimize the latter, and many who follow them are not equipped to distinguish one from each other.
Especially with Ramdev who's made an entire conglomerate in his name making all sorts of stuff from detergents to instant noodles to medicines, all of which use his reputation to promote their "healthy" status despite a lot of the ingredients just being bog standard and the same as any other product on the market and often plain inferior. My parents are sucked in completely and buy so many of their products
It's a shame that he turned so political and money hungry. A lot of his yoga and breathing techniques are simple and easy to follow and are genuinely helpful
This is interesting, and is a pre-regisetered double blind study; still it was 18 participants in each condition, which is on the low end of what I'd find acceptable.
I don't fully get the "lowers blood pressure" claim. Doesn't Table S2 in the paper say that blood pressure stayed roughly the same for people doing high-resistance IMST and went up for the control/sham group doing low-resistance IMST? The question in my mind is "why does low-resistance IMST increase blood pressure?" Am I missing something?
Casual vs ambulatory blood pressure readings seem to account for the difference between what is reported in Table S2 and what is shown in the main paper. I don't know which kind of reading is more clinically significant or reliable. A little worrying that its not seen in the ambulatory too.
Comparing group means might not be quite so informative in any case, because of baseline effects (e.g. you'd want to do paired tests I think to compare the diffs)
By my understanding "casual blood pressure" is when you sit for 5 minutes in a doctor's office then have a blood pressure measurement taken [1]. "Ambulatory blood pressure" is when a monitor is strapped onto you and automatic readings are taken periodically (typically half hourly) over a period of time (typically 24 hours) then averaged.
There is some debate (according to Google), but diagnosis of hypertension typically involves an ambulatory measurement over a casual measurement. It strikes me that the ambulatory measurement is the more important one from a long term health perspective, and it's odd that the paper chose not to mention the ambulatory measurement along with the casual measurement, though I'm not a medico.
As an aside, at one point I added a microcontroller to a cheap Aldi blood pressure monitor to do ambulatory measurements. A doctor seemed keen to diagnose hypertension based on a few casual readings, but I was keen to base the diagnosis on more data.
Okay, so I have some straight up anecdotal evidence done with a real blood pressure cuff by a trained medical professional for a related phenomenon.
I have to get a buprenorphine injection monthly.
As a part of this, they take my blood pressure.
I was talking to the nurse, animatedly about the silly policies our state government has around electric scooters, as she was taking my blood pressure.
She didn't read out both for me, but I initially had "135" as the result.
The nurse got me to take 5 minutes doing a guided (heavy) breathing and relaxation protocol, and sure enough, on running the blood pressure test again, I got "118"
If you are going to study effects on blood pressure in your own physiology, I very much recommend getting a home device so you can take a lot of measurements. Blood pressure changes constantly for any reason or (as far as I can tell) no reason.
When I take my own measurements, I take five measurements back to back without moving and see bigger swings that you did. I've seen that using three different home devices. I've seen it in clinical settings being measured by many, many professionals. I remember once seeing a thirty point swing between two measurements taken immediately back to back by a nurse. The sheer amount of downright superstitious behavior I've seen in nurses surrounding blood pressure measurements is pretty incredible, too: lots of retaking measurements until the number is what they expect, repositioning, or trying something random like you did. I find it all very reminiscent of the 2 4 6 Puzzle -- a lot more confirmation and explanation than investigation.
I'm not trying to say this sort of thing is statistically invalid at a population level. On the contrary. I'm pretty convinced in my own case that breathing exercises are worth about ten points. But I strongly recommend developing a healthy respect for the sheer variability of the number before drawing strong conclusions from a low number of measurements.
It’s called the “white coat syndrome” — when you’ve just arrived to the hospital to make your appointment, and the nurse/doctor start taking your readings in a high-stress environment, the reading ends up being higher: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/high-blood-pr...
I actually think this is why fitness devices like the Apple Watch (v8 is supposed to be able to check blood pressure) are great in that high sampling rates probably yield overall more accurate results as outlying deviations can be more easily and methodically sorted out.
I agree, this is a great trick. I've been using it for almost 20 years and it's kinda funny to use around friends too, if you are playing around with home blood pressure equipment for any reason. Also take off any hats, wear loose-fitting clothing, wear sandals instead of shoes if possible, and uncross your feet if they are crossed.
Also if they are weighing you clothes-on, it's worth some care as well. A lot of doctors offices will happily register that you gained a significant amount of weight without taking into account that you are wearing work boots, jeans, a vest holding your phone, etc. vs. your last appointment in the summer when you were wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and sandals. Your doctor won't see any of this of course, so it's your word vs the EMR.
And finally, a friend tells me that you should always feel out the doctor first before showing them your full noot stack or other health experiments. ;-)
- When lightly exercising, close eyes and focus on breathing. Note effects on heart rate.
- Get into an uncomfortable (but safe) position such as a deep squat, crab position, etc. Close eyes and focus on breathing. Note effects on feelings of discomfort, and effort to maintain the position.
Anyone know if breath is also connected to specific body parts? Really crude contrived example to illustrate what I mean: deep breathing affecting the left arm, shallow breathing affecting the right arm?
I always felt there must be some connection but never really understood how to even investigate. I definitely noticed that certain deep breathing was extraordinarily useful for alleviating IBS symptoms... basically the physical expansion of the lungs (contracting the diaphragm) clearly physically pressed upon the intestinal tract and massaged it (this is personal experience, anecdotal)... I have always wondered if this principle was extendable further?
Everything I've seen about the lungs is always about what it does for oxygen/co2 regulation in the blood... feels like this really underestimates whats going on
Just for context, I posted this study since I was intrigued by this[0] recent HN comment about an anecdotal apnea training effect on weight and then came across this study. I'm using the Apnea Trainer app on iOS, but too early to say how it affects my weight.
I'm going to get a PowerBreathe device[1] as used here, since I am also dealing with hypertension.
There was a time (~7 years ago). We were living in NYC. The doctors office was at the top of 5 flights of stairs and the elevator was out. Having just climbed 5 flights of stairs and telling the doctor she has white coat syndrome, they _immediately_ take her blood pressure. Noting it’s (unsurprisingly) high, suggests she go on blood pressure medication. A decision that would surely have damaged her health.
4 years ago, we told her OBGYN she had white coat syndrome. We got a blood pressure cuff to use at home that recorded every reading (including date/time) so we could bring it in to her. Every reading at home, out and about, was good - even borderline low. At the doctors office, it was always high. The doctor, knowing this, STILL tried to suggest we induce early labor.
TL;DR - doctors will kill you. Your health is your own - don’t delegate the most important decision in your life.
This is especially true for pregnancy. The provider you choose has an extreme amount of power over you towards the end.
For my first we were basically threatened and coerced for near zero medical reason to get "interventions". Before we got to the hospital we were promised one thing, but when we got there it was break her water or find a new provider and potentially have our baby die.
We trusted the doctors even though we both felt coerced and lied to. It all culminated in an unnecessary C-section 12 hours later because the doctor was already woken up for someone else. She said our baby was going to have a much worse outcome. That we would just have a c-section anyway so we might as well just do it.
I think we both deal with the team from that still.
Just remember to interview your doctor's and find local patient outcomes. We wish we had the first time.
The second went with minimal intervention and, fingers crossed, the third will go the same.
Also it's not that we are against needed intervention or chosen intervention. We simple want the best outcome for everyone. Intervention imo should be a last resort or as needed for patients like my wife.
I knew I had strep, went to urgent care to get tested so I could get antibiotics. They said there was no way I had strep, and told me the white spots all over my throat were "stress cankers". I was really sick and ended up going back 2 hours later because I wasn't breathing well. They just blew it off again and wouldn't do anything for me.
5 hours later I was in the ER because I couldn't breathe and ended up having strep and pneumonia. ER doctor said I would have died if I had waited longer since I was had sepsis. He also told me that the strep test is only 50% effective so there is no way they should have been that dismissive of me.
You are completely correct with your TLDR. I saw the same when a close family member had to battle their way through the medical system to live through (and eventually overcome) advanced cancer.
I’ve started to see doctors more like advanced chatbots than anything else.
They are good if you know what you need and how to formulate your questions. They are good at searching UpToDate (a database of DDx flows). They are good at treating specific problems.
But it is a very rare doctor who takes considerate time to understand a patient and treat them holistically. I believe this is why alternative medicine providers are able to peddle their voodoo so effectively. Many people who don’t feel understood by allopathic medicine turn to cranks, because at least the cranks listen to them and make them feel heard.
That TLDR should be on every so-called physician's office, especially in America. Actual healthcare is your own duty. Most physicians are there for medicine/testing, which are both for-profit, and they are not incentivized to keep you in optimal health. In fact, they make a little bit more money if all of their clients are not too healthy... which is why so many doctors are moral injured from hospitals putting profits ahead of health when they realize they act as prescription and diagnosis drones for so many of their patients. It's better to call US "healthcare system" the "disease maintenance industry", as once you combine the "health" lobby with the "food" lobby, you see they work synergistically to keep consumers at sub-optimal health, and maximum profitability for all the leeches involved. Disgusting.
I have a blood pressure monitor at home and my values can go from 140/100 to 110/80 within pretty short time. It's completely insane to make a medication recommendation after only one blood pressure measurement.
Personal opinion only but I think that in 100 years we will look back on the standard prescription drugs of the current era with the same mixture of horror and fascination that we feel today when we look back on the medicine of the 19th century.
And it's pretty much guaranteed that some of the things we do regularly these days will be viewed as completely insane. My money is on sitting the whole day or commuting with the car.
preaching to the choir here... i've felt this way since i was 18 and had to commute to uni for 1hr... i thought, my god is this what everyone does for the rest of their lives?
Of course this should not stop you from exercising where possible. It could be very useful in case of arthritis or similar conditions inhibiting exercise.
>...the IMST group saw their systolic blood pressure (the top number) dip nine points on average, a reduction which generally exceeds that achieved by walking 30 minutes a day five days a week.
Walking isn't very aerobic. I think you would have to walk/jog up a hill for some sort of meaningful comparison.
It's adjustable with a screw down. In general though breathing through the nose just will not replicate the inspiratory effort required to use this device. Not even close.
I've been using a Powerbreathe for inspiratory muscle training. The daily exercise only takes a few minutes. But it requires occasional cleaning, and the spring valve sometimes gets stuck closed. I haven't noticed any obvious decrease in blood pressure.
There are inhalation resistance trainers on Amazon for as little as $20. I'm doubtful the more expensive devices offer any benefits. In fact the simpler less expensive models look much easier to take apart and clean. As long as you are breathing against resistance, you're getting a benefit.
The article mentions that the device is used during the inhale. Doesn't clarify if it's also used during the exhale or not.
(I just rolled-up my fist and breathed through it. And it provided lots of resistance. So it looks like I might be able to make this work with just my fist.)
If anyone knows, please hit reply and let me know.
When I was working out in the gym in the summer in pandemic season with masks on, I noticed my breathlessness, the movement of the mask amplifies the visual and it was easy to draw a comparison in this way with my surrounding gym peers, and indeed I realized my lungs were in much worse shape than I'd expected, so I'm going to give this thing a try.
Edit: model featured in YouTube is not the same one the study used but close ‘nuff to get the idea.
Don't know for sure but from skimming the paper it looks like it's inhalation only. "Inspiratory muscle strength training (IMST) is an alternative form of physical training that uses the diaphragm and accessory respiratory muscles to repeatedly inhale against resistance." The words "exhale," "expire," and their various inflected forms don't appear anywhere in the paper.
The point is to breathe in and out as strongly/deeply and slowly as possible. You don't "do" anything aside from breathing and increasing the difficulty mode as your strength improves (over e.g. weeks).
If you breathe out quickly you're losing a large amount of the benefit of the exercise.
PS - I own a POWERBREATHE Sport, no relation to the company or this study.
The article mentioned what to do during the "inhale" but didn't mention "exhale", so I wasn't sure if one still does the restricted breathing during exhale or not.
Powerbreathe seems like an unnecessary uni-tasking gadget conforming to western sensibilities.
Zen and the Brain by James Austin details his study of Zen monks brains which revealed this breathing-stress connection scientifically decades ago.
If I remember correctly, the exhale is especially important to triggering certain relaxation states; brains of monks who were especially focused on long exhales were appreciably different from other monks.
> Powerbreathe seems like an unnecessary uni-tasking gadget conforming to western sensibilities.
This is an incredibly elitist and exclusive observation.
The use of a tool that provides positive health benefits to assist those unfamiliar with zen breathing techniques should be applauded. Meditation is ‘easy’ to those who are open and have time to commit to it, and it’s not for everyone. To some it might even be outside their own cultural or personal comfort zone, and that is entirely OK.
And what on earth is the problem with a ‘uni-tasking gadget’? My garage, bathroom and kitchen drawers are all full of these things. In fact, with the obvious exception of the smart phone, it’s the multi-tasking gadgets that should be derided (the outdoors industry is full of these, as epitomised by the ‘axesaw’).
Interestingly enough, I entered a friend’s clinical research study last year where they’re looking to replace the standard cardiac stress test by proving their hypothesis.
Essentially, they believe that by purposefully engaging in a combination of deep/long/shallow/etc. ("Wim Hoff style breathing techniques" - my friend’s words not mine), and get a patient to hyperventilate basically (in a controlled environment and developed protocol/framework), they could produce similar results and draw similar clinical conclusions as one would after a traditional stress test. They had me do two hours of various breathing techniques while simultaneously imaging my heart and then my brain using fMRI imaging.
* NAD but I managed to get the DICOM files and found some open source software (Horos) and loaded up the slices and it was super cool seeing what was going on during the different breathing *
I recently caught up with the individual and was told the study is in its final stages and so far looks very promising (which I’m sure all researchers say right but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt).
I guess this would help some truly disabled people, but traditional exercise, even in similar time frames, offers so many additional health benefits than breathing techniques.
My brother, who is probably about 70 pounds overweight, takes blood pressure medication. Won't even try losing weight. He claims that "everyone he knows" takes it and just resigned to having to use it.
There are various inhalation resistance trainers on Amazon for as little as $20. I'm doubtful the more expensive devices offer any benefits over the less expensive models. In fact the simpler less expensive models look much easier to take apart and clean. As long as you are breathing against resistance, you're getting a benefit.
Rather than post this completely useless comment, why don't you actually contribute by posting why you think this study should be ignored? I think many people in this comment section know from personal experience that breathing is a powerful tool for stress management so this result is intuitive to them.
breathing is a powerful tool for stress management
As is the occasional recreational drug of choice. Heck, a glass of milk before bed can do be a powerful tool for stress management. Same for going to a salon and having someone else wash your hair.
Even when it seems to work for you, you should still be sceptical when you find this stuff in a paper - especially when it is a small study. Especially with stress relief, something can "work" for you but still be completely without scientific merit (no better than a placebo, so no real benefit in telling the general population to do it).
> As is the occasional recreational drug of choice. Heck, a glass of milk before bed can do be a powerful tool for stress management. Same for going to a salon and having someone else wash your hair.
So? What does that say about this technique? I can't see the logic.
What is the obsession of looking for a cheap way out if you are able bodied. Literally just go for a walk, run, or ride. I highly doubt doing some small activity can really compare to the full health benefits of some daily exercise.
BP tends to go up with age even being able bodied and active, so research into how to control it without medications (which have to be tuned to the individual and can have some unpleasant side effects) is worthwhile.
Yes, exercise is not always easy, but it has been worth it. I have met plenty of amazing people and gone to many interesting places because of it, its not just about the exercise. I wouldn't exchange that for sitting around retweeting Elon Musk lol.
* I have met plenty of amazing people and gone to many interesting places because of it, its not just about the exercise.*
I haven't. At best, I'm alone. At worst - especially when I was younger - I was just laughed at. Not to mention that I couldn't always do things like afford shoes that allowed me to walk regularly without pain or that I can rarely find a sports bra in my size (let alone afford it), so things like running are out of the question.
This is called Pranayam.
We are doing this in India since ages... Good to see that 'experts' from Western countries taking baby steps to learn. Good for you guys!
Keep it up.
Note 1: Some 'expert' took my comment on their ego and downvoted my comment. Guys, my comment was encouraging. Taking it on your ego is your personal choice.
Does Pranayam involve high-resistance inspiratory breathing?
Anyway, this is about scientific investigation, not received wisdom and cultural or religious practice. Conceivably they could have found no effect; would you have "congratulated" them then?
> Does Pranayam involve high-resistance inspiratory breathing?
Yes, Pranayama is vast. So many different exercises for different purposes. But keep in mind that I'm a German and my knowledge is from books and some videos only. I'm no expert ...
One thing all sources I've read or seen are very clear about is that those exercises are advanced exercise. Also, Pranayama does very precisely assign exercises to specific conditions.
One thing we "western" guys can improve on is patience. I see it with myself every second of my life :-).
mainne englo shikshakon ke saath adhyayan kiya, lekin seedhe Sri BKS Iyengar ke vansh ke tahat. mere shikshak bahut satark the. main bahut achchhe svaasthy mein hoon aur tees saal baad ab meree achchhee aadaten hain. Light on Pranayama kee adhikaansh takaneeken ek shaharavaasee ke lie, yahaan tak ki mere lie bhee, bahut unnat hain.
edit: apologies for the terrible Hindi, but since YNews was so rude to a guest with a downvote, I wanted to show some respect to the South Asian knowledge. Yogas citta vritti naroda'ha -- namaste
I had a blood pressure monitor and pulse oximeter on my bedside table that I would experiment with doing these various techniques and seeing my heart rate go down, my blood pressure go down, my anxiety would disappear, lung/chest inflammation would settle, and even oxygen levels increase up to 5%.
I did this primarily because Covid reduced my average running mile time by around 20%. I was hopeful that I could make a full recovery which I did and then some.
This new tool I believe saved my life, and I’m excited to use it for the rest of it.
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