Asthma and breath
I am where I thought I would never be. As a healthy practitioner for a sustainable lifestyle, I suddenly find myself breathless with asthma developed over the holidays. I have no one to blame but myself as I try to recalibrate my Type-A personality activities to heal myself: With a killer stress schedule last quarter of the year that clearly took over my better sense of judgment, the New Year’s firecracker air, the terrible pollution outside and spending work-time inside air-conditioned rooms plus a compromised immune system due to fatigue…this is the result. My pulmo doctor meanwhile told me that she has recorded the rise of asthma cases when women are pregnant or in their premenopausal stages of life. She attributes this to hormonal changes in the body. But what was alarming was when people knew I had asthma, their rejoinder was that they knew someone else, or more than another person with asthma or some form of respiratory or pulmonary disease.
The clinical explanation is that asthma comes from the Greek word for “panting.” Medical doctors describe it as “a reversible, chronic lung disease characterized by coughing, wheezing, and inflamed airways. Though asthmatics always have some degree of inflammation, an asthma attack or “flare” occurs when some trigger provokes increased swelling, mucus production, coughing, and a tightening of the smooth muscle around the airways. As airways close, breathing becomes shallow, fast and difficult. Symptoms can be mild, severe or even fatal.” While theoretically I understand this as I write this, let me share that nothing compares to the debilitating feeling and helplessness of not being able to breathe, and feel as though I would just die any moment with no breath.
Our breath is the vital force that keeps us connected to life. We stop breathing, we die. While we may blame pollution and airborne environmental toxins as a major trigger of asthma, we must understand that it’s a combination of many things — the first of which is we are more susceptible to asthma if we are already the types prone to allergies, have had a history of pulmonary infections, bronchitis or pneumonitis, plus when our immune system becomes weak due to stress, fatigue and a host of unhealthy living patterns, then we are hit. Asthma has many triggers and each person’s trigger is uniquely his.
As I was reading up on asthma, I learned of what is called “exercise-induced asthma.” Many athletes (Olympic winners even) have this. People who are into extreme physical exercise often breathe through their mouths and bring cold, dry air into the lungs and make the airways swell and secrete large amounts of mucus — then asthma attacks come.
While there are some drugs and rescue inhalers that can soothe asthma symptoms and attacks, there is no real cure for it now. What asthmatics (actually everyone should for preventive reasons) can try to control daily is the breathing pattern. Respiration is involuntary and controlled by the autonomic nervous system. Respiration, of all the body systems, is actually something we can control. And the ancient science of yoga has what is called “pranayama” or the science of the breath. Because the way we breathe is controlled by our nervous system, when the latter is compromised due to stress, then our breathing pattern is also compromised.
How many times do we “not breathe” when we are stressed, excited or angry? When we are aroused, are involved in extreme exercise or move into emergency situations — our adrenaline rises, our heart beat goes faster, anxiety or even fear rises, and we go into over-breathing or hyperventilation. We forget to breathe deeply let alone exhale long and strong. When this happens, we are working our sympathetic branch of the nervous system. We breathe deep to bring in life-giving oxygen and breathe out long to regulate the carbon dioxide in our body. What happens in stressful situations is that we breathe in oxygen too fast and also release carbon dioxide too fast, resulting in the CO2 level in our body diminishing. An imbalance occurs. What we need to awaken and be conscious of is that we are living life in partnership with the parasympathetic brand of our nervous system, which gives the “relaxation response.” This allows us to slow down, bring our heartbeat to a regulated rhythm, which will activate digestion and elimination.
The world we live in now is moving into an extreme of speed, of activities that demand so much from us and stress that is chronic, too. Imbalance can happen to anyone, anytime. And when times like this happen, we should stop to recalibrate. Let’s make more effort at doing away with unnecessary activities, keep away from stressful people, choose only life-giving activities, prioritize, balance diet and work-life activities. And most of all, breathe deep and long with awareness!
