Salt Booth Therapy Memberships
If you don’t know this about me already I love Himalayan Salt rooms! The relaxation, the ambiance but most of all the health benefits of breathing in the salt. Yes there are health benefits of putting yourself in a room that is full of pink Himalayan salt. In the medical world it is known as halotherapy (dry salt therapy) and research has shown it is beneficial for lots of different ailments but especially healing for the lungs, skin and immune system.
Having had asthma as a child and my own healing journey of trying everything under the sun to help, I fell in love with halo therapy when I first tried it in 2016. Even though I haven’t used my inhaler since I was 17 and no doctor would say I have asthma now I still really enjoyed the benefits of spending 30 minutes in a salt room. Feet up and just breathe deep while meditating.
So with the new office and the 8 treatment rooms I wanted one of the rooms to be a Himalayan salt room but with COVID I was thinking shared space for halo therapy was not a great idea at the same time we needed the support for our lungs and immune system now more than ever so I was so grateful when I found a Himalayan salt booth. Best of both worlds, halotherapy with privacy!
Before COVID I was thinking halo therapy was great for 4 things: sinus and lung issues, skin issues, to boost up the immune system and to detox from crappy NYC air. Now with COVID I think halo therapy is a must to stay healthy. We can no longer just assume we are healthy but to take preventative measures to ensure we really do stay as healthy as possible. So we can add wellness care to the list of why one would get halo therapy.
Salt itself is known to be: anti-bacterial, anti-viral, mucolytic (loosens mucus & phlegm) and anti-inflammatory. For this reason I have suggested using a Neti Pot which is a specific container that you put warm salt water in to wash your nasal passages and sinuses with. Instead of just rinsing out your sinuses, which is wet salt therapy, halotherapy, or breathing in salt vapor takes the healing properties of salt deep into the body through the lungs and the skin. Breathing in the salt is super cleansing to the body because it’s full of negative ions. How can negative ions help your body? Well, back to Science 101, “A negative ion is an atom that has more electrons than protons, giving the atom a negative electrical charge.” Our bodies are full of positive ions from all the chemical reactions that occur and toxins we have in our bodies. Positive ions also come from electronic devices like computers, TVs, microwaves, and even vacuum cleaners and can often exacerbate problems like allergies, stress and sleep trouble. An ion having a charge is known as a free radical and causes oxidative stress in the body. That's why eating and drinking antioxidants is healthy for your body and now with the Salt Booth you can breathe in salt which acts like an antioxidant helping the body to heal. On a much smaller scale you can get a Himalayan salt lamp to have the health benefits at home. I would keep it at your bedside to get the most benefit of breathing in salted air while you sleep. The salt from the lamp automatically goes into the air from the humidity.
When you breathe in the salt or negative ions they neutralize positive ions by bonding to them. With less positive charge on the body there is less stress and inflammation on the body and the immune system is boosted. Negative ions occur more often in nature and they are often created by things like lightning storms, sunlight, waterfalls, and ocean waves. This is one of the reasons people often report feeling renewed or refreshed after a storm or at the beach. Other than walking along the ocean, or being outside immediately after a thunderstorm, it’s hard to expose yourself to as many negative ions as you can inside a halotherapy room or booth. It’s an enjoyable way to spend time literally recharging your body!
More than 40 years of research, conducted around the world, shows that treatment with halotherapy has beneficial effects for patients with:
Asthma
Chronic Bronchitis
Sinusitis
COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease)
Allergies
Ear Infections
Various acute or chronic respiratory diseases
Smoker’s cough
Viral infections
Coughs and colds
Chronic ear-nose-throat illnesses
Salt is so good at killing bacteria and viruses that there is new research showing how salt on face masks can decrease the spread of infection.
Salt is also extremely beneficial to your skin in treating:
Acne
Psoriasis
Hives
Eczema
In addition, negative ions have been shown to reduce:
Stress
Headaches and migraines
Lethargy
Depression
High blood pressure
And negative ions can dramatically increase your:
Immune system
Energy
Mental alertness
Overall sense of well-being
As you sit in the salt booth you really want to spend your time taking deep breaths to get the most of your salt treatment. The deeper the breath, the more oxygen can come in per breath. The amount of oxygen that we inhale through our breathing, influences the amount of energy that is released into our cells. On a molecular level, this progresses all sorts of chemical and physiological processes. Breathing is controlled by the autonomic nervous system. The part of our nervous system we don’t have to think about that makes our heart beat and digests our food. There are two parts to the autonomic nervous system, sympathetic and parasympathetic. These two parts control different things in the body. The parasympathetic controls the breathing, digestion, sleep and libido. This is the part of our nervous system that makes us feel relaxed and that is why breathing is so good to do during stressful times. It helps get us out of fight or flight mode. Breathing is also the easiest part of the autonomic nervous system to control and navigate. In fact, the way you breathe strongly affects the chemical and physiological activities in your body. It’s amazing what you can do when you can control your breath. I’m not just talking about how long you can swim under water for but Wim Hof has developed special breathing techniques that keep his body in optimal condition and in complete control in the most extreme conditions. The breathing technique is first and foremost premised on inhaling deeply and exhaling without any use of force! With his controlled breathing the heightened oxygen levels hold a treasure of benefits, more energy, reduced stress levels, and an augmented immune response that swiftly deals with all germs.
Wim Hof got his nickname “The Iceman” by breaking a number of records related to cold exposure. His feats include climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in shorts, running a half marathon above the Arctic Circle on his bare feet, and standing in a container while covered with ice cubes for more than 112 minutes. Patients who have used his method say that it helps with stress and it even helped one patient heal from his eczema and that’s even without the use of halotherapy! He has great youtube videos that I do twice a day to stay healthy and strong.
I’m so excited to bring personalized skin and lung therapy into the office. When I discovered the salt booth not only did I get excited about the booth for privacy during COVID but I also liked the idea that if someone had acne on their back or rashes on their thighs or chest that with the privacy they could expose the skin the air and get even more benefit from the salt treatment. The particles of salt are so small in the air that it won’t make you cough or irritate the skin. It is also super safe for children and even babies. I see a lot of babies with eczema and other skin irritations. I also love that with the salt booth unlike the salt room the concentration of salt particles can be adjusted to offer a more individualized and targeted salt therapy session. Because the concentration of salt is higher in the booth and your the only one breathing it sessions only take 10 minutes. There's nothing you need to do to prepare for your salt booth experience. There are no side effects and you can wear your street clothes in the rooms.
Since salt is a drying agent, I do suggest drinking water afterwards. I also recommend waiting to shower afterwards since rubbing the salt residue on your skin can help soften it and act as an exfoliant. If you stay away from having salt in your diet due to water retention or high blood pressure know that breathing in salt is safe to do and will not affect your water retention or blood pressure.
If that wasn’t enough the salt booth also does sound and light therapy. I love light therapy, which you may already know because we have chakra light therapy and chakra glasses in the office already as forms of light therapy but this is my first type of sound therapy in the office. Sound therapy has been shown to help relieve stress, help people have few headaches, increase focus and energy, have clearer thoughts, improve attention span and Relief from common ailments such as hypertension, stomach pain, depression, and joint pain.
Color therapy has been shown to reduce swelling and decreased inflammation in the body in this way it’s good for accelerating healing and pain relief. Color therapy is also good for:
Increased range of motion
Decreased muscle tension
Improved circulation
Anti-aging benefits,
improve sleep and
Regulated mood including seasonal affective disorder. I recommend full spectrum light bulbs for the middle of winter because we don’t get outside enough and the full spectrum light bulbs literally emit all the electromagnetic rays ranging from infrared to healthy ultraviolet rays which are the wavelengths that are useful to plants.
Now more than ever people are suffering from respiratory issues. I see it in my office now more than I have in the last 15 years. From air pollution to airborne diseases, pollens and toxins our lungs need help to detox. Not only does salt therapy help with the lungs but also the skin and immune system while decreasing the stress on the body. Plus the salt booth adds privacy, sound therapy and light therapy. A salt booth treatment is $30 or unlimited for the month for $70. Book here, you have to try it the next time you are at the office. You won’t believe the results!
Resources:
In a 2007 study people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) had fewer symptoms and improved quality of life after halotherapy https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18019972/. And in 2014 COPD patients were tested before and after halo therapy and even though lung tests before and after halotherpay didn’t show a difference, 65% of patients were satisfied with halotherapy and requested it again https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4153239/
Halotherapy triggers anti-inflammatory and anti-allergic responses in people with bronchial asthma or chronic bronchitis, according to 2014 research
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4391365/.
Himalayan Salt Lamps -https://healingartsnyc.blogspot.com/2016/06/health-benefits-of-himalayan-salt-lamp.html
Salted Masks - https://www.nature.com/articles/srep39956
Wim Hof - https://youtu.be/wFj6TOYpQG8
Chakra Light Therapy - https://healingartsnyc.com/chakra-light-bed
Sound Healing - https://www.healthline.com/health/sound-healing
Ozone Sauna Therapy Benefits
Who doesn’t love to sweat out toxins for better health? Dry saunas and steam rooms have been used for centuries to help people feel better not just by the relaxation but by the heat allowing one to sweat out toxins and boost the immune system. When doing this type of therapy one always has to be careful to not detox too fast and cause a detox reaction or dehydration. To help prevent dehydration that’s one reason why I love using steam versus the dry heat. But even after spending time in a steam room you want to drink at least 64 ounces of water that same day to help flush out toxins that were brought up and out of the cells during the steam room time. Besides a steam room, hot showers always do the trick for me especially if I have tight muscles or feel like I need an immune boost. Now I can get the benefits of a steam room with ozone at Healing Arts (I just have to come to work early or leave later to have time for a treatment).
I love ozone. Having had asthma as a child putting ozone into the air saves me when I go to my mom’s dusty cabin in the Adirondacks. I also make ozonated water to drink 16 ounces daily, wash my fruits and vegetables in it to get the dirt and bugs off of it and I use it to wash my face. The ozo-pod makes that all possible, creating ozonated water at home. Washing my face with the ozonated water is amazing! I couldn’t believe it the first time I used it, my skin got tighter. More oxygen to the skin is only beneficial. So when I learned about ozone sauna therapy I couldn’t wait to try it! If I had amazing results with just washing my face, imagine if I did my whole body! Not only is it amazing for the skin but ozone sauna is therapeutic for the body as well. As the ozone gets absorbed in through the skin to the lymphatic and blood streams the extra oxygen gives the body the extra boost it needs to fight free radicals, fight infection, detox heavy metals, absorb nutrients, reduce inflammation, have better digestion and more! I knew I had to have one in the office so others could experience it and understand why I love ozone.
Ozone is a colorless gas made up of three atoms of oxygen (O3). The oxygen in the air is O2 so when ozone gets absorbed into the body the extra oxygen atom easy breaks off and bonds to where it is needed in the body. Your body can benefit in all sorts of ways if it has extra oxygen. To help detox the extra oxygen molecule bonds with sulphur compounds the way glutathione does. In this way ozone helps take the burden off the liver by binding to toxic substances making them neutral in the body and no longer a toxin.
Ozone sauna therapy is the combination of steam sauna and ozone gas. During an ozone sauna session you sit in a sauna pod that covers you from the neck down and induces sweating using steam from distilled water. This sweating opens up pores to allow the ozone gas to be absorbed by the skin. As you sit in the sauna pod, ozone gas is introduced at the same time. It’s important that the sauna allows for the head to stick out to prevent you from inhaling a lot of the ozone gas. Inhaling some ozone will only benefits the lungs as the extra oxygen is beneficial but too much can be irritating to the lungs and cause lightheadedness. You google ozone and there is a lot of controversy despite the research that shows how therapeutic it is for the body. I’m not waiting for research to catch up to the results I see in my daily life.
So when you combine the wet and warm skin with the ozone gas the extra oxygen that goes in has such great anti-inflammatory and immune boosting effects. Ozone sauna therapy is believed to be a powerful treatment which may be comparable to IV ozone administrations just without the needle. Ozone therapy breaks up lactic acid, increases cellular respiration in muscles, speeds up recovery of damaged tissue and accelerates growth of muscle for those who have tight, sore muscles. Ozone therapy improves blood circulation, improves vitamin and mineral absorption, fights inflammation, and is wonderful at killing mold, parasites, candida, viruses and bacteria.
WHAT TO EXPECT:
You will sit in the Ozone pod with your head out of the top of the pod while steam and an ozone, oxygen mixture circulates inside the unit. The steam and heat trigger the opening of your pores. Ozone then enters your body through your skin into your lymphatic fluid, blood and fat cells. Toxins in your lymph, fat & blood are oxidized, the oxidized toxins are expelled out through your skin, sparing your liver and kidneys. Because ozone enters the body and pulls toxins out of fat cells it increases the body’s metabolism and can assist with weight loss
A treatment is usually between 20 or 30 minutes depending on your health. But we also offer 10 minute sessions to help prevent too much detox and if you just want to give it a try and don’t have enough time. You will sit naked on a towel inside the pod. You could also have a towel wrapped around you but the idea is the more skin that is exposed to the steamy ozone air the better. No jewelry, water bottles or foreign objects should be taken into the pod with you due to the wet heat.
You can expect to emerge from the treatment feeling relaxed, refreshed and energized. We provide towels to dry off. Remember to drink plenty of water and breathe deeply for the rest of the day!
What is ozone sauna therapy used for?
Ozone saunas are used for a wide array of conditions because of its potent anti-inflammatory, detox and immune system boosting effects. Ozone sauna therapy can be used for:
Joint pain
Multiple Sclerosis
Foggy Brain
As a complementary treatment to reduce side-effects of chemotherapy
Lyme disease
Rheumatoid arthritis
Auto-immune disorders
Lupus
Eczema
Injuries
Weight loss
Chronic viral diseases like EBV, hepatitis B and C
Bacterial infections
Fungal infections
Skin ulcers (diabetic, infectious, necrotic)
Allergies
Influenza, cold
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Fibromyalgia
Poor Circulation
Diabetes
Scleroderma
Asthma
and more …
Are there possible side effects of ozone sauna therapy?
Ozone saunas are one of the safest treatments in the alternative health field: They’re non-invasive, and relaxing.
The reported side effects are usually minor, transient, and can be easily remedied by using the sauna less. This is why I like to muscle test for how long a patient’s ozone sauna session should be. We have 10, 20 or 30 minute intervals. The longer the session the more oxygen can get into the body but we don’t want to detox too fast. Signs of detoxing too fast from the ozone would be a rash or fatigue. The body goes into fatigue because all of the body’s energy goes to detoxing and not towards daily output. If this happens just be kind to yourself for the day and it usually wears off with a good night sleep.
A rash can occur because the ozone has brought up too many toxins and the body is trying to get rid of toxins through the skin as you sweat. It can be itchy and it usually looks like small red pimples. It can occur on the abdomen, chest or back, or on the limbs. It is usually the itchiest the night of the ozone sauna therapy and dissipates completely in 3-4 days without any long standing damage to the skin. It’s a good thing because you know you detoxed a lot but there is no reason to overwhelm the body so if you get a rash I do suggest the next time you do it either a reduction of the ozone concentration or frequency of administration.
If you get itchy you can alternate hot and cold showers when you get home. 10 minutes hot shower 2 minutes as cold as you can stand and the water really only has to hit the area of the rash. You may also want to do a liver flush to help with the toxins. A lotion with oat can be really soothing. Bentonite paste on the rash can draw out the toxins helping the skin, and a high dose of vitamin B12 : up to 1500 micrograms at a time can help the rash too.
For those who just want to do steam sauna and not ozone it is possible to turn the ozone off and get the health benefits of just the hot sauna.
You are not allowed to do the ozone sauna if you have high blood pressure, worried about a stroke, have an organ transplant or have hyperthyroidism. If you are pregnant please do not partake in sauna ozone therapy, rather consider it for your post pregnancy protocol.
To know whether ozone sauna therapy is right for you talk to me or one of the other practitioners at Healing Arts and we can muscle test you for the best course of action. If your body would benefit we can test for the best duration 10, 20, 30 minute sessions and for how often. I do see for general detoxification and well being a schedule of four 30 minute sessions once every other week sessions is tested often. For chronic medical disorders up to 12 sessions or more are required but everyone is different and we want to personalize your care. So if you are thinking about it let us know at your next appointment so we can muscle test you for it.
Resources
Ozone Water Blog -https://healingartsnyc.blogspot.com/2016/04/benefits-of-ozone-water.html
Ozo-pod for ozonated water - https://healingartsnyc.com/shop/ozone-pod
Ozone therapy research -https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5674660/
Anti-aging Secrets of Breath
I grew up on a farm in upstate NY on a dairy farm in a small town called Little Falls and when I was 12 years old my parents took me to NYC for the first time. I loved the sights but the air was toxic and so I came home to my first asthma attack. For four years I struggled with asthma. In and out of ER getting steroids and nebulizer treatments. On an inhaler daily, I never saw any improvement. The goal was just to maintain enough air to prevent another attack. At 16 years old, it was just getting worse and so my mom and I started looking for an alternative to Western medicine and that’s when I found Nutrition Response Testing and fell in love. After two years of being on a muscle testing program I stopped using my inhaler for good and no doctor would now say I have asthma. Having asthma was a blessing because it started me on this road and was the reason why I dedicate my life to giving people the joy of health the same way I was given it.
Only recently, really just the last two years, with the pandemic, have I been looking at and studying the health of the lungs on a deeper level and I will tell you everything I have learned tells me that if we breath slower and deeper we will live longer. It’s truly that simple. This is why I am so happy to offer 30 minute Breathing Sessions at Healing Arts or via Zoom with Maureen.
With all my research on deep breathing I realize that growing up my asthma was not the problem. The body constricted the airways in order to help. Yes, you are correct. That was not a typo. The body constricted the airways to slow down breathing in order to help. The real problem occurred before the airway constriction which was the increase in my rate of breathing which dropped carbon dioxide levels so low that my body wanted to constrict my airways. With less carbon dioxide, not oxygen, the body tightens the airways to get less oxygen in but we panic when we feel the tightness which causes us to want more air and the panic causes the asthma attack to escalate. The answer to this is to breath slower and less and the body calms down, airways open and then the mind can relax too. This quick and easy fix works for anxiety too. When you start to feel the chest pressure even before then, start taking slower, deeper breaths. To really learn how to breathe deep from your diaphragm this is how Maureen’s breath work sessions can help.
Besides asthma and anxiety I have seen deep breathing help patients with dizziness, vertigo, shortness of breath and heart palpitations. It’s not the deep breathing part that is healing because during an asthma attack, try as you might. a deep breath doesn’t really happen. It’s the holding part that is important to build carbon dioxide up in the body. We think it’s a lack of oxygen as the cause but I have put an oxygen reader on my finger during an asthma attack and it stays 94% oxygen saturation or more.
So why do I start my anti aging blog about asthma and deep breathing? It’s because breathing is a force, a medicine, and a mechanism through which you can gain an almost superhuman power. Just ask Wim Hof who climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro wearing shorts. Even though he uses breath to do superhuman feats most people reading this want to learn how to breathe better for an increase in mental and physical health and that includes staying young.
There are as many ways to breathe as there are foods to eat and each way we breathe will affect our bodies in different ways. You need to know that how you breathe matters. Some methods of breathing will nourish your brain, while others will kill neurons; some will make you healthy while others will hasten your death.
If it’s only one thing you get from this post it is to breathe through your nose at all times and if you are a chronic mouth breather please go to an ENT and figure out why and how to change that. The nose hairs and mucus that the air hits is so important as a first line of defense when breathing. Mucus is constantly on the move, sweeping along at a rate of about half an inch every minute, more than 60 feet per day. Like a giant conveyor belt, it collects inhaled debris in the nose, then moves all the junk down the throat and into the stomach where it is sterilized by stomach acid, delivered to the intestines and sent out of your body. This conveyor belt doesn’t just move by itself. It’s pushed alone by millions of tiny, hair like structures called cilia. Cilia sway with every inhale and exhale at a fast sway of 16 beats per second. If you feel you have too much mucus when you first wake up in the morning or maybe a cough that produces mucus or a nose that runs constantly I promise that you are not constantly breathing through your nose and if you start to become aware and change that then you will find the mucus is a lot less.
Until the 1980s the common belief in Western medicine was the lungs would stay the same. That whatever lungs we were born with, we were stuck with. It is well known that the lungs will lose about 12% of capacity from the age of 30 to 50 and will continue declining even faster as we get older, with women faring worse than men. If you make it to 80 years old you will be able to take in 30% less air than we did in our 20s. We’re forced to breathe faster and harder as we get older. This breathing habit leads to chronic problems like high blood pressure, immune disorders, and anxiety. What western science is now discovering is that aging doesn’t have to be a one-way path of decline. The internal organs are malleable, and we can change them at nearly any age.
Free divers know this better than anyone. Free divers are people who go underwater as long as possible with their own lung capacity of air. Free diving is also known as breath-hold diving. They have trained their lungs and increased the lung capacity by 30% to 40%. To get the same increase in lung capacity the actual diving down hundreds of feet is not required. Any regular breathing practice that stretches the lungs and keeps them flexible can increase lung capacity. Moderate exercise like walking or cycling has been shown to increase air capacity by up to 15%.
When you start training the lungs make sure to use the diaphragm with every breath. The diaphragm is a muscle that sits beneath the lungs in the shape of an umbrella. The diaphragm moves down as the lungs expand during inhalation. During exhalation the diaphragm moves up as the lungs contract. This up and down movement occurs within us some 50,000 times a day. A typical adult engages as little as 10% of the diaphragm during breathing, which overburdens the heart, elevates blood pressure, and causes a range of circulatory problems. How are they connected? The heart pumps an average of 2000 gallons of blood a day. What influences much of the speed and strength of the circulation is the thoracic pump, the name for the pressure that builds up inside the chest when we breathe. As we inhale, negative pressure draws blood into the heart. As we exhale, blood shoots back out into the body. It’s similar to the way the ocean floods onto the shore, then ebbs out. And what powers the thoracic pump is the diaphragm. If we use the diaphragm 50 to 70% of its capacity it will ease cardiovascular stress and allow the body to work more efficiently including better circulation. For this reason, the diaphragm is sometimes referred to as the second heart because it not only beats to its own rhythm but it also affects the rate and strength of the heartbeat.
The better our breathing the more oxygen flow we have. Inside each of our 25 trillion red blood cells are 270 million hemoglobin, each of which has room for four oxygen molecules. That’s 1 billion molecules of oxygen that runs through your body at any given moment. When oxygen goes into a cell, carbon dioxide comes out. But why did this exchange take place? The more carbon dioxide in an area then the more acidic it is. It is this acidity, this low pH, that actually makes the oxygen leave the hemoglobin and go into the oxygen starved tissue. This explains why some muscles will get more oxygen than other muscles. It is because they are producing more carbon dioxide. It is supply and demand on a cellular level that makes oxygen move to where it needs to be.
When we breathe at a normal rate which on average is 18 breaths a minute, our lungs will absorb only about a quarter of the available oxygen in the air. The majority of that oxygen is exhaled back out. So why are we taking all these breaths that aren’t necessary? It really does make sense to take more oxygen in with less breaths per minute. Breathing less is better for us because with breathing too much we expel too much carbon dioxide and our blood pH rises to become more alkaline; when we breathe slower and hold in more carbon dioxide pH lowers and blood becomes more acidic. We need this acidity for the oxygen to leave the hemoglobin.
Almost all cellular functions in the body take place at a pH of the blood at 7.4, our sweet spot between alkaline and acidic. When we stray from that the body will do whatever it can to get us back there. The kidneys, for instance, will respond to over breathing by buffering. Buffering is a process in which an alkaline compound called bicarbonate is released into the urine. With less bicarbonate in the blood the pH lowers back to normal, even if we continue to huff and puff. It’s as if nothing ever happened. The problem with buffering is that it is meant as a temporary fix, not a permanent solution. Weeks, months or years of over breathing and this constant kidney buffering will deplete the body of minerals. Constant buffering will move minerals out of the bones. That’s how important the correct blood pH is. The body chooses stabilizing the pH over the strength of the bones.
Breathing is more than just a biochemical reaction or physical act; it’s more than just moving the diaphragm downward and sucking in air to give the red blood cells oxygen and remove waste. The tens of billions of air molecules we bring into our bodies with every breath also serve a more subtle, but equally important role. They influence nearly every internal organ, telling them when to turn on and off. The air we breathe affects heart rate, digestion, moods, attitudes; when we feel aroused and when we feel nauseated. Breathing is a power switch to a vast network called the autonomic nervous system (ANS).
There are two parts to the ANS, the sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system. The lungs are covered with the nerves from both the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. Many of the nerves connecting to the parasympathetic are located in the lower lobes which is one reason why deep and slow breaths are so relaxing. When you take a deep breath and air goes down deeper into the lungs the parasympathetic nerves are switched on which sends more messages for the organs to rest and digest and during exhalation the molecules stimulate an even more powerful parasympathetic response. The deeper and more softly we breathe in, and the longer we exhale, the more slowly the heart beats and the calmer we become.
The sympathetic nervous system fibers our at the top part of the lungs. They send signals to our organs, telling them to get ready for action. When we take short, faster breaths, the molecules of air switch on the sympathetic nerves. The more messages the system gets the bigger the emergency. The intense energy you feel when someone cut you off in traffic or wrongs you at work is the sympathetic system ramping up. Heart rate increases, adrenaline kicks in, blood vessels constrict, pupils dilate, the palms sweat, and the mind sharpens. Our bodies are built to stay in a state of heightened sympathetic alert only for short bursts and only on occasion. Even though it just takes a few seconds to activate, turning off the sympathetic nervous system and returning to a state of relaxation and restoration can take an hour or more.
The fastest easiest way to turn off the sympathetic nerves and not live a life in chronic low grade stress is to take deep breaths and turn on the parasympathetic nervous system. Just 3 deep breaths in the moment of being cut off in traffic or confronted with an argument can be enough to have the body stay calm and not spiral into fight or flight. You can also use deep breathing when not in a stressful moment such as during a meal for better digestion and at bedtime for deeper sleep. Deeper sleep and better digestion occur naturally if the parasympathetic nervous system is turned on and the sympathetic nervous system is turned off.
One reason we live in a chronic state of stress is because when the sympathetic nervous system is turned on we feel alive but it’s at the cost of the body breaking down. Without rest and relaxation, being stuck in fight or flight, will be the cause of poor digestion, not sleeping well, headaches, joint pain and so much more. Eight of the top ten most common cancers affect organs cut off from normal blood flow during extended states of stress. We need to learn to live in a balance between the two nervous systems, a homeostasis of the Autonomic Nervous System. That balance can be easily found with deeper breaths, holding your breath, and don’t forget to count to 6!
I had a 45 year old male patient come into the office about 1.5 years ago with severe eczema. Before coming to see me he had tried everything under the sun. In the 9 months he broke out all over his body he had seen 4 different medical doctors, tried tons of steroid creams, acupuncture, 2 naturopaths, and I was his last hope. We needed to detox some heavy metals and chemicals and within 2 weeks of detoxing his skin was 90% better. I had never seen the skin heal so fast from such a severe case and he said with starting the detox program I gave him and Wim Hof breathing he couldn’t believe the healing that was taking place after months of no relief.
Who was Wim Hof I wondered and so I didn’t have to dig deep to find him on Google. Wim Hof’s wife had taken her own life after years of depression when had sought refuge from his pain by deepening his practice of yoga, meditation, and breathing practices. He unearthed the ancient technique of Tummo, honed it, simplified it, repackaged it for mass consumption, and began promoting its powers in a string of daredevil stunts. He has been nicknamed “The Iceman” by breaking a number of records related to cold exposure. His feats include climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in shorts, running a half marathon above the Arctic Circle on his bare feet, and standing in a container while covered with ice cubes for more than 112 minutes.
In 2011 researchers at Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands brought Hof into a laboratory and started poking and prodding him, trying to figure out how he did what he did. At one point they injected his arm with an endotoxin, a component of E. coli. Exposure to the bacteria usually juices vomiting, headaches, fever and other flu like symptoms. Hof took the E. coli into his veins and then breathed a few dozen breaths, willing his body to fight it off. He showed no sign of fever, no nausea. A few minutes later he rose from the chair and got a cup of coffee. There's all the proof you need to know how deep breathing boosts your immune system!
To practice the Wim Hof‘s breathing method, start by finding a quiet place and lay flat on your back with a pillow under your head. Relax the shoulders, trunk, and legs. Take a very deep breath into the pit of your stomach and let it back out just as quickly. Keep breathing this way for 30 cycles. It should take about 3 minutes if you are breathing about 6 seconds in and 6 second outs. If possible, breathe through the nose; if the nose feels congested then breath through pursed lips. Each breath should look like a wave, starting with the stomach lifting, then the chest. You should exhale all the air out in the same order. At the end of the 30 breaths, exhale naturally, leaving about a quarter of the air left in the lungs, then hold that breath for as long as possible. Once you reached your breath hold limit, take one huge inhale and hold it another 15 seconds. Then exhale and start the 30 cycles of breathing again. Repeat the whole pattern three or four rounds and add in some cold exposure, cold shower, ice bath, a few times a week. The controlled breathing and then breathing all out, then not at all, getting really cold and then hot again is the key to the body’s magic. It forces the body into high stress one minute, a state of extremely relaxation the next. The body becomes more adaptable and flexible and learns these bodily responses can come under our control.
Wim Hof sees this controlled breathing as being able to create amazing physiological responses with the body. His feats speak for themselves. But I think it’s not just about biochemistry. There’s more going on than we can see under a microscope or find in a college textbook. In energy medicine (which I guess can be partly found in a quantum physics textbook) we see pumping the lungs with breath like this isn’t just about oxygen and carbon dioxide molecules moving in and out but it’s also about the movement of the chi, or call it prana, or kundalini energy, or chakras, or the meridian system. It’s all the same. This life force goes by many names. Chi has it’s origin in Chinese medicine and is used by acupuncturists. Japanese call it ki, Hebrews call it ruah, Greeks call is pneuma. The Iroquois even had a word for it, orenda. Prana has it’s origin in yoga and comes from the Hindu culture. Chakras are energy centers of this life force. Kundalini is the name of the life force energy that is stuck at the bottom of your spine. Guess what you do to get it unstuck? You use breath. I'm not waiting for science to catch up to tell me to use breath to be able to hold more life force in my body. I see the rejuvenating results with my patients and you can too.
If you ever do the Chakra Light Therapy at the office please remember to do deep breathing during the session to get the most out of it. If not using deep breathing during the session then going into meditation is another way to open yourself up and get the most out of the Tesla energy coming into the chakras and body to help balance this life force.
The power of breath is the reason why laughter is the best medicine. It pumps the lungs and moves stagnant life force. What makes us laugh is part of the equation. The laughter stimulus resonates with something in our energy or mind and then has the physical reaction of pumping the lungs. This energy shift is why laughter can be contagious.
The lungs pumping air, moving life force is why when we do Allergy Clearing in the office we have patients hold homeopathic vials of things they are allergic to while doing breath work as we tap certain acupuncture points to get the body to recognize the vials as something that is not harmful to the body. In this way the next time the real allergy is in contact with the body it doesn’t see it as a threat and does not overstimulate the immune system to have a reaction.
If how we breathe matters then the quality of air we breathe also matters. I do suggest an air purifier at least in the bedroom if you live in a city. Get one that has a HEPA filter.
I hope this helps you understand the importance of what so many take for granted and that is the power of breath bringing life force AND oxygen into the body in order to stay strong, healthy and rejuvenated.
Ozone Sauna Therapy Benefits
Who doesn’t love to sweat out toxins for better health? Dry saunas and steam rooms have been used for centuries to help people feel better not just by the relaxation but by the heat allowing one to sweat out toxins and boost the immune system. When doing this type of therapy one always has to be careful to not detox too fast and cause a detox reaction or dehydration. To help prevent dehydration that’s one reason why I love using steam versus the dry heat. But even after spending time in a steam room you want to drink at least 64 ounces of water that same day to help flush out toxins that were brought up and out of the cells during the steam room time. Besides a steam room, hot showers always do the trick for me especially if I have tight muscles or feel like I need an immune boost. Now I can get the benefits of a steam room with ozone at Healing Arts (I just have to come to work early or leave later to have time for a treatment).
I love ozone. Having had asthma as a child putting ozone into the air saves me when I go to my mom’s dusty cabin in the Adirondacks. I also make ozonated water to drink 16 ounces daily, wash my fruits and vegetables in it to get the dirt and bugs off of it and I use it to wash my face. The ozo-pod makes that all possible, creating ozonated water at home. Washing my face with the ozonated water is amazing! I couldn’t believe it the first time I used it, my skin got tighter. More oxygen to the skin is only beneficial. So when I learned about ozone sauna therapy I couldn’t wait to try it! If I had amazing results with just washing my face, imagine if I did my whole body! Not only is it amazing for the skin but ozone sauna is therapeutic for the body as well. As the ozone gets absorbed in through the skin to the lymphatic and blood streams the extra oxygen gives the body the extra boost it needs to fight free radicals, fight infection, detox heavy metals, absorb nutrients, reduce inflammation, have better digestion and more! I knew I had to have one in the office so others could experience it and understand why I love ozone.
Ozone is a colorless gas made up of three atoms of oxygen (O3). The oxygen in the air is O2 so when ozone gets absorbed into the body the extra oxygen atom easy breaks off and bonds to where it is needed in the body. Your body can benefit in all sorts of ways if it has extra oxygen. To help detox the extra oxygen molecule bonds with sulphur compounds the way glutathione does. In this way ozone helps take the burden off the liver by binding to toxic substances making them neutral in the body and no longer a toxin.
Ozone sauna therapy is the combination of steam sauna and ozone gas. During an ozone sauna session you sit in a sauna pod that covers you from the neck down and induces sweating using steam from distilled water. This sweating opens up pores to allow the ozone gas to be absorbed by the skin. As you sit in the sauna pod, ozone gas is introduced at the same time. It’s important that the sauna allows for the head to stick out to prevent you from inhaling a lot of the ozone gas. Inhaling some ozone will only benefits the lungs as the extra oxygen is beneficial but too much can be irritating to the lungs and cause lightheadedness. You google ozone and there is a lot of controversy despite the research https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5674660/ that shows how therapeutic it is for the body. I’m not waiting for research to catch up to the results I see in my daily life.
So when you combine the wet and warm skin with the ozone gas the extra oxygen that goes in has such great anti-inflammatory and immune boosting effects. Ozone sauna therapy is believed to be a powerful treatment which may be comparable to IV ozone administrations just without the needle. Ozone therapy breaks up lactic acid, increases cellular respiration in muscles, speeds up recovery of damaged tissue and accelerates growth of muscle for those who have tight, sore muscles. Ozone therapy improves blood circulation, improves vitamin and mineral absorption, fights inflammation, and is wonderful at killing mold, parasites, candida, viruses and bacteria.
WHAT TO EXPECT:
You will sit in the Ozone pod with your head out of the top of the pod while steam and an ozone, oxygen mixture circulates inside the unit. The steam and heat trigger the opening of your pores. Ozone then enters your body through your skin into your lymphatic fluid, blood and fat cells. Toxins in your lymph, fat & blood are oxidized, the oxidized toxins are expelled out through your skin, sparing your liver and kidneys. Because ozone enters the body and pulls toxins out of fat cells it increases the body’s metabolism and can assist with weight loss
A treatment is usually between 20 or 30 minutes depending on your health. But we also offer 10 minute sessions to help prevent too much detox and if you just want to give it a try and don’t have enough time. You will sit naked on a towel inside the pod. You could also have a towel wrapped around you but the idea is the more skin that is exposed to the steamy ozone air the better. No jewelry, water bottles or foreign objects should be taken into the pod with you due to the wet heat.
You can expect to emerge from the treatment feeling relaxed, refreshed and energized. We provide towels to dry off. Remember to drink plenty of water and breathe deeply for the rest of the day!
What is ozone sauna therapy used for?
Ozone saunas are used for a wide array of conditions because of its potent anti-inflammatory, detox and immune system boosting effects. Ozone sauna therapy can be used for:
Joint pain
Multiple Sclerosis
Foggy Brain
As a complementary treatment to reduce side-effects of chemotherapy
Lyme disease
Rheumatoid arthritis
Auto-immune disorders
Lupus
Eczema
Injuries
Weight loss
Chronic viral diseases like EBV, hepatitis B and C
Bacterial infections
Fungal infections
Skin ulcers (diabetic, infectious, necrotic)
Allergies
Influenza, cold
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Fibromyalgia
Poor Circulation
Diabetes
Scleroderma
Asthma
and more …
Are there possible side effects of ozone sauna therapy?
Ozone saunas are one of the safest treatments in the alternative health field: They’re non-invasive, and relaxing.
The reported side effects are usually minor, transient, and can be easily remedied by using the sauna less. This is why I like to muscle test for how long a patient’s ozone sauna session should be. We have 10, 20 or 30 minute intervals. The longer the session the more oxygen can get into the body but we don’t want to detox too fast. Signs of detoxing too fast from the ozone would be a rash or fatigue. The body goes into fatigue because all of the body’s energy goes to detoxing and not towards daily output. If this happens just be kind to yourself for the day and it usually wears off with a good night sleep.
A rash can occur because the ozone has brought up too many toxins and the body is trying to get rid of toxins through the skin as you sweat. It can be itchy and it usually looks like small red pimples. It can occur on the abdomen, chest or back, or on the limbs. It is usually the itchiest the night of the ozone sauna therapy and dissipates completely in 3-4 days without any long standing damage to the skin. It’s a good thing because you know you detoxed a lot but there is no reason to overwhelm the body so if you get a rash I do suggest the next time you do it either a reduction of the ozone concentration or frequency of administration.
If you get itchy you can alternate hot and cold showers when you get home. 10 minutes hot shower 2 minutes as cold as you can stand and the water really only has to hit the area of the rash. You may also want to do a liver flush to help with the toxins. A lotion with oat can be really soothing. Bentonite paste on the rash can draw out the toxins helping the skin, and a high dose of vitamin B12 : up to 1500 micrograms at a time can help the rash too.
For those who just want to do steam sauna and not ozone it is possible to turn the ozone off and get the health benefits of just the hot sauna.
You are not allowed to do the ozone sauna if you have high blood pressure, worried about a stroke, have an organ transplant or have hyperthyroidism. If you are pregnant please do not partake in sauna ozone therapy, rather consider it for your post pregnancy protocol.
To know whether ozone sauna therapy is right for you talk to me or one of the other practitioners at Healing Arts and we can muscle test you for the best course of action. If your body would benefit we can test for the best duration 10, 20, 30 minute sessions and for how often. I do see for general detoxification and well being a schedule of four 30 minute sessions once every other week sessions is tested often. For chronic medical disorders up to 12 sessions or more are required but everyone is different and we want to personalize your care. So if you are thinking about it let us know at your next appointment so we can muscle test you for it.
Resources
Ozone Blog - https://healingartsnyc.blogspot.com/2016/04/benefits-of-ozone-water.html
Ozo-pod for ozonated water - https://healingartsnyc.com/shop/ozone-pod
Ozone therapy research - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5674660/
Anti-aging Secrets of Breath
I grew up on a farm in upstate NY on a dairy farm in a small town called Little Falls and when I was 12 years old my parents took me to NYC for the first time. I loved the sights but the air was toxic and so I came home to my first asthma attack. For four years I struggled with asthma. In and out of ER getting steroids and nebulizer treatments. On an inhaler daily, I never saw any improvement. The goal was just to maintain enough air to prevent another attack. At 16 years old, it was just getting worse and so my mom and I started looking for an alternative to Western medicine and that’s when I found Nutrition Response Testing and fell in love. After two years of being on a muscle testing program I stopped using my inhaler for good and no doctor would now say I have asthma. Having asthma was a blessing because it started me on this road and was the reason why I dedicate my life to giving people the joy of health the same way I was given it.
Only recently, really just the last year with the pandemic, have I been looking at and studying the health of the lungs on a deeper level and I will tell you everything I have learned tells me that if we breath slower and deeper we will live longer. It’s truly that simple. I have now realized with all my research that my asthma was not the problem. The body constricted the airways in order to help. Yes, you are correct. That was not a typo. The body constricted the airways to slow down breathing in order to help. The real problem occurred before the airway constriction which was the increase in my rate of breathing which dropped carbon dioxide levels so low that my body wanted to constrict my airways. With less carbon dioxide, not oxygen, the body tightens the airways to get less oxygen in but we panic when we feel the tightness which causes us to want more air and the panic causes the asthma attack to escalate. The answer to this is to breath slower and less and the body calms down, airways open and then the mind can relax too. This quick and easy fix works for anxiety too. When you start to feel the chest pressure even before then, start taking slower, deeper breaths. Count 6 seconds as you inhale, hold for 6 seconds, exhale for 6 seconds and then hold the exhale for 6 seconds before inhaling again. This 6 second rule is called Coherent Breathing. It’s good to do as a preventative too. Add it in to your daily routine for 5 minutes every morning and every night and start by looking at a clock that shows the seconds because when I first started this my 6 seconds counting was more like 4 seconds! There are free apps out there to specifically help with Coherent Breathing, Paced Breathing and My Cardiac Coherence.
Besides asthma and anxiety I have seen Coherent Breathing help patients with dizziness, vertigo, shortness of breath and heart palpitations. It’s not the deep breathing part that is healing because during an asthma attack, try as you might. a deep breath doesn’t really happen. It’s the holding part that is important to build carbon dioxide up in the body. We think it’s a lack of oxygen as the cause but I have put an oxygen reader on my finger during an asthma attack and it stays 94% oxygen saturation or more.
So why do I start my anti aging blog about asthma and Coherent Breathing? It’s because breathing is a force, medicine, and a mechanism through which you can gain an almost superhuman power. Just ask Wim Hof who climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro wearing shorts. Even though he uses breath to do superhuman feats most people reading this want to learn how to breathe better for an increase in mental and physical health and that includes staying young.
There are as many ways to breathe as there are foods to eat and each way we breathe will affect our bodies in different ways. You need to know that how you breathe matters. Some methods of breathing will nourish your brain, while others will kill neurons; some will make you healthy while others will hasten your death.
If it’s only one thing you get from this post it is to breathe through your nose at all times and if you are a chronic mouth breather please go to an ENT and figure out why and how to change that. The nose hairs and mucus that the air hits is so important as a first line of defense when breathing. Mucus is constantly on the move, sweeping along at a rate of about half an inch every minute, more than 60 feet per day. Like a giant conveyor belt, it collects inhaled debris in the nose, then moves all the junk down the throat and into the stomach where it is sterilized by stomach acid, delivered to the intestines and sent out of your body. This conveyor belt doesn’t just move by itself. It’s pushed alone by millions of tiny, hair like structures called cilia. Cilia sway with every inhale and exhale at a fast sway of 16 beats per second. If you feel you have too much mucus when you first wake up in the morning or maybe a cough that produces mucus or a nose that runs constantly I promise that you are not constantly breathing through your nose and if you start to become aware and change that then you will find the mucus is a lot less.
Until the 1980s the common belief in Western medicine was the lungs would stay the same. That whatever lungs we were born with, we were stuck with. It is well known that the lungs will lose about 12% of capacity from the age of 30 to 50 and will continue declining even faster as we get older, with women faring worse than men. If you make it to 80 years old you will be able to take in 30% less air than we did in our 20s. We’re forced to breathe faster and harder as we get older. This breathing habit leads to chronic problems like high blood pressure, immune disorders, and anxiety. What western science is now discovering is that aging doesn’t have to be a one-way path of decline. The internal organs are malleable, and we can change them at nearly any age.
Free divers know this better than anyone. Free divers are people who go underwater as long as possible with their own lung capacity of air. Free diving is also known as breath-hold diving. They have trained their lungs and increased the lung capacity by 30% to 40%. To get the same increase in lung capacity the actual diving down hundreds of feet is not required. Any regular breathing practice that stretches the lungs and keeps them flexible can increase lung capacity. Moderate exercise like walking or cycling has been shown to increase air capacity by up to 15%.
When you start training the lungs make sure to use the diaphragm with every breath. The diaphragm is a muscle that sits beneath the lungs in the shape of an umbrella. The diaphragm moves down as the lungs expand during inhalation. During exhalation the diaphragm moves up as the lungs contract. This up and down movement occurs within us some 50,000 times a day. A typical adult engages as little as 10% of the diaphragm during breathing, which overburdens the heart, elevates blood pressure, and causes a range of circulatory problems. How are they connected? The heart pumps an average of 2000 gallons of blood a day. What influences much of the speed and strength of the circulation is the thoracic pump, the name for the pressure that builds up inside the chest when we breathe. As we inhale, negative pressure draws blood into the heart. As we exhale, blood shoots back out into the body. It’s similar to the way the ocean floods onto the shore, then ebbs out. And what powers the thoracic pump is the diaphragm. If we use the diaphragm 50 to 70% of its capacity it will ease cardiovascular stress and allow the body to work more efficiently including better circulation. For this reason, the diaphragm is sometimes referred to as the second heart because it not only beats to its own rhythm but it also affects the rate and strength of the heartbeat.
The better our breathing the more oxygen flow we have. Inside each of our 25 trillion red blood cells are 270 million hemoglobin, each of which has room for four oxygen molecules. That’s 1 billion molecules of oxygen that runs through your body at any given moment. When oxygen goes into a cell, carbon dioxide comes out. But why did this exchange take place? The more carbon dioxide in an area then the more acidic it is. It is this acidity, this low pH, that actually makes the oxygen leave the hemoglobin and go into the oxygen starved tissue. This explains why some muscles will get more oxygen than other muscles. It is because they are producing more carbon dioxide. It is supply and demand on a cellular level that makes oxygen move to where it needs to be.
When we breathe at a normal rate which on average is 18 breaths a minute, our lungs will absorb only about a quarter of the available oxygen in the air. The majority of that oxygen is exhaled back out. So why are we taking all these breaths that aren’t necessary? It really does make sense to take more oxygen in with less breaths per minute. Breathing less is better for us because with breathing too much we expel too much carbon dioxide and our blood pH rises to become more alkaline; when we breathe slower and hold in more carbon dioxide pH lowers and blood becomes more acidic. We need this acidity for the oxygen to leave the hemoglobin.
Almost all cellular functions in the body take place at a pH of the blood at 7.4, our sweet spot between alkaline and acidic. When we stray from that the body will do whatever it can to get us back there. The kidneys, for instance, will respond to over breathing by buffering. Buffering is a process in which an alkaline compound called bicarbonate is released into the urine. With less bicarbonate in the blood the pH lowers back to normal, even if we continue to huff and puff. It’s as if nothing ever happened. The problem with buffering is that it is meant as a temporary fix, not a permanent solution. Weeks, months or years of over breathing and this constant kidney buffering will deplete the body of minerals. Constant buffering will move minerals out of the bones. That’s how important the correct blood pH is. The body chooses stabilizing the pH over the strength of the bones.
Breathing is more than just a biochemical reaction or physical act; it’s more than just moving the diaphragm downward and sucking in air to give the red blood cells oxygen and remove waste. The tens of billions of air molecules we bring into our bodies with every breath also serve a more subtle, but equally important role. They influence nearly every internal organ, telling them when to turn on and off. The air we breathe affects heart rate, digestion, moods, attitudes; when we feel aroused and when we feel nauseated. Breathing is a power switch to a vast network called the autonomic nervous system (ANS).
There are two parts to the ANS, the sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system. The lungs are covered with the nerves from both the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. Many of the nerves connecting to the parasympathetic are located in the lower lobes which is one reason why deep and slow breaths are so relaxing. When you take a deep breath and air goes down deeper into the lungs the parasympathetic nerves are switched on which sends more messages for the organs to rest and digest and during exhalation the molecules stimulate an even more powerful parasympathetic response. The deeper and more softly we breathe in, and the longer we exhale, the more slowly the heart beats and the calmer we become.
The sympathetic nervous system fibers our at the top part of the lungs. They send signals to our organs, telling them to get ready for action. When we take short, faster breaths, the molecules of air switch on the sympathetic nerves. The more messages the system gets the bigger the emergency. The intense energy you feel when someone cut you off in traffic or wrongs you at work is the sympathetic system ramping up. Heart rate increases, adrenaline kicks in, blood vessels constrict, pupils dilate, the palms sweat, and the mind sharpens. Our bodies are built to stay in a state of heightened sympathetic alert only for short bursts and only on occasion. Even though it just takes a few seconds to activate, turning off the sympathetic nervous system and returning to a state of relaxation and restoration can take an hour or more.
The fastest easiest way to turn off the sympathetic nerves and not live a life in chronic low grade stress is to take deep breaths and turn on the parasympathetic nervous system. Just 3 deep breaths in the moment of being cut off in traffic or confronted with an argument can be enough to have the body stay calm and not spiral into fight or flight. You can also use deep breathing when not in a stressful moment such as during a meal for better digestion and at bedtime for deeper sleep. Deeper sleep and better digestion occur naturally if the parasympathetic nervous system is turned on and the sympathetic nervous system is turned off.
One reason we live in a chronic state of stress is because when the sympathetic nervous system is turned on we feel alive but it’s at the cost of the body breaking down. Without rest and relaxation, being stuck in fight or flight, will be the cause of poor digestion, not sleeping well, headaches, joint pain and so much more. Eight of the top ten most common cancers affect organs cut off from normal blood flow during extended states of stress. We need to learn to live in a balance between the two nervous systems, a homeostasis of the Autonomic Nervous System. That balance can be easily found with deeper breaths, holding your breath, and don’t forget to count to 6!
I had a 45 year old male patient come into the office about 1.5 years ago with severe eczema. Before coming to see me he had tried everything under the sun. In the 9 months he broke out all over his body he had seen 4 different medical doctors, tried tons of steroid creams, acupuncture, 2 naturopaths, and I was his last hope. We needed to detox some heavy metals and chemicals and within 2 weeks of detoxing his skin was 90% better. I had never seen the skin heal so fast from such a severe case and he said with starting the detox program I gave him and Wim Hof breathing he couldn’t believe the healing that was taking place after months of no relief.
Who was Wim Hof I wondered and so I didn’t have to dig deep to find him on Google. Wim Hof’s wife had taken her own life after years of depression when had sought refuge from his pain by deepening his practice of yoga, meditation, and breathing practices. He unearthed the ancient technique of Tummo, honed it, simplified it, repackaged it for mass consumption, and began promoting its powers in a string of daredevil stunts. He has been nicknamed “The Iceman” by breaking a number of records related to cold exposure. His feats include climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in shorts, running a half marathon above the Arctic Circle on his bare feet, and standing in a container while covered with ice cubes for more than 112 minutes.
In 2011 researchers at Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands brought Hof into a laboratory and started poking and prodding him, trying to figure out how he did what he did. At one point they injected his arm with an endotoxin, a component of E. coli. Exposure to the bacteria usually juices vomiting, headaches, fever and other flu like symptoms. Hof took the E. coli into his veins and then breathed a few dozen breaths, willing his body to fight it off. He showed no sign of fever, no nausea. A few minutes later he rose from the chair and got a cup of coffee. There's all the proof you need to know how deep breathing boosts your immune system!
To practice the Wim Hof‘s breathing method, start by finding a quiet place and lay flat on your back with a pillow under your head. Relax the shoulders, trunk, and legs. Take a very deep breath into the pit of your stomach and let it back out just as quickly. Keep breathing this way for 30 cycles. It should take about 3 minutes if you are breathing about 6 seconds in and 6 second outs. If possible, breathe through the nose; if the nose feels congested then breath through pursed lips. Each breath should look like a wave, starting with the stomach lifting, then the chest. You should exhale all the air out in the same order. At the end of the 30 breaths, exhale naturally, leaving about a quarter of the air left in the lungs, then hold that breath for as long as possible. Once you reached your breath hold limit, take one huge inhale and hold it another 15 seconds. Then exhale and start the 30 cycles of breathing again. Repeat the whole pattern three or four rounds and add in some cold exposure, cold shower, ice bath, a few times a week. The controlled breathing and then breathing all out, then not at all, getting really cold and then hot again is the key to the body’s magic. It forces the body into high stress one minute, a state of extremely relaxation the next. The body becomes more adaptable and flexible and learns these bodily responses can come under our control.
Wim Hof sees this controlled breathing as being able to create amazing physiological responses with the body. His feats speak for themselves. But I think it’s not just about biochemistry. There’s more going on than we can see under a microscope or find in a college textbook. In energy medicine (which I guess can be partly found in a quantum physics textbook) we see pumping the lungs with breath like this isn’t just about oxygen and carbon dioxide molecules moving in and out but it’s also about the movement of the chi, or call it prana, or kundalini energy, or chakras, or the meridian system. It’s all the same. This life force goes by many names. Chi has it’s origin in Chinese medicine and is used by acupuncturists. Japanese call it ki, Hebrews call it ruah, Greeks call is pneuma. The Iroquois even had a word for it, orenda. Prana has it’s origin in yoga and comes from the Hindu culture. Chakras are energy centers of this life force. Kundalini is the name of the life force energy that is stuck at the bottom of your spine. Guess what you do to get it unstuck? You use breath. I'm not waiting for science to catch up to tell me to use breath to be able to hold more life force in my body. I see the rejuvenating results with my patients and you can too.
If you ever do the Chakra Light Therapy at the office please remember to do Coherent Breathing during the session to get the most out of it. If not using Coherent Breathing during the session then going into meditation is another way to open yourself up and get the most out of the Tesla energy coming into the chakras and body to help balance this life force.
The power of breath is the reason why laughter is the best medicine. It pumps the lungs and moves stagnant life force. What makes us laugh is part of the equation. The laughter stimulus resonates with something in our energy or mind and then has the physical reaction of pumping the lungs. This energy shift is why laughter can be contagious.
The lungs pumping air, moving life force is why when we do Allergy Clearing in the office we have patients hold homeopathic vials of things they are allergic to while doing breath work as we tap certain acupuncture points to get the body to recognize the vials as something that is not harmful to the body. In this way the next time the real allergy is in contact with the body it doesn’t see it as a threat and does not overstimulate the immune system to have a reaction.
If how we breathe matters then the quality of air we breathe also matters. I do suggest an air purifier at least in the bedroom if you live in a city. Get one that has a HEPA filter.
I hope this helps you understand the importance of what so many take for granted and that is the power of breath bringing life force AND oxygen into the body in order to stay strong, healthy and rejuvenated. Part 2 of anti-aging secrets is about stem cell supplements, a technique called Mewing and more!