People suffering from asthma often fall into that vicious circle of avoiding more and more use of their muscles. The fear of falling short of breath, and asthma attacks makes people under utilize the muscles, which causes them to stress even under slight exertion. In this article we are going to discuss some exercises that you can follow to maintain healthy muscle movement. If the muscles have adequate strength, then these exercises could aid in your asthma treatment.
Nose Breathing
Our nostrils have various other functions then just help us take in air. The hair inside the nose act as natural filter, they block small particles that might be present in the air. At the same time, the air that we breathe is warmed and humidified by the nostrils. The most common situation is to breathe through the mouth during an attack because you’re gasping for air. Try to make it a point to breathe as much as you can through your nose. If you have any illness of the nose, then try to get that rectified too.
Lip Breathing
All you need to do is breath through the nose and breathe out through your mouth. But before you blow out, you need to shape your lips in a way that you are blowing candles. The second thing to keep in mind is that if you are taking 3 seconds to breathe in, then you should take about 6 minutes to breathe out. So you are not releasing air all together, you release it slowly. This will clear the nasal passage. Once you do it regularly, you will notice then whenever your muscles are exerting, you will start breathing this way.
Belly Breathing
Notice, when you breathe, two parts of your body show distinctive movement. But that is only noticed when you are lying relaxed. These two parts are your abdomen and your chest. When you are lying down, you will notice that the abdomen and chest move out while breathing in and move in while breathing out. In asthma cases, the diaphragm in the abdomen doesn’t work much. Diaphragm is the main muscle that helps lungs push out air. When it doesn’t work, other parts of the body kick in, but then they are not as effective. So through belly breathing, we train our diaphragm to work optimally. All you need to do is keep one hand on chest and one on abdomen, and while breathing out, apply gentle pressure on the abdomen.
It is advised though that you consult an asthma doctor before attempting to do any of these exercises.