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On the tribulations of an expatriate in Europe
Friday, July 14, 2023
Speaking in the Spirit of the Father
Thursday, July 13, 2023
Strength Training for the Lungs: Why Heavy Breathing Could Be a Shortcut to Improving Your Health
Photo by Sally Anscombe/Getty Images
Do you need to strengthen the muscles you breathe with? According to recent research, the answer is a resounding yes. Just five minutes of “strength training” for the lungs could improve everything from heart health to your memory – and it could even be a more effective tool for lowering blood pressure than aerobic exercise.
In April 2019, the preliminary results of a clinical trial of 50 subjects trying a breath workout known as “Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training” (IMT) were presented by the University of Colorado at Boulder. They showed that as well as boosting brain function and breathing new life into athletic performance, breath resistance training can improve artery function and reduce the risk of heart attack.
And all without having to get changed for the gym.
How do you 'lift weights' for your lungs? The answer is a hand-held device known as an 'inspiratory muscle training device'. You hold it to your mouth and it provides resistance to airflow, making you breathe in and out with more force. The sensation has been described as “sucking hard through a straw which sucks back”.
The novel gadget was developed in the 1980’s and used for low-resistance, daily 30 minute sessions to improve the lung capacity of people with lung diseases or asthma.
More recently, there have been experiments in heavier weight 'lung lifting'. In 2016, the University of Arizona trialled it to find out if 30 inhalations a day with greater resistance might help sufferers of obstructive sleep apnea (snoring, to you and me), who tend to have weak breathing muscles.
The results were more than promising: not only did the participants enjoy a more restful sleep, but after six weeks, they noticed a few unexpected side effects. These included performing better on cognitive and memory tests – and, perhaps most significantly of all, their systolic blood pressure plummeted by 12 millimeters of mercury.
For context, that’s twice as much of a decrease in blood pressure that can be achieved via aerobic exercise, and far more effective than some medicines.
Systolic blood pressure creeps up as we age and as the arteries stiffen, and is associated with a risk of heart attack, cognitive decline and kidney damage (for the record, systolic blood pressure, is pressure in your blood vessels when your heart beats, whereas diastolic blood pressure, measures the pressure in your blood vessels when your heart rests between beats). Anyway, aerobic exercise is one way to decrease it – but few of us do enough.
In 2018, research led by the London School of Economics and Political Science, found that exercise programmes, such as walking, jogging, or gym sessions, were often more effective at lowering blood pressure than medicines and drugs.
Running, walking, cycling, swimming and strength training are particularly effective – but for those of us who break out in a cold sweat at the very idea of physical exertion, IMT could be a solution to high blood pressure. It's a positive cycle, too, because in turn, breath training should also make aerobic exercise easier in the first place.
And IMT appears to be easy to keep up: participants of the study were able to stick to their regime (fewer than 10 per cent of study participants dropped out, which is seen to be “high compliance rate”.)
Examples of devices available in the UK include the prominent brandPOWERbreathe, which promises a host of other intriguing health and fitness benefits on its website, including an up to 75pc improvement in asthma symptoms and an accelerated recovery during repeated sprints of up to 7pc. It also states that it can reduce your breathing requirement when exercising at high altitude by up to 25pc.
“PowerBREATHE is a good example of one of many inspiratory muscle training devices that can aid and accelerate breathing muscle development,” recommends Dr Dane Vishnubala, Chief Medical Adviser at Active IQ.
“For those who are ill, injured or struggle to take part in physical activity, it’s particularly beneficial. For a relatively fit person, I would say it’s probably more important to be active than to perform IMT training which should be seen as an adjunct. If breathing muscles are strong then people will tire less easily and the inspiratory breathing muscles won’t be their limiting factor or weak point.
"Good breath control is just one component to improving your physical and mental health and it is vital that everything else such as good sleep, exercise and nutrition are also factored in."
Vishubala suggests using balloons as an alternative to the device. "Thicker balloons with more resistance will make it harder," he explains. "To do this, large, deep breaths are taken in and then powerful breaths out. This also works the expiratory muscles."
Even if you’re not sold on the idea of IMT, or balloons for that matter, how do you know you’re breathing well in general?
“Compared to ‘emergency’ chest breathing, which is characterised by the upward and outward movement of the chest, deep abdominal breathing uses the large dome-shaped muscle under the lungs (the diaphragm) and is a more efficient way of getting air into the lungs,” says Dr Jet Khasriya, an NHS-registered, private GP for the UK’s first doctor-on-demand app GPDQ.
Dr Khasriya suggests the following simple technique for better, more mindful diaphragmatic breathing, and for checking whether it’s your chest or your diaphragm muscles doing the work: “Lie on your bed with a pillow under your knees. Put a hand on your chest and the other on your abdomen. Try to keep your chest still while using your abdomen to bring air in and out of your lungs. You shouldn’t notice much movement in the hand on your chest but you should notice it on the hand which is on your tummy.
“As you get used to the muscles involved in abdominal breathing, you will be able to utilise it effectively in your every day life.” He adds that diaphragmatic breathing is also more relaxing, and can help to diminish stress – which has also been linked to heart attacks and strokes.
"Many people, particularly asthmatics or people under stress, tend to be 'apical breathers' – breathing with the tops of their lungs, and never really using all of their lungs," adds Dr Dane Vishnubala. "Working with a respiratory physiotherapist or practicing yoga be helpful to improve this. Initially you will have to focus on ‘breathing properly’ but it soon becomes second nature."
So, whatever you make of the idea of “Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training” – just don’t forget to breathe.
Soften Your Heart
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Wednesday, July 12, 2023
Proclaiming the Kingdom
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How lonely are you?
Ankita Sinha
I get up at 6:30 am in the morning, cook lunch, and go to a park nearby for exercise.
My husband gets up at 7:30 am, packs his lunch and leaves home at around 8:30 am. By the time I reach home from park, there is no one. I have entire day in front to me to spend alone.
I go to Yoga thrice in a week, but don’t get chance to interact much as there are only few people who come in the morning practice. In the afternoon, I usually spend time writing, and reading. I read and read a lot. By the time my husband comes back at around 7:00 pm, I am busy exercising again.
There are days when I do not speak to anyone whole day. There is quietness. As I write this answer on Quora, I can listen to the tick tick of clock, other than that there is complete silence. By the evening, I sit in my balcony watching the vehicles moving on highway. Every thing I wrote above makes me happy, it gives me calmness and stability.
Image source - My Phone gallery
So, am I lonely? I don’t think so.
I enjoy MY company. I enjoy sitting quietly, watching the things without labeling them. Being alone taught me about myself, about the things I didn't know, about the passion hidden inside me.
I got to understand my weakness and started learning how to turn them into strengths. I have embraced my own solace, my space, and no matter what others say, I always know myself and love myself.
I tell you, Solitude is bliss!
P.S: Here is something I learned today, ‘Solace’ which means ‘Comfort’ or ‘Support’.
Dr. Tetsu Nakamura
This is Dr. Tetsu Nakamura, a Japanese doctor who has spent decades of his life helping people in Afghanistan.
Nakamura, 73, was recently shot dead along with five of his colleagues when gunmen ambushed his car.
The Doctor. Nakamura has settled in eastern Afghanistan for decades. He came to the region in 1984 to treat refugees and people with leprosy. He helped build a 70-bed hospital and several clinics.
The Doctor. Tetsu Nakamura said, "As a doctor, nothing beats healing patients and sending them home happy."
He later devoted his life to improving the conditions of the war-torn Afghan people, especially the peasants. For that, he needed to help people eat better and drink clean water, so he helped villagers dig wells. He drew on a wide variety of Japanese methods to channel a 25-mile canal. He transformed a vast expanse of desert into forests and wheat fields.
Dr. Tetsu Nakamura: “It helps an entire village. I love seeing cities come back to life."
This shows the barren desert before Dr. Nakamura started his transformation plan.
Years later:
Irrigate the canal soon after construction.
Years later, it turned into heaven.
Humanity is proud of him, proud of what he has done. He will always be a hero, but we are ashamed of being human because you were the best human and we let you down.
Tuesday, July 11, 2023
Pearl Buck
It's the birthday of writer Pearl S. Buck, born in Hillsboro, West Virginia (1892). Her parents were Christian missionaries, and she was raised in China from the age of three months. She said: "I spoke Chinese first, and more easily. [...] I did not consider myself a white person in those days." She was tutored in the mornings by her mother, but spent the afternoons with her beloved Chinese nurse, who told her stories and took her to visit friends, where young Pearl listened to women gossip. She played with Chinese friends, joined their parties, and hid her blond hair underneath a hat.
She married an agricultural missionary. They lived in northern China and then Nanking, where she taught English literature. In 1920, she gave birth to a daughter, Carol, who had a severe developmental disability. Her husband did not know how to cope with Carol and withdrew from his family. At times, Buck doted on Carol, desperately hoping that her condition would improve. And other times, she was frustrated and embarrassed by the girl, who would scream and cry for hours on end. She said, "Sometimes I can scarcely bear to look at other children and see what she might have become."
By the winter of 1927-28, Buck was living in Shanghai, and she was unhappy. Earlier that year, they had been forced to evacuate their home in Nanking after a violent skirmish called the Nanking Incident — among those targeted were white foreigners, and their home was destroyed. She had just completed the manuscript of her first novel, working in her own private space in the attic, but the only copy was destroyed by looters. The Red Cross sent them to Japan with nothing but the clothes they were wearing, and they lived there for seven months before moving to Shanghai. Her husband returned to Nanking for work, so she was left caring for the children, sharing a run-down rental house in Shanghai with two other families. Her marriage was deteriorating. Her salary was tiny, and her husband forced her to sign it over to him and then ask for an allowance. She knew that the only hope of giving Carol long-term care was in the United States, but her husband didn't want to leave China. She realized that she might end up responsible for Carol and that she had to figure out a way to provide for her.
So she returned to writing, not out of passion but as a way to earn money. She had written a few stories here and there, and the novel that had been destroyed, and she felt it was her best chance of earning a living. She found an old trade magazine in a Shanghai bookstore, and it listed three literary agents, so she wrote to all three. Two of them told her there was no market in America for Chinese subjects. The third, David Lloyd, agreed to take her on, and remained her agent for 30 years.
In 1929, Buck took Carol back to America to find her long-term care. Touring institutions depressed her, and although she found a place she liked, she said that leaving Carol was the hardest thing she did in her life. She took out a loan from a member of the Mission Board to afford the care. At the same time, her first novel, East Wind, West Wind (1930), was accepted for publication by John Day Company. Her agent had sent it to 25 publishers, and John Day was the last on his list; if they refused it, he was going to withdraw the manuscript. John Day's president and publisher, Richard Walsh, later became Buck's lover, and eventually her husband. She started writing her second novel, The Good Earth (1931), as soon as she got back to China, and it took her just three months. Buck was floored when it was chosen by the Book-of-the-Month Club and she was sent a check for $4,000 — with that money she could pay for several years of Carol's schooling. The Good Earth sold nearly 2 million copies in its first year of publication, and was the best-selling book of 1931 and 1932. She earned more than $100,000 dollars in a year and a half, and put $40,000 toward Carol's care. She won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1938.
~ Garrison Keillor
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