The Art of Breathing Part 3

Today I want you to lie down on your back and let your body just assume it's relaxed breathing rate. Now as you exhale, count the length of your exhalation. Don't force an exhalation or inhalation, just breathe as you normally would in this relaxed state and once again count the length of the next exhalation.

The first exhalation that you counted should be shorter than the second exhalation. If it is not, you may be an overbreather. As a test try to shorten your inhalation. If that causes you to feel distressed or stressed or uncomfortable, you are probably an overbreather. Since it is hard to not manipulate these tests, you may want to have somebody count for you when you are not aware of your breathing.

This particular piece is important as far as sleep goes. If you are having trouble going to sleep, become aware of your breathing and consciously make the exhale longer than the inhale. before very long, you will be asleep.

The Art of Breathing Part 2

Yesterday you became aware of what type of breather you are. Now, still lying on your back, put your hands around your lower ribs. Continue to breathe in your normal fashion, focusing on your hands. What you should feel is an effortless expansion of the ribs as you inhale and slow recoil as you exhale.

If you ribs remain motionless, your breathing is too shallow even if you are an abdominal breather. Many times people who are chest breathers will not feel any movement of the lower rib cage when they do this, because they are by nature of the way they breath shallow breathers.

Shallow breaths do no use the full capacity of the lung and decrease the amount of oxygen available to the blood stream and hence the rest of your body.

The Art of Breathing

Most of us just taking breathing for granted. We don't really spend much time thinking about it, we just breath. But there is an art to breathing. Taking a little time each day to think about your breathing will help you in many ways.

First just become aware of what type of breather you are. Lying on your back, put one hand on your chest and one hand on your abdomen. Just think about your hands and become aware of the movement of your hands. If the hand on the chest is moving and the one on the abdomen is not, you are a chest breather. If the hand on the abdomen is moving more than the hand on the chest, you are an abdominal breather.

Why is this important? Chest breather's are less efficient in their breathing. If you are an abdominal breather, you are filling the little air sacs in your lungs down to the bases of the lungs which is more efficient and gives your body more oxygen to work with.

Pulmonary Hypertension

Yesterday I mentioned the disease pulmonary hypertension. Today I want to explain a little about this complex disease. Pulmonary hypertension is basically a high blood pressure in the pulmonary system vasculature. It can be in the arteries, veins or capillary beds or a combination of these. Like the high blood pressure that we are all familiar with, this high blood pressure is in the lungs. This makes it difficult for oxygen to get into the blood stream and CO2 to get out of the blood stream. Hence you may become short of breath because your oxygen saturation levels will drop.

These high pressures in the lungs will put high pressures on the heart and result in a heart that fails. But these pressures don't just affect the heart, they also affect the liver and can result in liver failure as well.

While we do have earlier detection these days and we can closely monitor someone with this disease, the survival rate is not great beyond 3 years from the time of the diagnosis.

So if you end up with this disease as a result of a weight loss drug, is it worth losing a few pounds to the total detriment of your health?

Weight Loss Drugs Drawbacks

Lastly, I want to talk about Phenteramine (Adipex, Ionamin). This is one of the more dangerous drugs in terms of the side effects. While it can cause things like an increase in blood pressure, increase in heart rate, diarrhea, anxiety or restlessness, these are not the things to be mostly concerned about. The bigger risk here is the development of a disease called pulmonary hypertension. This is an insideous disease that comes on without any symptoms. Once we discover that it is present, we have very few things we can do to treat it.

This is a lethal complication for you and while losing weight is important, this drug can actually totally rob you of your future health and your future. The risk with this drug is just way too high to even consider using it.

More on the Weight Loss Drugs

The next drug which is fairly familiar out there is Meridia (sibutramine). While this drugs has a slightly higher weight loss average as compared to orlistat, the side effects are much more dangerous to your health.

First and foremost, if you are on this drug be sure that you are watching your blood pressure. Meridia not raises your blood pressure, but it can also increase the heart rate, compounding the problem with the blood pressure. You should never be using this drug if you already have high blood pressure or a problem with heart rate.

Additionally, this drug can cause nausea, constipation, dry mouth, or insomnia.

Having done some the clinical trials with this drug, I can tell you that the weight loss was fairly minimal at best.

Weight Loss Prescription Drugs

I have often been asked by patients for a prescription for a weight loss drug. My usual answer is no for several reasons. Mostly it is no because of the side effects of these drugs. First and foremost you need to know that no drug whether it is prescription or over the counter is going to be a majic pill for weight loss. Taking a pill to lose weight just is not going to do it.

The economy being what it is currently, for you to lose a significant amount of weight with any of the major prescription drugs is going to cost you upwards of $1000 a year. So cost in my mind is an issue for many, but it is not the most disturbing issue about these drugs.

The most disturbing is the side effects. Here's some of the side effects of the more common drugs out there. Orlistat (Xenical, Alli) cause oily stools which can leave oil spots on your underware and often causes a very uncomfortable urge to have a bowel movement. In addition it may cause a decrease in the absorption of vitamins which you normally get from foods that you eat. The studies have shown that an individual will lose about 6 pounds a year. That's not very impressive folks and you would do better to just eat sensibly and get some exercise in your life.

More tomorrow on some of the other weight loss drugs.