How Breathing Exercises and Meditation Help You Lose Weight

Breathing exercises may be the answer to your weight loss dilemma if you eat as a reaction to stress related incidents.   Suzanne Andrews, featured in the best selling book, Is She Naturally Thin or Disciplined by Sally Shields, reveals just how breathing exercises and meditation helped her lose over 60 lbs and how you can lose the weight and keep it off.  

Sally Shields, in her book, Is She Naturally Thin or  Disciplined?

offers a motivational book sharing how 101 women share how they stay slim and trim, despite busy work schedules and time consuming family demands.  She didn't forget the baby boomers either.  Let's face it - what do you think when you see a 20 something slim beauty.  Well I don't know what you think, but I think, "of course, she's slim - she's only 20!"  Sally Shields interviewed women all the way up to age 60 plus and each reveals insider secrets of the sexy and slim!

Why Breathing Exercises Help COPD

If you or a loved one have asthma, Bronchitis, Emphysema, or get short of breath from everyday activities, breathing exercises will help you function with your day to day living.  That’s something we Occupational Therapy Practitioners specialize in – increasing peoples ability to perform Activities of Daily Living.    COPD is a severe lung disease associated with airflow obstruction.  Asthma, also a disease that affects your airways affects all ages. There are currently 20 million Americans with Asthma.   COPD, a more serious and generally fatal disease can be slowed down with proper treatment and reduce the severity of your symptoms and can increase your lifespan. 

   

COPD stands for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and it affects your lungs and airways.  Chronic means you will have this condition the rest of your life.  So what can you do to manage it?

 

My patients who have COPD often mistakenly believe that they can’t exercise.  Exercise is essential because the less active you are, the weaker your muscles get.  Weak muscles need MORE oxygen and this causes a chain reaction of being short of breath.  By practicing a COPD  program, following a good nutrition plan and doctors plan of care, some patients who were on continuous Oxygen Therapy were able to come off the oxygen and just use it as needed with their Doctors approval.  I measured their oxygen intake with an oxpulsimetor before and after the breathing exercises and their oxygen gradually increased to a normal level.

Did you know your diaphragm is a muscle?  This muscle,  crucial for breathing, can be made stronger and help you get more air into your lungs to increase your lung capacity. When you strengthen your breathing muscles with exercises and breathing exercises, you can have some control over COPD instead of it taking charge of you.