Breathing

Awareness:

For the first 7 days: Awareness of incorrect breathing, and the understanding that loss of CO2 returned from the cells is what makes the oxygenation at the CELLULAR LEVEL to be lacking.
It is crucial to understand that too much breathing results in oxygen starvation at the cellular the level. Blood is always 92-98% O2 saturated.
We do not need to pump more O2, but rather to allow it to go from hemoglobin to the cells, and not to be carried back to the lungs unused.

All observations should be made in relatively similar conditions with respect to physical effort. I suggest using observation in a state of no physical strain, such as doing deskwork, driving, watching TV, in bed before falling asleep, immediately after waking up, showering, and so on. It is also extremely important to watch your breathing 30 minutes after a heavy meal, and then the next 3-4 hours.

In this stage of learning, which should be undertaken for about one week, s(he) should examine one's behavior for the following HIDDEN sources of loss of CO2:
-mouth breathing is the major cause of CO2 concentration loss; become aware if you are a mouth breather, nose breather or a combination of the two, and identify in what conditions the mouth breathing happens.
-a higher than 5 complete breathing cycles per minute is borderline good health.
-a higher than 10 complete breathing cycles per minute is mild health condition.
-a higher than 15 is already serious enough to your health

Take your score, make an average and compare with these 3 pointers above. See there is a correlation between the number you get and the state of your health. Be aware of a change after a meal especially.
-an incorrect pattern is also to breathe in and hold it in, even though it does not exceed 5-10 cycles per minute. This would be correct if also pressurized by closing nose, mouth and press with the tummy muscles to pressurize the air in the lungs. If there is no pressure increase, then it dilutes the returned CO2, the CO2 escapes back to the lungs from the blood; in the end by its effects it is no different than breathing too often. Remember, it is about CO2 concentration in the lungs!
-the habit of incorrect breathing could be acute (it is not permanent, and it is usually triggered by events, situations or emotions) or chronic condition (it is a set in, or permanent).
-notice the effect of your emotions on your asthma: anger, frustration, fear, negative mind chatter and the like on your breathing pattern. Catch yourself involuntarily modifying your respiration without the need for it (there is no tiger out there to make you run 100 meters to the first tree…). Become aware that there is a link between what happens in you life and your breathing.
-sneezing, coughing, yawning, talking really fast, are subtle sources of breathing uncontrollably.
-nutrition: it is of paramount importance to know two facts here. First is that overeating will put you in a downward spiral. Too much food will make your breathing heavy, and it may even seem that the method does not work if food is not consumed with moderation. At least for a few months the quantity of food should be reduced to moderation.

Secondly, there are foods that are not friendly to our goal. Certain foods are harder to digest and increase respiration, and other foods such as milk produce mucus, which will put you onto unnecessary strain. All this can be revised later, after 12 months. But before our body recovers, it is much easier to prevent strain by removing these blocks that hamper progress. Become aware that milk consumption increase secretion of mucus (the protein + lactose makes the most perfect mucus); also protein rich foods do the same especially if mixed with sweet foods. Mucus in excess, will make you breathless, and put you in a downward spiral, unnecessarily. Foods such as beans, cabbage, broccoli, corn on the cob, potatoes, and pasta are bloating and press on the diaphragm muscle, bringing breathing to borderline an asthma attack. It is especially important to avoid mixing the protein with carbohydrates such as meat and potatoes, meat and pasta. Have instead meat and vegetables (least the ones mentioned).

Fish is a lean choice and promotes health in any condition of the body.
-allergens: it is important to notice (if you do not know already) which allergens are triggering an episode. These should be avoided in the first 2-3 months, or until the body recovers enough to become immune to allergens again.
-binge eating and especially eating the following foods abundantly: milk and dairy, high protein (beef, pork, shellfish, beans) and especially mixing protein with sweets or carbohydrates (fruit, cola, sugar, cookies, pasta, potatoes).
-test the impact of food by skipping a meal and observing your asthma; especially effective is to skip a dinner, sleep and then skip a breakfast. Then go back to your routine and be AWARE of when it hits you again and what and how much you ate. I will give dietetic recommendations in this material.

Enough for one week. We do not do anything to correct just yet. We need this period to have a frame of reference for the actual correction which is the next natural step.

Application of Correction:

For the next 7 days: there will be a lot of benefits to collect, and the best is the first 12 hours, or let’s say the first day. Begin with the decision to stop mouth breathing, and breath holding. These are the most important sources of CO2 loss or CO2 dilution, which are equally detrimental. We will take more steps to increase vigilance in a week. For now you will use the awareness you gained in step 1 to guide you in situations where you caught yourself in need of correction. Now you will know, and anticipate where correction is needed, because you know your most preferred ways to depreciate the CO2 concentration in the lungs.

What happens if your nose is clogged already, and you cannot do it? Take a mint or eucalyptus or you doctor’s prescribed nasal spray medication to help you for the next few hours. Just a few hours or relief will be enough, because by removing the mouth breathing the nose will unclog by itself.

What to expect first to happen? Shortly after you begin to increase CO2 concentration in the lungs, the nose will unclog. This could take 1 to 2 hours, more only if you do not or cannot keep the mouth closed. Secondly, the digestion which at best was intermittent, will resume, and the chronic bloating (that falls unnoticed in the diagnostic of asthma), will go away. It will never return again, should you decide to stick to corrective behavior of your breathing and help a little by avoiding certain foods. Remember, shortly, all of these “efforts” will become automatons. You will not even know that you will be doing it. It will be “as easy as breathing”.
Try to picture in your mind that bloating and nose congestions are not symptoms, but signals to you to correct your pattern!!! Take these two as the wordless messages of the body to you.

Keep your medication:

For the period of learning: even though there is a lot of benefit to collect from doing the breathing exercises, the medication your doctor precribed must be used, unless your doctor changes it. See the section dedicated to medication in order to understand if it is desirable to keep your medication and how to work with your doctor to phase it out.