How do you breathe? Always inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth.
Your nose hairs help filter out particulate matter, when you’re breathing in city air. Your lungs are responsible for delivering oxygen into the bloodstream providing a filtration system.
Coughing is an automatic response to clearing irritants. Asthma and hay fever are the two major types of lung distress that do not involve infection. Bronchitis can develop if the lungs cannot handle an attack on the immune system. Worst case scenario is pneumonia if these attacks on the lungs immune system is not resolved.
The How Tos:
Avoid antibiotics if you do not have an infection. Infection is signalled as fever, fatigue, and colored phlegm. Drink pure water and warm teas for remedies.
Use Essential oils, which are useful diluted with hot water and taken as a steam inhalation to help clear your lungs include
– sandalwood
– eucalyptus,
– fennel,
– thyme.
A nagging cough?
1– 2 teaspoon of manuka honey in fresh- squeezed hot lemon water helps.
Effective herbs for coughs include
– camomile
– cypress,
– cedarwood,
– bergamot.
Drink Green tea, high in the pigment epicatechin, is a gentle bronchial stimulants. Drink it daily.
Asthma is a lung irritation. Beware of its triggers
– dust mites,
– pollens (tree pollens in spring), (weed and grass pollens in summer)
– airborne fungal spores (rainy seasons)
– feathers
– cockroach droppings
– food allergens ( dairy, eggs, shellfi sh, peanuts, wheat, chocolate, citrus, and food colorings).
– food additives ( artificial dyes, especially the yellow tartrazine, preservatives, sulfites)
Help your lungs by consuming
– trytophan (you can get these in protein eg meat)
– vitamin B 12 are well- known irritant-busters
For healthy lungs:
– rest well 5- 8 hours of quality sleep
– drink plenty of water 8- 12 glasses per day
– eat a healthy, plant- based diet.
– for animal protein and digest it well, free- range eggs and wild salmon and lean meat.
– be with nature and greeneries for best oxygen. Trees inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen. Do “forest bathing.” , a Kapanese tradition – walk in the woods.
Practice good breathing:
– shallow chest breathing stresses and overworks the lungs. Deep gentle diaphragmatltic breathing relaxes the body
Do a daily 5 min practiced breathing and as time progresses, you teach your lungs to breath this way all the time.
Exercising regularly for ideal body weight and fitness helps to strengthen your lung functions and capacity. Exercise helps to regulate blood flow to the lungs. This is important to fight infection and increase immunity.
– Briswalking, swimming in a heated pool, cycling once or twice per week of 20 min duration regularly
– yoga with deep breathing exercises