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5-min breathing workout lowers blood pressure as much as exercise, drugs (2021)

colorado.edu

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Re: 5-min breathing workout lowers blood pressure as much as exercise, drugs (2021)

#81
post #64

If you want to learn more about breathing I recommend checking out the book The Oxygen Advantage by Patrick Mckeown. It's got a bunch of different breathing exercises and ways to measure progress. It basically reteaches you how to breath too, which is fascinating on its own. Worth checking out for sure. https://www.amazon.com/Oxygen-Advantage-Scientifically-Breat...

Oxygen Advantage is a great book. I'd recommend James Nestor's - 'Breath' [0] as a first read, however. I feel like the book has more real world application and I picked up a number of things outside of what I learned studying Hof breathwork. I also studied, prior to both books, with Wim Hof in Poland in 2017 on one of his week long expeditions. The in person experience of group breath work is something to experience…

Interestingly, Breath demonstrates that what we used to think is an O2 advantage is actually a CO2 advantage.

Re: 5-min breathing workout lowers blood pressure as much as exercise, drugs (2021)

#82
post #64

If you want to learn more about breathing I recommend checking out the book The Oxygen Advantage by Patrick Mckeown. It's got a bunch of different breathing exercises and ways to measure progress. It basically reteaches you how to breath too, which is fascinating on its own. Worth checking out for sure. https://www.amazon.com/Oxygen-Advantage-Scientifically-Breat...

Oxygen Advantage is a great book. I'd recommend James Nestor's - 'Breath' [0] as a first read, however. I feel like the book has more real world application and I picked up a number of things outside of what I learned studying Hof breathwork. I also studied, prior to both books, with Wim Hof in Poland in 2017 on one of his week long expeditions. The in person experience of group breath work is something to experience…

Wow, you studied with Wim Hof in 2017, thats pretty damn cool! Its funny you say to start with 'Breath' because I was thinking you should start with Oxygen Advantage and then go to Wim Hof, but you sound like you have a much better background for legit recommendations. I had never heard of 'Breath' before. I'll definitely look into it. Is the Wim Hof experience just something one can sign up for? How did you end up there?

Re: 5-min breathing workout lowers blood pressure as much as exercise, drugs (2021)

#83

After reading Wim Hof and James Nestor a couple years ago during the pandemic, I used their techniques in full while battling long Covid. I had a blood pressure monitor and pulse oximeter on my bedside table that I would experiment with doing these various techniques and seeing my heart rate go down, my blood pressure go down, my anxiety would disappear, lung/chest inflammation would settle, and even oxygen levels in…

wim-hof is a life saver. I used during my covid battle as well. I had this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tybOi4hjZFQ on loop when I was suffering with covid

Re: 5-min breathing workout lowers blood pressure as much as exercise, drugs (2021)

#84
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have thoughts or resources on comparing the two types of readings?

No, sorry; I was just learning about them now, because they were terms in the paper I didn't understand.

By my understanding "casual blood pressure" is when you sit for 5 minutes in a doctor's office then have a blood pressure measurement taken [1]. "Ambulatory blood pressure" is when a monitor is strapped onto you and automatic readings are taken periodically (typically half hourly) over a period of time (typically 24 hours) then averaged.

There is some debate (according to Google), but diagnosis of hypertension typically involves an ambulatory measurement over a casual measurement. It strikes me that the ambulatory measurement is the more important one from a long term health perspective, and it's odd that the paper chose not to mention the ambulatory measurement along with the casual measurement, though I'm not a medico.

As an aside, at one point I added a microcontroller to a cheap Aldi blood pressure monitor to do ambulatory measurements. A doctor seemed keen to diagnose hypertension based on a few casual readings, but I was keen to base the diagnosis on more data.

[1] https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-3...

Re: 5-min breathing workout lowers blood pressure as much as exercise, drugs (2021)

#85
post #64

If you want to learn more about breathing I recommend checking out the book The Oxygen Advantage by Patrick Mckeown. It's got a bunch of different breathing exercises and ways to measure progress. It basically reteaches you how to breath too, which is fascinating on its own. Worth checking out for sure. https://www.amazon.com/Oxygen-Advantage-Scientifically-Breat...

Oxygen Advantage is a great book. I'd recommend James Nestor's - 'Breath' [0] as a first read, however. I feel like the book has more real world application and I picked up a number of things outside of what I learned studying Hof breathwork. I also studied, prior to both books, with Wim Hof in Poland in 2017 on one of his week long expeditions. The in person experience of group breath work is something to experience…

I loved reading 'What Doesn't Kill Us', and have been thinking about doing one of the week-long expeditions with Wim Hof. Did you do any prep before going on the trip, or was it your first experience with his breathwork?

Re: 5-min breathing workout lowers blood pressure as much as exercise, drugs (2021)

#87
post #31

What is the obsession of looking for a cheap way out if you are able bodied. Literally just go for a walk, run, or ride. I highly doubt doing some small activity can really compare to the full health benefits of some daily exercise.

Why are you punishing yourself with unnecessary work if the easy way gets most of the benefit? Literally just breathe. "But I like exercise" OK that's great for you, I have other things to do and not enough time to do them.

Yes, exercise is not always easy, but it has been worth it. I have met plenty of amazing people and gone to many interesting places because of it, its not just about the exercise. I wouldn't exchange that for sitting around retweeting Elon Musk lol.

Re: 5-min breathing workout lowers blood pressure as much as exercise, drugs (2021)

#89

After reading Wim Hof and James Nestor a couple years ago during the pandemic, I used their techniques in full while battling long Covid. I had a blood pressure monitor and pulse oximeter on my bedside table that I would experiment with doing these various techniques and seeing my heart rate go down, my blood pressure go down, my anxiety would disappear, lung/chest inflammation would settle, and even oxygen levels in…

Wim Hof is really good, the calmness you feel after the breathing is unmatched.

There all these small techniques for managing emotions that are just not well known. If you need to calm down in the moment for example, doing a simple inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 2, exhale for 8 can make your stress melt away. Or in really stressful situations, try grabbing an icepack and holding it for a minute.

Re: 5-min breathing workout lowers blood pressure as much as exercise, drugs (2021)

#90
post #88

The lack of skepticism in this comment section is so depressing.

Rather than post this completely useless comment, why don't you actually contribute by posting why you think this study should be ignored? I think many people in this comment section know from personal experience that breathing is a powerful tool for stress management so this result is intuitive to them.
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