Monthly Archives: September 2011

Optimal Sleeping Postures for Ideal Health and Body Oxygenation

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Modern books, articles, and websites generally suggest that we should select the optimal sleeping position based on less pain in a spine and other parts of the body. Meanwhile, should we consider the human body as a purely mechanical machine? Could a certain sleeping position be temporary good for a spine, but eventually lead to various health problems due to some fundamental abnormalities created by this “ideal” sleeping position? This is exactly the situation with supine sleep or sleeping on one’s back.

Sleeping on one’s back or supine sleep, according to medical studies, associates with higher chances of asthma; asthma and allergies in wheezing children; nocturnal asthma;back pain in pregnancy; bruxism and swallowing; bruxism;clenching episodes and gastroesophageal reflux; chronic respiratory insufficiency; cough (nocturnal) and coughing attacks; GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease); health of geriatric inpatients; heart failure with central sleep apnea/Cheyne-Stokes (irregular) respiration; irregular or periodic breathing; health of pregnant women; sleep apnea; sleep paralysis and terrifying hallucinations; snoring; hypopneas and apneas; stroke with sleep apnea; stroke in elderly patients; and pulmonary tuberculosis.

However, there were no published studies that tested effects of sleeping positions on cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and many other conditions. Medical professionals are busy with an eternal search for better drugs, while it is known that severely sick patients are most likely to have exacerbations of their health problems during sleep (from 4 to 7 am). Furthermore, epidemiological research articles have found the highest mortality rates for these early morning hours. Would it be smart then to investigate the effects of sleep lifestyle factors (breathing route, sleeping position, air quality, hardness of the bed, thermoregulation, effects of late meals, effects of exercise with mouth vs. nasal breathing and its duration, etc.)?

Should such research studies be conducted, sleeping on one’s back would be declared as a one of the leading immediate causes of mortality in the severely sick. (The other key cause is mouth breathing during sleep leading to dry mouth in the morning.)

Surely, we are biochemical, not mechanical machines and sleeping positions should be selected according to better health, prevention and treatment of chronic diseases and better well-being in the morning. Since chronic diseases are based on ineffective breathing and low body oxygenation, choice of optimum sleeping postures for modern people must be based on better respiratory parameters and minimum losses in body oxygenation in comparison with evening values.

Hence, our next question is what is the ideal or optimum breathing pattern for proper body oxygenation? If we consider modern people, dozens of studies found that modern people breathe about 2 times more air at rest than the medical norm. This norm is only about 6 liters of per minute, while ordinary adults breathe about 12 L/min. Can overbreathing improve oxygenation of cells and tissues? Thousands of medical publications have revealed that hyperventilation makes us HYPOXIC. We get less O2 in cells due to 3 factors:

1. When we breathe more, we start to use chest muscles for respiration. As a result, instead of normal 98% for oxygenation of red blood cells in the arterial blood, we get less oxygen in the arterial blood.

2. Since we remove too much CO2, arteries and arterioles get constricted (CO2 is a powerful vasodilator) and all vital organs get less blood supply.

3. Less oxygen is released in tissues due to the suppressed Bohr effect (CO2 is also the key factor for oxygen release in tissues).

Indeed, not only medical research has found all these effects in vivo and in vitro, you can easily confirm this fact on your relatives and friends. Normal breathing is light, slow, inaudible, and with strictly nasal breathing. We take very small and short diaphragmatic inhalations and then have long relaxed and quiet exhalations. This breathing pattern is also the key criteria for good sleep and best sleeping positions.

You can easily notice that, when we have better health, our breathing during sleep is lighter and slower so that others cannot hear and see it. Breathing of sick people, on contrary, is fast and noisy due to their ineffective breathing pattern or irregular breathing pattern during sleep. You can observe this effect, if you pay attention to breathing of your spouse, children and/or relatives and friends during sleep. When they are healthy, their breathing is quiet and relaxed. When they are sick, you can easily hear them.

As a next step, you can measure your or their body oxygenation using a stress-free version of the BHT (breath holding time) test. After usual exhalation, pinch both nostrils and count the number of seconds for the breath hold, but do the test only until first or initial signs of stress or discomfort. Heavy breathers have short breath holding times, while normal breathing corresponds to 40 seconds. [Since most modern people breathe twice the norm, they have about twice less oxygen in cells or about 20 seconds. Sick people usually have less than 15 s BHT after one's usual exhalation.]

You can also test the effects of sleeping postures on your body oxygenation measured in seconds. Practical experience of Russian and western Buteyko doctors and practitioners found that if you have a certain BHT when you go to sleep, sleeping on a chest (or tummy) or your left side will not change your BHT. (Your BHT will go down, if you sleep for hours without changes in your body position.) Sleeping on the right side will cause about 20% reduction in your BHT. Sleeping on your back will decrease your body oxygenation by around 40%.

Hence, ideal sleep postures are prone and on the left side. Hence, ideal sleep for modern people should include alternations between these 2 optimal sleeping postures: sleeping on your stomach (or chest) and the left side.

Stress – How It Affects the Body

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The effect stress can have on the body can be enormous with a lot of people today ending up paying a high price for stress levels that are too high for too long a period of time. An important note here is that the body is either in a state of “fight or flight” or a state of “growth and repair”, it cannot be in both states at the same time. In other words when the body is experiencing stress that is at too high a level, it is flooded with cortisol and adrenaline and cannot focus on healing and repairing the body. When this goes on for too long you increase the risk of suffering a stress induced disease as the load on your immune system becomes too great.

When the stress response is activated, you’ll find that your heart rate increases, your pupils dilate, you breathe faster, and you may break out in a sweat. Do you recognise this process? In our ancestors days most threats were of a physical nature such as the potential threat of a wild animal so you either ran away or fought the animal off. This physical response of fighting or fleeing meant the adrenaline that flooded the body could be burned off. What tends to happen today too often though is the “threat” is not usually of a physical nature rather it is work related stress, relationship stress, or financial stress, so this coupled with a more sedentary lifestyle adds up to chronic health damaging stress. The trouble with this all to frequent scenario though is its insidious nature, because it goes on every day it is often perceived as normal.

There is plenty of evidence to show the connection between mind and body. What can be overlooked with physical issues is that its cause could be mental or emotional in origin, in other words from a stressful event or series of events. For example, you may have developed migraine headaches that seem to be occurring more frequently. The connection you may not have made however is that shortly before the migraine headaches began you may have increased your hours at work, and your youngest child had just started school. The connection you may have overlooked is these increased stressors in relation to the development of your migraine headaches.

This is where the beauty and simplicity of EFT Tapping comes in. EFT Tapping has been used by thousands of people on a range of physical and emotional issues with great success and it is just as easily resolved if the event occurred yesterday, five years, or fifty years ago. When the effects of stress become too great, EFT Tapping can easily be used to help reduce your stress levels down to a more manageable level.

Body System – Problems of The Head

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The Head contains the brain, the sensory organs, and the throat – the gateway to the lungs and digestive system. Together these organs allow us to think, see, hear, breathe, take in nutrients, and generally make sense of our environment. The bones of the skull surround and protect the brain, the most complex organ of the body. It controls life as we know it, as well as our more spiritual thoughts. Located around the head are the chief sensory organs: the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. The face is a reflection of our inner health, the way we look, and the condition of our skin and hair, and the brightness of our eyes can all indicate disease, or ill-health.

The nose and throat act as “air-conditioners” or filters to remove harmful particles from the environment around us. The nose warms and humidifies air as we breathe it in, before it passes into the lungs. The throat is a multipurpose tube leading from the back of the nose and mouth to the trachea (windpipe) and esophagus (gullet) susceptible to infection that can spread upward or downward. The appearance of the lining of and throat, gums and teeth can all indicate our state of health. The ears are highly complex organs, three separate compartments – the outer, middle ears.

The flaps of skin we refer to as “ears” a important – unlike some other animals, humans cannot turn them to pick up sounds.

The eyes are delicate and sensitive, yet they contain sets of muscles that can be strengthened exercise – and can weaken with lack of attention. The eyeball is intricate, made up of layers of tissue. The retina, the inner surface at the back of the eyeball onto which images are focused, contains a layer of sensitive nerve cells. Information about light color, and detail are transmitted from these cells along the nerve to the brain.