Breathing exercises are an easy, free, thing to do to improve your health post-flox.
According to the post, “18 benefits of deep breathing and how to breathe deeply,” the benefits of breathing exercises include:
- Breathing detoxifies and releases toxins
- Breathing releases tension
- Breathing relaxes the mind/body and brings clarity
- Breathing relieves emotional problems
- Breathing relieves pain
- Breathing massages your organs
- Breathing increases muscle
- Breathing strengthens the immune system
- Breathing improves posture
- Breathing improves quality of the blood
- Breathing increases digestion and assimilation of food
- Breathing improves the nervous system
- Breathing strengthens the lungs
- Breathing makes the heart stronger
- Breathing assists in weight control
- Breathing boosts energy levels and stamina
- Breathing improves cellular regeneration
- Breathing elevates moods
The claims in the article weren’t backed up by peer-reviewed sources, but it all seems reasonable enough. We have to breathe. It’s free. We may as well do it in a way that improves our health and well-being.
Bill notes in his fluoroquinolone toxicity recovery story that:
Since I had no explanation why ozone was working, I wondered if maybe all I needed was more oxygen. When the ozone gas is mixed in with the blood, the blood turns from dull rust brown to bright red, as hemoglobin is supposed to do in the presence of oxygen. I certainly wasn’t getting any exercise… Could just breathing more be at least part of the answer?
I think it might just be. I was able to leave off the cane completely within two days of when I started deep breathing. The pain, balance problems, and mind fog didn’t go away completely at that point, but the change was nonetheless pretty dramatic. I took the technique from a cheesy old Tony Robbins tape. I don’t know how much of what Tony says on the tape is pseudoscience and wishful thinking, but I followed it anyway.
The procedure is pretty simple. Breathe in, via nose, for a slow count of some number. There’s no magic to this, just as much as you can hold. I count to seven heartbeats before I’m full. Apparently Tony counts to ten, but he’s also roughly the size and shape of Frankenstein’s monster.
Hold your breath for a count of four times how long it took to breathe in. I count to twenty eight heartbeats, and Tony counts to forty, the freak. Tony claims that this is the optimum amount of time for maximum oxygen absorption.
Then, slowly exhale COMPLETELY through your mouth, for a count of two times the amount of time it took you to inhale. I can’t quite manage a count of fourteen, usually making it only to twelve or thirteen. I have no clue how Tony makes it to twenty except to speculate about an extra lung, perhaps in his chin. He claims that this maximum exhale stimulates the lymphatic system to flush wastes out of cells and eventually out of the body.
Do this between ten to thirty times per day. I like to do it while driving. The way I think about it, even if this has nothing to do with recovering from quins, it can’t hurt to try.
Here are the Tony Robbins Breathing exercises that Bill wrote about:
Some possible techniques are those breathing techniques developed by Dr. Konstantin Pavlovich Buteyko known as Buteyko breathing. Buteyko breathing is described in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx-3dt9L72c
Here is some more good information on the background and benefits of Buteyko breathing:
I didn’t specifically do breathing exercises during my recovery, but I did find swimming to be immensely helpful. When you swim, you are forced to do breathing exercises.
I was recently chatting with Ruth, and she mentioned that her functional medicine doctor, Dr. Whitcomb, told her to play the flute often to encourage her to breathe deeply and properly, and to encourage healing. She said that playing the flute helps her to feel more calm and generally better.
Breathing exercises are safe, easy, free and can be helpful for floxies. I highly recommend doing some of the breathing exercises shown in the videos in this post, or swimming, or playing a wind instrument.
Thanks for this Lisa. It’s great for those of us who can’t exercise, or even sit up in a chair, to have “exercises” we can do to help recovery. I’m very lightheaded and swimmy all the time, and deep breathing makes this worse. Do you think it’s still ok to persist with it? I would imagine it’s not doing any harm, but am a bit wary because, as you know, I seem to have the opposite reaction to most floxed people!
I totally think breathing exercises can help with just about anything. When I meditate, I usually begin with really deep breathing, which helps reduce anxiousness and aligns my mind with my body. There’s a thing called OM chanting which forces you to breathe a certain way when you practice, I suppose any kind of singing/chanting would work, but there are free apps on google play and itunes for chanting. Also on a side note, once when I quit smoking I took up the recorder (I know the recorder is cheesy but it’s easily accessible) and it totally helped me stay away from the cigs.