Sinus and Head Colds

Several readers asked what else they can do for painful head and sinus congestion, because after two+ weeks of medicines and doctor visits, they were no better, or were worse. Common treatments do not work as claimed, including decongestants and sprays, and can cause sinus pain to continue and recur.

What Are Sinuses?
The sinuses in your head are eight spaces in your skull behind your eyes and nose. They produce mucus, and that is good. Mucus produces antiseptics, and traps and filters germs and particles that you don't want to pass into your respiratory system and the rest of your body. Sinusitis occurs when one or more of your sinus cavities become inflamed.

Inflamed by Inhaling Things
Sinuses can become inflamed without any germs causing it, for example from inhaling particles, allergens, or liquids up the nose. If you have ever "gotten water up your nose" in a pool, you have felt the results. The practice of irrigating the nose and sinuses with salt-water sprays is often prescribed for sinus congestion, and even for preventive "maintenance," but it removes important protective mucus layers and natural disease-fighting compounds, and is irritating in itself. Some people regularly spray the sinuses using a variety of squeeze bottles, or a device called a neti pot. It is an unnecessary practice, and does not prevent the underlying cause of sinus pain. It sets up an addictive cycle of rebound congestion and irritation, and increased risk of infections and discomfort to follow.

Another contributor to rebound congestion is regular use of camphor inhalers. Sniffing camphor is a widespread practice throughout Asia, where decorative camphor containers shaped to fit the nose are sold in most grocery, pharmacy, and convenience stores. Camphor irritates mucus membranes causing a cycle of irritation, more camphor inhalation, and more congestion. Some people develop a habit of inhaling camphor, thinking it is for their congestion, not realizing they have a substance inhalation addiction called "huffing."

Decongestants
Decongestants are a big money item in drug store sales. They are not the best treatment for sinus pain and congestion. You are already too clogged up. You do not want more "drying out." The clogged areas would do better becoming more dilute by drinking hot liquids, not by becoming more gummy and concentrated with the "drying out" of a decongestant. After the decongestant wears off, a rebound can occur of more congestion. Taking more decongestant perpetuates a negative cycle, and can raise blood pressure. Cough syrups and pills that contain dexomethorphan (DXM) to block coughing are not as effective for coughs as hoped, but are popularly abused by kids looking for a cheap, easily available "high" ("rhobotripping") with unhealthy physical and psychoactive effects.

Infections and Antibiotics
Sometimes sinuses fill with bacterial or viral fluid. Antibiotic do not help against sinusitis, even the kinds colonized by bacteria. Antibiotics can kill your body's good "bugs" or weaken them, leaving you susceptible to stronger bad bugs, who learn how to live and multiply in your body. Antibiotics taken orally reduce the needed numbers of beneficial flora that normally live in your GI tract. The nutritional and immunogenic products that they normally make in your body are not made, and the organisms responsible for several illnesses can rapidly reproduce and get out of control. An example is antibiotic-associated Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) colitis, an infection of the colon that occurs primarily among patients exposed to antibiotics. More than three million C. difficile infections occur in hospitals in the U.S. each year. He number is growing. An estimated 20,000 C. difficile infections occur each year in the U.S. outside the hospital - directly caused by taking antibiotics.

Healthier Ways to Decongest and Sooth:

• Hot steamy showers and baths.
• Hot facial compresses.
• No need for fancy vaporizers with chemicals (more camphor or other irritants to inhale). Put on a kettle or any pot of water and heat until steaming. Stand at a distance where you feel the warm steam, without standing close enough for any chance of burns. No need to bend over as in the photo at right. Stand in healthy comfortable position for your back and neck.
• Eat spicy foods that you like, such as wasabi or chili peppers.
• Drink hot peppermint tea, or other warm, aromatic teas with lemon.
• Reduce irritating particles (rugs, cats, junk piles, cigarettes, or whatever concentrates trigger irritants).
• A walk outdoors in fresh air and sunshine helps clear breathing and pain.
• Do any fun exercise to heat your body. Increasing body temperature loosens clogging secretions and generates heat shock proteins that have been found to be pretty good for you. The post Exercise and Cancer touches on the basics of heat shock proteins.
• The post Fast Fitness - Quick Warm Up gives a quick method to increase body temperature to warm up.
• The post Regular Exercise Reduces Cold and Flu Incidence lists good practices to lower risk and increase resistance to infectious diseases.

More information on preventing and resolving sinus problems, things to know about antibiotic use, and other infectious topics are in the book Healthy Martial Arts.

Labels: breathing, children, colds/flu/infectious, drugs, heat, neck, nutrition, smoking, warmup

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Grunting and Exercise

Grunting in the gym made recent news. A member was forcibly removed from a gym when others complained. The article told of factions arguing who was right if grunting and other loud vocalizations when exerting for exercise were helpful or needless annoyance.

Exercise is supposed to be healthy and build discipline of mind and body. Antagonism and disputes are not healthy for mind or body. Moreover, both sides have missed the point.

Breathing out, either quickly or slowly in coordination with effort can help. It can be done silently - by exhaling without vocalizing. You can have both, the exhale and the peace. This quiet but forceful exhalation practice is used in many high exertion fields from martial arts to warfare to meditation.

Fighting ninjas were legendary for both focused effort and silent tactics. No sense making a war cry until it was needed for its better purpose - to increase tendency to submission by the other party on the receiving end of the cry. In other words, to be scary.

For exercise, focused exhalation can increase acceleration at specific points of the move to increase power. For heavy moves, it can help lessen increases of pressure in the chest cavity and blood vessels, depending how it is done. Sometimes, people put so much pressure into the exhalation that they increase internal pressure instead of prevent problems. Done either quickly or slowly, it can be used to strengthen the move by including expiratory muscles. Often in martial arts and yoga classes, we (teachers) use noisy breathing just to remind students to breathe at all. It is a cue until they remember to breathe on their own (quietly) instead of holding their breath.

In the war dances and drumming in many countries, in martial arts, and in meditation arts, a concentrated exhalation coordinated with effort is variously called kiah, kiai, hihap, battle cry, and other terms. Each school is certain that their own different translation and beliefs about these terms is the "right one." The exhalation can be vocalized in a short yell, a loud breath, or silent. In group efforts, from martial arts to hauling sheets on tall ships, to chain gangs, to exercise classes, it helps unify mood or keep cadence. Done without coordinating effort, it is called yelling, and sometimes it is just vocalizing in corny ways.

More about breathing, the kiai exhalation and exercise for any sport are in the book Healthy Martial Arts.

Labels: breathing, circulation, martial arts, strength, stress, yoga

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Lung Training from the Exercise Ball

The week before I left to teach at the Wilderness conference, I taught my University yoga class entirely on an exercise ball. I will post about functional movement on a ball in weeks to come.

We don't use three of the most ineffective things you can do on a ball - crunches, sitting on the ball (for almost anything), and arching the lower back over the ball. These seem to be three of the more common things done on the ball in fitness classes, but they are not fit or effective. Another myth is that an exercise ball will magically make you sit straight. You can sit with as faulty positioning as on any other surface. Click Does an Exercise Ball Make You Sit Straight? Better, healthier ways to use your time on the ball instead will open many good doors, so watch for posts to come on this.

Most of my students brought in an owned or borrowed exercise ball. I brought in three more for students without access. Some of the students pin-balled cheerfully through the narrow doorway with a large inflated exercise ball. One came in on the subway holding hers. I managed a comic, calorie-burning commute with three on a bicycle. A few students brought theirs uninflated. Wow, such an idea.


They asked me if I had a pump.

I told them, "Yes, your lungs, blow it up."

They sat politely waiting for the other students who brought a pump to finish with theirs.

I chided them that people talk all about yoga and breathing but here was opportunity in the tangible. They sat politely waiting for the pump. I demonstrated - "fffooooooooou."

I told them that when I was small, I was transfixed when my father, a Russian ice swimmer, blew up a beach ball in one breath. I decided then and there that I wanted to do that. I experimented with bags. I'd inflate to all my capacity and compare the bag to my little chest. I later practiced this in my swimming career until I was measured by scientists who came one day to test our whole team. My lung volume (not counting residual that you cannot breathe out) came in close to 6 liters. They called me a sports car. I didn't know what that was and hoped they were not flunking me. Who knows how much was from my 35 to 40 mile a week swimming training, or inherited, or just lung size relative to height. Still, a "big engine" can be trained and added to the mix. Click the label "breathing" under this post for entries about training breathing and exercise capacity.

My students took a chance on believing me that breathing and yoga and health had something to do with real life, and took a big breath to the ball. Bigger, bigger, full. Then quick hands to cap it off. They laughed. Laughing is good for breathing too. Then we started class.

• Take a nice full breath in right now. Let your lower abdomen come outward. Exhale normally.
• Breathe when you cook, clean, and do daily life. Don't hold your breath or gasp.
• Blow up balloons, pool floats, air cushions, enormous inflatable beach toys. Don't overbreathe and get dizzy.
  
• Exercise until you have to breathe a lot. Don't let yourself get so out of shape that it ever becomes unhealthy to try fun exercise.
• Sing.
• Laugh.

Labels: breathing, exercise ball, yoga

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High Fat Meals Hurt Lung Function

I am still getting caught up with work from the sports medicine meeting I attended in late May.

An interesting study was presented at the pulmonary and respiratory physiology session -
"Effects of a High-Fat Meal on Pulmonary Function in Healthy Subjects." It is known that high fat meals negatively affect people with asthma and other pulmonary problems. It is also known that a high-fat diet increases internal inflammation, which is associated with higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis (possibly other forms of arthritis such as osteoarthritis), and several other chronic illnesses. What about effects on your lungs and breathing?

The study looked at the effect of a high-fat meal on airway inflammation and pulmonary function. The researchers tested subjects for total cholesterol and triglycerides, then fed them a high fat meal. Subjects were tested after the meal for cholesterol and triglycerides, various pulmonary functions, markers of airway inflammation (exhaled nitric oxide), and C-reactive protein, which is a marker of systemic inflammation. The researchers found that the high fat meal increased total cholesterol, triglycerides, and exhaled nitric oxide. They concluded that the results suggest that high-fat meals may contribute to inflammatory diseases of the airway and lung (in addition to other health consequences).

Just as smoking or taking amphetamines are not healthy, but help weight loss, popular weight loss diets "work" but have health drawbacks. Check your meals to see if you eat high fat, whether for a diet, or just from unhealthful eating habits.

A diet may help weight loss, but be unhealthy. An exercise may work a muscle but be bad for your joints. A medicine may fix a disease but harm the patient. You don't have to choose. Many fun healthy ways to exercise and control weight that don't harm the body are given throughout this Fitness Fixer blog. Click the labels under this post for related posts that give information about breathing exercises and healthier nutrition.

Labels: breathing, nutrition

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Respiratory Muscle Training for Swimming, Diving, and Running

The previous post on training breathing muscles -
Respiratory Muscle Training for Better Health and Exercise - covered how breathing exercises have been found to help increase respiratory capacity in people with various diseases, and more recently, to help physical training in athletes. At the diving and hyperbaric conference three weeks ago, I attended sessions on respiratory muscle training for underwater operations. It is a topic of interest for those in charge of combat swimmers.

In one study, Researchers at the State University of Buffalo at New York found that respiratory muscle training improves swimming and respiratory performance at depth. As you go deeper, the work of breathing can increase, even using high performance breathing devices, because of higher gas density and other factors. They tested the effect of resistance respiratory muscle training on respiratory function and swimming endurance in divers at 55 fsw (~16 m). They found that respiratory muscles were less fatigued following training, breathing rate was lower during the swims, and that the training increased the duration they could swim by about 60%. They concluded that respiratory muscle fatigue limits swimming endurance at depth, and the increase in swimming endurance may result from reduced work of breathing or improved respiratory muscle ability.

The second study by the same group looked at the different benefits of training the endurance and strength of the respiratory muscles. Eighteen SCUBA-certified swimmers were randomly assigned to a placebo group who didn't train their breathing muscles, a respiratory endurance training group, or a respiratory strength training group. Each group used a breathing resistance device five days a week for 30 min over four weeks. The endurance trained group decreased heart rate and ventilation during underwater swims. Both the endurance and strength groups improved fin swimming endurance. The placebo group experienced no changes.

The researchers concluded that respiratory muscle training is effective in improving swimming endurance. They told me they found it is also effective for endurance running, but perhaps not as effective. They are working on finding out why. My friends who do long stints in submarines mentioned they like to use respiratory muscle training to help keep them in shape since they can't go out for a run while on sub duty.

The post Do Breathing Exercises Work? shows ways to try breathing training. The book Healthy Martial Arts gives more.

Labels: aerobic, breathing, endurance, hyperbaric, performance enhancing modality, scuba, strength, swimming

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Respiratory Muscle Training for Better Health and Exercise

At the American College of Sports Medicine conference last month, I attended an entire session on effects of training respiratory muscle function. Back when I was in school, we learned that the ability to breathe harder, better, faster, could not be trained with exercise or other modality, that it was fixed from person to person, like eye color, except that it got worse with aging, and that it didn't matter much, since ventilation did not do much to limit exercise potential anyway.

Even though the lungs don't have any muscles of their own, it didn't seem right to me, as the diaphragm and muscles that move the rib cage to voluntarily breath in and out are muscles like any other. What if there are people whose respiratory muscles are not trained to work hard enough and add to the metabolic cost of exercise, increasing fatigue and so, limit exercise? It is also true that many people are not in good enough shape to use more oxygen, so breathe most of the oxygen back out with each breath, even when exercising strenuously. What about someone in great athletic shape who could use that oxygen. Why couldn't they be trained to move more air faster if they needed some?

Exercising the muscles that you use to breath in (inspiratory muscle training) is known to improve the endurance of the respiratory muscles in people with spinal cord injury and cystic fibrosis, and is shown to improve exercise capacity in patients with heart failure. What about for people without these conditions or for athletes?

There is some published literature that does not show improved work capacity (J Sports Sci. 1991 Spring;9(1):43-52.) and some that show high-intensity training increases exercise capacity in people who are healthy (Phys Ther. 2006 Mar;86(3):345-54.).

The diving medicine conference two weeks ago had several studies that showed interesting and promising results with breathing training. Combat swimmers have long used various breathing training to get in shape for swims and other strenuous work. The next post covering respiratory exercises - Respiratory Muscle Training for Swimming, Diving, and Running - tells about it.

Respiratory muscle training in the above studies did not involve popping corks from your lips, as in the accompanying photo. To improve your breathing capacity and do training at home without respiratory training devices, see the post Do Breathing Exercises Work? and the book Healthy Martial Arts.

Labels: aerobic, breathing, circulation, endurance, performance enhancing modality, scuba, strength, swimming

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Fixing Fitness Myths

"The public has an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except which is worth knowing." - Oscar Wild

April 1 seems to be a day to notice, more than usual, if things in the news are not facts but April Fool. On other days, urban legends and other stories are still popular, sometimes more popular than what is really going on.

The observation that the Earth is flat seemed obviously true at one time until we had more information. It used to be a taught as a medical fact that the cause of epilepsy was masturbation. When I was in school, one of my medical books stated that you don't need to eat calcium since you can "get all you need from your bones." It is true that you pull calcium from your bones when you don't eat enough, although with unhealthy results.

The post Forensic Science told of two crime-science myths, often still taught in forensic books and popularized in television shows, which were never true. Following are more posts hoping to replace myth with information, so that you can get stronger and do more, without the injuries or restrictions in activity that are part of many fitness or injury rehab practices.

Feet and Ankles

Myth - You need tight shoes for support. Fact - tight shoes can deform toes and prevent healthy muscle use:
Are Your Shoes Too Tight?
and Healthy Toe Stretches.

Myth - All ankle stretches prevent sprains. Fact - Some may enhance predisposition to ankle sprains:
Unhealthy Yoga Ankles.

Myth - Following an ankle sprain, bracing must be continuous since no exercise can restore the area. Here is another way -
How To Treat Ankle Sprains and Prevent Them
and
No More Ankle Sprains Part II.

Dispelling Myths of Orthotics Use:

Myth - Only orthotics can place your arches in neutral position. Fact - your own muscles can often do the same:
Arch Support Is Not From Shoes
and
Which Shoes Help Exercise, Fall Prevention, and Ankles?

Dispelling Aging Myths - That respiratory function only declines with age:

Do Breathing Exercises Work?

Dispelling Aging Myths - That you only get weaker with aging:

Getting Stronger is for Everyone
What I Learned at the Aging Conference
Better Balance by Christmas
Conference on Aging Dec 2, 2006 in Midtown New York.

Dispelling Nutrition for Exercise Myths:

That weight gain with aging is primarily lower metabolism: Metabolism - How to Lose Weight and Save Money

or that Healthy eating is difficult or expensive:
What Medical Students Told Me About Nutrition.

Myth that you must eat much protein to get muscles:
Get Muscles for Christmas

Myth that acid prevention drugs are harmless:
Stomach Acid Drugs May Increase Osteoporosis and Hip Fractures

Myth that food marked "Health Food" means it has to be healthy:
Is Your Health Food Unhealthy
and Exercise Common Sense Discipline - Turn Down Halloween Junk Food

and the myth that it's healthy for children to eat junk food:
A Little Good Exercise, a Lot of Bad Food - Overweight Still No Mystery.

Myths that only gyms and weights can improve your strength:

How to get natural exercise is in Rocky IV and Healthier Exercise,
Getting Stronger Without a Gym
Exercising With A Friend - Partner Leg Press
Don't Confuse Exercise With Real Fitness
Healthy Toe Stretches
Quick and Fun Arm and Body Strengthener
and Quick and Easy Strength and Balance Exercise.

More to come for smart, fun, healthier ways to get exercise.

Labels: aging, ankle, arches, arm, balance, breathing, feet, fix pain, forensic, holiday, leg stretch, nutrition, osteoporosis, partner exercise, shoes, sprain, strength, toes, yoga

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Do Breathing Exercises Work?

Often the simple act of breathing is made into a complicated ritual. People take classes to learn how to breathe in this nostril and out that nostril and four times slowly this way, and eight hundred times quickly that way. All you need is to remain simple. In. Out. Try a nice breath now. This is often more than many people do. Check yourself when at work, opening mail, putting things away. Do you hunch your shoulders and hold your breath, straining or breathing shallowly and quickly, just to hurry through and get it done? Keep breathing normally in and out.

It was previously thought that lung function declined steadily with each passing year after age 30. It also used to be thought by some in exercise science that respiratory muscles could not be trained, or that the highest amount of air moving in and out with exercise would not change except to diminish with aging. Now it is established that the breathing muscles of the chest and abdomen are muscles like any other. You need to exercise them. You can improve function at any age.

Exercising your respiratory system through healthy breathing is important to reduce many respiratory problems, and is part of staying in shape and able to do normal activities without getting out of breath. How do you do this? To exercise your respiratory system, following are three main things to try:

1. Exercise your whole body with biking, skating, skiing, running, skipping, hiking, dancing, and other fun ways to move.

2. You can exercise your breathing right now while sitting or standing:

• Close or purse your lips loosely (draw them together at the sides) and breathe in against the resistance.
• Breathe out slowly without resistance. Repeat several times.
• Try the above, breathing in more and more quickly.
  
• Allow enough time (a few seconds) between each resisted breath so that you do not become dizzy.
• As you get better at this over time, increase resistance by how firmly you close your lips together.

You can buy expensive respiratory muscle trainers in fitness catalogs to provide resistance for breathing muscle training. You can also get the same effect yourself by breathing in through pursed lips or trying to breathe through your sleeve (pressing your mouth against your forearm). Resistance breathing exercises have been long practiced in the martial arts in exercises of "sanchin," yoga, and some forms of chi kung breathing, which tighten the throat (or hold the nose) for resistance instead of the lips. Some scuba-divers and breath-hold free divers practice various techniques, hoping to increase breathholding endurance and underwater time. Not all of these practices are a good idea for divers, to be covered in future posts.

3. Periodically see how much air you can breathe in and out in one breath, both with and without resistance:

• See how quickly you can inhale fully.
• Then how fast you can exhale fully.
• Regularly exercise heavily so that you need to breathe hard for extended periods.

Don't "overbreathe" (hyperventilate) by taking huge breaths in and out while at rest. That changes your body chemistry, which can make you dizzy or cause temporary limb tingling. The dizziness from hyperventilation is often taught in yoga, martial arts, and meditation breathing classes as something healthful. However, it is not physically beneficial.

Healthful breathing patterns are important when not doing strenuous exercise. When chopping vegetables for dinner, do you hunch your shoulders and hold your breath during the knife stroke? Instead, make the rhythmic chopping a meditation and an easy exercise with healthful body positioning. When you hang up laundry or put away groceries, notice if you tense up and hold your breath? When you move during any action, check to see if you tighten muscles and hold your breath trying to get it done. Lower your shoulders. Untense your muscles. Enjoy the task. Breathe.

For healthful breathing during life activities, remember to let your belly expand to breathe in. Don't just raise your shoulders and chest. Don't pull your belly inward when breathing in; let it come outward as air fills your lungs. Take a full breath in now and try it. Relax and feel good.

More on breathing can be found in the book Healthy Martial Arts.

Labels: breathing, martial arts, performance enhancing modality, scuba, spirit, strength, stress

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Which Ancient Exercise Gives Focus and Concentration?

People often meditate by staring at a candle but tense their shoulders preparing dinner and driving, hold their breath to lift things, and are easily distressed when someone cuts in front of them.

My husband Paul and I studied martial arts in several training centers, and in temples and monasteries in Asia. The monks told us a secret. Sitting quietly, starting at something, or nothing, or counting, is the first five minutes of the first lesson. After this simple start, you are supposed to *use* the concentration and focus to do everything else. The fact that some people take years to master the first five minutes, or spend their life doing only this minor introductory part is another story.

Sometimes students come to my classes talking all about how yoga and martial arts gives you discipline, but can't seem to organize themselves to get their paperwork filled out or their things put away off the floor. They claim the Arts give you patience and awareness, then get angry when someone's cell phone goes off during class and when I show them how to bend and sit in a way that helps rather than harms their health. People use the catch phrase "mind-body" then sit in poor posture not using their body, and losing their mind.

Long ago, only the rich and subsidized could sit idly to meditate. The rest had chores to do and families to raise. There are stories of ancient monks who sat and meditated unmoving for years, then got up and ran marathons. Those turned out to be folk tales and fables. The monks actually soon found they had trouble concentrating, trouble sleeping, and that their joints hurt. They needed exercise. They developed systems of using their body while practicing concentrating because they had to defend the temple and their emperor. When bad guys attacked they couldn't say, "Oh I can't work under pressure." They had to unfalteringly see and do frightening things to win bloody defenses. They had to be able to lie down that night and sleep, not lie awake saying, "Oh I'll have such nightmares. How could he yell at me? I am so ruined by what I saw and what happened to me." They had to practice being mentally strong while they practiced fighting. Their meditation was done raking leaves from monastery paths, preparing dinner, chopping wood, and during all their strenuous training.

All exercise is supposed to train focus and concentration. All household chores too. Work too. Use meditative action for all you do. Can you stay healthy and keep your blood pressure from rising in real life when the phone is ringing and the babies (of all kinds) are screaming? Or when nothing is happening externally to make you focus and get things done. Instead of only practicing meditation sitting, get up and get healthy by turning away negative thoughts, staying on track, and breathing easily when doing housework, during interactions with others, and all exercise you do.



Photo by stevekwandot, Creative Commons.

Labels: breathing, martial arts, stress, yoga

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Healthier Hamstring Stretching

One of the most common stretches for the hamstrings is bending over from a stand to touch the toes. You already know that bending over with straight legs to pick up a package is unhealthy for your back. Bending over to stretch is just as unhealthy. Forward bending puts large forces on the discs of your lower back, and is not even a highly effective stretch for your hamstrings. Bending over to touch toes is a common contributor to back pain, whether you keep your back rounded or straight. I will show you more about exactly why in future posts.

Instead of bending over to stretch, or standing with one foot propped up on a bench or chair, an effective way to stretch the hamstring is to stand facing a wall and press one heel against the wall at about hip height.

• Keep your standing foot straight, not turned out; not even a small amount.
• Look down and see if your standing foot is facing straight ahead.
• Move your foot so that it is straight, or you will lose the stretch. As soon as you turn your standing foot straight, you will feel the stretch improve.
• Lift your chest and stand straight.
  
• Don't let your hip curl under.
  
• Smile and breathe.
  
• Hold a few seconds and switch legs.
  

Stretching is supposed to be healthy. When you stretch, don't practice bad posture habits by rounding your back, and don't practice things you know aren't healthy like bending over so that your body weight hinges on your lower back.

Stretch in ways to make your life healthier.

Labels: breathing, chest, disc, fix pain, hamstring, injury, leg stretch, lower back, stretch

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