If you have asthma or another health concern, new techniques like belly breathing may be able to help you to start feeling better. Improving breathing and taking steps to increase lung capacity and to increase oxygen content in your body can all work together to help you feel better when you are suffering from a variety of ailments. Improving these things can help to improve your overall health and sense of well being.
Currently, about 13% of adult Americans use therapeutic deep breathing exercises, like belly breathing. Deep breathing exercises can help to relieve asthma, in particular. The Buteyko method, for instance, has patients breathe slowly and shallowly through their noses when they feel short of breath. Behavioral techniques, like learning to avoid hyperventilation, can also help to reduce medication use and symptoms over several months of training. Breathing techniques to curb asthma can be more important in some places than others, like big cities, where air quality is lower. Nashville, for instance, is the third lowest ranked city for air quality. Different exercises can help to palliate other breathing troubles, like sleep apnea. Some tools can pull your lower jaw forward to relieve snoring and mild sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is a serious condition that should be treated.
Belly breathing and other exercises can be used just to relax, which in itself can stimulate better health by increasing your happiness and general emotional well being. Using belly breathing and similar techniques to generally relax can act as preventative medicine for other conditions, making it a useful practice even if you do not suffer from a breathing or other condition that therapeutic breathing is designed to treat. If you are interested in these techniques, you should consult a professional to help you to learn about proper breathing techniques.