Hi everyone, I'm Lucy Macdonald, physiotherapist, and at the moment I am
seeing a few patients who are starting to show signs of breathing problems, I'm
seeing obviously all my patients at the moment from home by video consultation
and as we would expect people are starting to have the symptoms of
coronavirus, so as we all know breathing difficulties and a persistent cough, so I thought it might
be useful for those of you who do fall into that category and any friends or
family that you know who are struggling with breathing issues to make a little
video so that you can share it with them and it can be of help, I always find it
quite amazing how little we generally are taught about breathing which
is obviously a pretty fundamental part of being human, so we need to understand how
we can do it best in order to make sure that we are staying as healthy as
possible, even if you don't have symptoms it's a really good idea to try and
practice some of these so that if when you do have any symptoms then you're
well prepared, also the physiological benefits are really significant
irrespective of whether you have any problems, so good for everyone to start
practicing these now and I'll talk a bit more about the general health benefits a
bit later, so first things first how do we want to be trying to breathe, so our
lungs, a bit of physiology first of all, our lungs start way up in the top of
our backs here and fill our entire ribcage all the way down to the back, so
if you reach your arms round to the back and feel where your ribs finish so
that's where all the way around to where your ribs are and your entire
ribcage if you can kind of feel those bones of your rib, of your ribs
your entire ribcage is filled with lungs
except for a few handy structures like your heart, so apart from that it's all
it's all lung tissue, now because of gravity there's actually more blood
vessels at the bottom of the lungs around here so you really want to try
and get the air down to the bottom of your lungs to get optimal gas exchange,
the more air you get around there the more carbon dioxide we get pumped out of
the body and the more oxygen comes into the body, now here's a really key
component of breathing, you need to try and focus on your exhalation, that's
breathing out, the reason being is that inhalation is a reflex so if you think
about breathing out out out out eventually your body's reflexes will
kick in and you will start to breathe in as an automatic reaction okay, however
breathing out is not, and therefore what can happen if you try and focus on
breathing in too much you can end up filling your lungs up so there's no
space for more oxygen to get in and that's where
hyperventilation happens so you keep trying to get more and more air into
your lungs and actually what happens is because there's no space for the
oxygenated air to go you end up just getting a whole lung, your lungs just
full of carbon dioxide which doesn't do you any favours at all, so what you need
to do is to focus on that exhalation, that breathing out, so if you start by
putting one hand over your diaphragm now your diaphragm if I put my other
hand or if I put my finger on my belly button you can see it there, so that's my belly
and one hand up from there here's my sternum, and my diaphragm sits basically
if my rib cage is like that's my diaphragm sits there,
so if you can try and first of all breathe from your diaphragm, what that
does is your diaphragm draws the air into the bottom of your lungs but as
I've already mentioned you want to start with an exhalation, so if you start now
just breathing gently out, however fast your breathing is at the moment just try
and increase the time spent breathing out, even if it's by a millisecond,
just purely thinking about your outward breath and you'll probably notice that
slowly but surely as your focus changes from your inward breath to your outward
breath your breathing might actually slow down and you start to be able to
draw the air into the bottom part of your lungs here, so as you breathe in
that hand should move away from your body and as you breathe out that hand comes inwards, as
you breathe out and in, as slowly as you can, now it's really important that you don't take repetitive
deep breaths or you'll faint, so if you are new to doing breathing exercises
it's a good idea to start doing it lying down, I've pointed over there because this is not only my new virtual office but it's also my bedroom,
so lie on your bed and just think
about breathing from your diaphragm and try not to take really deep breaths, but
at least if you're lying down you're not gonna go anywhere, certainly don't do it
standing or sitting, don't want you falling off your chair, so back to that
diaphragm, so just nicely focus on breathing out out out
now the lungs are kind of a it's quite useful to sort of imagine them as a sort
of sponge like tissue, and if you think about a sponge and you're trying to
capture as much water in that sponge as possible, I'm sure it's not difficult to
to envisage that if you want to try and draw more water into the sponge you've
first of all got to squeeze that water out of the sponge so that you can then
bring more water into it, it's similar with the lungs so if we think
about that, if you close your eyes and you visualise the lungs all the
way around the bottoms of your lungs and you imagine they're these beautiful big
spongy structures and in order to bring more oxygenated air into those lungs you
have to squeeze, just like you would a sponge, you need to squeeze a little bit
out of the bottoms of your lungs, so you just visualise breathing out and try and
then increase that exhalation a little bit more to then enable your lungs to
expand more, the other place that you can place your hands depending on your size
you can either put your arms around you so that you're placing your hands at the
sides of your ribcage here and here, or you can bring your hands into that
position as well and as you breathe in you can start to think about breathing
in sorry exhaling first so breathing out, so really simple stuff
just really nicely gently practicing that gentle breathing
and what that does that really keeps that lung tissue nice and flexible,
it also is incredibly relaxing and we know that relaxation has a direct effect
on your immune system so it's actually highly beneficial for your immune system
and also if you've got any phlegm inside your lungs so if there's any sort of
gunky stuff down at the bottom of the lungs that's getting in the way of your
ability to get oxygen into your blood then getting the air right down to the
bottom of your lungs will help to shift that and
enable you to cough it up, so I hope that's been helpful, please do let me know if you
would like me to do any other topics in particular, I hope you enjoyed my last
video on exercising for your immune health and I will continue to respond to
whatever my patients need and in the meantime please drop me an email
lucymacdonaldphysio@hotmail.co.uk and even though this has all been about
breathing I am actually a musculoskeletal physio so if you have
any pain or injuries I am here to support you as is the rest of my team
from octopus clinic, so please do follow us on facebook it's octopus clinic is
the page and we look forward to supporting you over the next few months, bye!