Shortness of breath can be a problem a real problem with Covid-19. Now if you can't finish
a short sentence or if your breathing suddenly worsens within an hour or so please seek medical
advice immediately. Hi I'm michelle I'm making this video in response to many of your requests
from India and from Brazil for breathing exercises and exercises to cope with shortness of breath
during this current pandemic. Now if you have medical advice already please follow that advice
otherwise what I'm about to teach you is deep breathing exercises and the best positions for
increasing air into your lungs if you're suffering from Covid-19. You'll also find translations for
this video in the closed captions below in Hindi in Urdu and also to in Spanish if that will help
you with your recovery as well. Now we're going to start out with deep breathing exercises and
I'm going to take you through this fairly slowly. When you start your deep breathing exercises don't
do them lying flat. So if you're lying flat down on the bed it makes it very difficult to breathe.
Try to elevate yourself either in sitting or on a raised bed and I'm going to be showing you
and I also have in my app that you can see above, some links to some bed rises and wedges that might
help you to actually elevate the bed. If you can't access bed rises you can even use a block of wood
or a cement block to lift up the bed. Ideally the bed should be raised up between 30 to 60 degrees.
So you should be lifted to actually do these exercises. Alright let's start the exercises now.
First of all with the person raised or yourself raised bring your hands up around this part
of your rib cage. Sit tall if you can and relax your shoulders and chest down. So we're going
to try just two relaxed breaths for starters. Just slow and steady normal breaths in through the nose
and out through the nose and mouth, just a slow breath. Here we go breathing in
and let it go. And again just a regular breath. Control your breathing breathing in
and allow the air to release slowly. Now we're going to start with some deeper breaths. I'm
going to take you through three deeper breaths. Just do what you can do. If you start to feel
dizzy or lightheaded stop straight away. Let's see how we go with these two exercises. So bringing
your hands here, this is where the air exchange happens here, so we want to expand this area. So
if you're with someone you could put your hands around their chest to help them expand this area.
If this is just you watching the video doing the exercises you can place your hands here too.
Take a slow deep breath in through your nose and allow your your hands to expand out
and then come back down. Now see if you can take it a little bit slower if you can. If you're short
of breath you might not be able to. Let's go again breathe into here breathing in through the nose
and let the air out slowly.
Good we've got one more time if you can do this. Take it slow and steady breathing in
and let the air out slowly. Obviously if you can hold that breath a little bit longer then please
do so. It's a good thing to do try to do three to five of those exercises every hour in your upright
position but I'm also now going to show you the best positions for increasing air into your
lungs and we're going to start first of all with a seated position. So if you're sitting in a chair,
if you lean forward with your forearms on your thighs that will help you and you can also combine
this with the deep breathing exercises I just showed you. You might also like to cup your chin
in your hands like this and you could breathe in that position too. Obviously
I'm sitting over the side of a bed. You should have your feet on the ground
and you'd be breathing in that manner. So that's two of your sitting positions that
you can start straight away. Let's now talk about a third sitting position that you can also use
so if you're sitting. Another nice position to relieve shortness of breath is sitting
and leaning forward. Now you can raise your elbows up over a pillow or a couple of pillows
and put your head to the side and lean forward in that position. So you might find that a little bit
higher I can feel in this position I should be a little bit higher on this bed to lean forward
and that can also relieve shortness of breath. Now if you're caught short of breath standing,
if you stand up and lean forward you can use a bent knee position or a lunge position like this
with your hands braced firmly on a kitchen bench and this will also help to breathe by
fixing your hands. It helps to open up the chest so you'll find that leaning forward
and holding on to something and practicing the deep breathing exercises that I just showed you
can help you relieve shortness of breath. If you're suffering from that symptom with Covid 19.
Now I'd like to take you through a lying down positioning routine that you can use during the
course of the day for your breathing. Ideally you should be changing your breathing position,
your resting position every one to two hours. If you can so try not to stay in the same position
and definitely don't lie down flat on your back unless you've had medical advice to do so.
Now this is the way we start. We start lying on your tummy so long as you haven't eaten in the
last half an hour or that you're not vomiting or feeling nauseous or unwell and you must also make
sure that you can actually get in and out of this position yourself. Please don't position anyone in
this position if they can't get in and out of this position themselves and basically you use a pillow
underneath your hips and you lie down. So we're going to come into lying down
over and in that position bring one arm up or both arms up if you can and you can see I've got one
leg bent out to the side and your head can come down to the side. Now I could use a folded cloth
under my head in that position and this helps to get air into the back parts of
the lungs in the bases there so it's a really useful position with Covid 19.
You could stay in that position for one to two hours if that feels tolerable. Then what you
do is you lie onto your right side. So this is where I'm going to need an extra pillow.
So coming on to the right side, pillow between the legs a pillow for the upper body and also to
a pillow for the head. So that's my right side again for one to two hours. Okay and then we come
over onto the back so coming on your back to rest. This is where you'll need your wedge remember that
we're only lying on our backs elevated or this is where you'll need to raise the bed
and you can then be resting in this position
again for one to two hours. You might find that bringing your hands over raising your hands there
is comfortable for you as well. So we've gone from our tummy to our right side over onto our
back and now we need to go on to the left side. So we're going on to the left side now. Again the
pillow between the legs and I would move the wedge which is a little bit tricky here at the moment
and then coming down into that left side lying position. And then finally to finish off that
little routine you'd come back into lying onto your tummy prone. So you can see we've gone tummy,
right side, onto the back with the bed raised, left side back down flat again
and then we finished off there. You could be then coming back onto prone or lying on your tummy.
So that's alot we've gone through isn't it. We've talked about your deep breathing exercises and the
importance of the three to five slow deep breaths here not using the chest but breathing into your
belly we've also talked about some alternative positions you can use sitting leaning forward
and also to standing resting on something and finally I've taken you through a little
guided routine that you can do lying down on the bed to increase the air entry into your lungs.
Finally I'll just mention the importance of a pulse oximeter. So you can you can access pulse
oximeters and wedges and if you get my app you can see my recommendations below this video in
the app. And a pulse oximeter is a little device that fits on the finger and it measures how much
oxygen is in your blood. These are inexpensive little devices and they're very useful.
When you're changing position your oxygen levels shouldn't decrease and you must monitor the person
for that first 15 minutes each time they change position. If they become short of breath move out
of that position straight away. So if the oxygen saturation levels drop below 92 percent then that
is a medical emergency and go to the hospital. So if you can't breathe during a short sentence
or if you notice that you're suddenly getting very short of breath within one hour or your
oxygen saturation levels drop below 92 percent, that's the sign to get medical help straight away.
So I really hope this information helps you wherever you are managing your Covid
symptoms. I'd really appreciate it if this video helps you if you could give it a like below
because then YouTube will actually notice that people are liking the video and will recommend
it to other people who are also suffering the same thing. So thank you very much for
watching today. I really wish you all the best with your recovery goodbye for now.