Breathing exercises for cold hands and feet? I'm gonna explain everything that
you need to know so you really get it
Hey I'm Dr. Ekberg with Wellness For Life and if you like to truly master
health by understanding how the body really works make sure that you
subscribe and hit that notification bell so that you don't miss anything. So I
recently did a video on cold hands and feet and I explained some of the basics
but then I have several people asked me about that video one in particular Theleon
who asked so what we have to do breathing exercises to improve
circulation and warm our hands and that is exactly right so we're going to dig a
little bit deeper into this so you really get the full understanding the
second question that he asked that's a great one was his cold hands and feet
something that never goes away so we're gonna answer that one as well toward the
end so make sure you stay tuned so to really understand the big picture we
have to look at some of the basics of the body how it works so first of all
yes it is the blood circulation that's going to warm your hands and feet and
your core temperature is somewhere around 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 37
degrees Celsius that's the core temperature that's the temperature of
the blood and the tissues inside your body so as the blood circulates through
the body it takes that heat with it and hands and feet they're kind of bony if
you haven't noticed they are mostly bone and connective tissue tendons they don't
really have a lot of muscles or active tissue that generate heat it's not the
fingers that work it's the muscles in the forearm so the engine sits a bit a
distance away from the fingers so because there's nothing generating heat
out here the hands are almost entirely dependent on blood circulation for that
warmth so as the blood circulates it takes the heat with it out to the
fingers so if you're sitting that's about 74 degrees let's just call
that the a good comfortable temperature now your body has enough energy it has
enough heat to keep a good steady supply of warm blood to the hands because the
your body is 98.6 the room is 74 and your body has enough energy from its
basal metabolic rate to produce enough energy to make you comfortable it
doesn't have to save energy it can freely and generously supply the hands
with warmth however if you were to sit half-naked in freezing temperatures
now that's an emergency and now your body doesn't have the resources it
doesn't have the energy to keep up with that extreme energy loss because your
body is losing heat to the environment the greater the temperature difference
the quicker you lose the heat and if it's a big difference like from 98.6 to
freezing now your body has to conserve energy because that's an emergency so
now it doesn't have the energy to freely circulate it and instead it's gonna pull
the blood back to the core to save your life because your brain and your heart
and your vital organs are more important to sustain life than your extremities
are so that's the first part to understand that yes in a warm room
you're supposed to have warm hands in a comfortable room your blood your fingers
should stay somewhere around 90 degrees give or take a few degrees that's a
comfortable normal temperature but of course then in an emergency when you
have to pull resources back your fingers aren't supposed to be warm anymore so
whether you have warm or cold fingers it does depend on the environment but in a
comfortable room it's supposed to work so now we have to look at what is it
that determines how that blood circulates and it is the autonomic
nervous system which has two branches is called a simple
pathetic or fight/flight portion of the nervous system and the parasympathetic
which is your feed breed so the sympathetic acts in emergencies and the
parasympathetic acts when we're supposed to digest have our immune system going
defend ourselves from microbe for reproduction and for healing
so the sympathetic nervous system the fight flight is constrictive it
constricts blood vessels so that makes the blood flow faster out to muscles in
an emergency but in chronic stress it also constricts to keep the blood
away from the fingers so now they get cold and this works like a seesaw
whenever it's not an on/off switch but whenever the sympathetic nervous system
increases activity the parasympathetic nervous system is going to decrease
activity so these branches of your autonomic nervous system is what
determines how much blood circulation gets into the hands so the next question
is what does breathing have to do with this it has everything to do with it
because when you breathe in your heart beats faster when you breathe out your
heart beats slower and that heart rate is also determined by your sympathetic
and your parasympathetic nervous system so when you breathe in and your heart
speeds up then that sympathetic nervous system is increasing in activity and
when you're breathing out and your heart slows down then your sympathetic is
decreasing and your parasympathetic is increasing its activity so breathing is
very tightly linked to this balance that determines your circulation so why does
the body do this is it random is it smart you bet it's really really smart
because the autonomic nervous system the sympathetic and the parasympathetic it's
a resource allocation system it prioritizes resources so when you're
sitting in the freezing cold then it's an emergency and the resources
are pulled back to save your life by keeping your vital organs alive and the
same thing happens when you're breathing that it's also a type of prioritization
that when you breathe in there is more air more oxygen in the lung for the
blood to pick up so it makes more sense to send the blood there more and faster
so your heart speeds up during an in-breath and when you breathe out there
is less oxygen in the lungs so it makes sense to slow down a little bit this way
we have we optimize the utilization of the blood so if your average heart rate
is maybe 65 then it's probably around 70 on an in-breath and about 60 on an out
breath that's a normal and good amount of heart rate variability the healthier
you are you basically the more you have so by practicing breathing you can
create a balance here because as you breathe in you fire off your
sympathetics as you breathe out you fire off your parasympathetics but the way
most people breathe is that they breathe in to fire the sympathetics and they
breathe out and then breathe in and they breathe out so they breathe out much
much too fast to allow that parasympathetic nervous system to engage
that's why the in-breath and the out-breath have to be somewhere around
four to five to six seconds to allow that parasympathetic to engage so you
can tell this immediately if you just take a slow breath in and a slow breath
out just let it out very very slowly you can notice how you relax instantly and
that's because you activate that parasympathetic nervous system and if
you practice this on a regular basis then you can start changing this balance
permanently so I would suggest that you do five or ten minutes at a time
or twice a day because doing that you're going to start creating a habit and this
is where people don't quite get how far-reaching how profound this benefit
can be and this is about the question the next question is this something that
never goes away so now we have to understand one more concept called
neuroplasticity and we have to understand that this balance and the
neuroplasticity and the brain and the cold hands and feet all of these things
relating to physiology are what we call functional something that's functional
is not structural okay a structural problem is let's say that you had a
nerve from your brain to the arm and if that nerve is completely severed let's
say in an accident now there is no function in that arm because there's a
structural lesion that wire just isn't there anymore it's been cut that's a
structural problem it isn't there but a functional problem means that the wire
is there there's a transmitter and a receiver and it's just not working at a
hundred percent it's working a little to not enough it's working not enough or
it's working too much it's out of balance that's a functional problem and
ninety-five percent or so of all the problems people have basically anything
except accidents are functional problems they're not structural problems so cold
hands and feets and digestive issues and diabetes etc they're all functional
problems they're the parts are there they're just not doing exactly what
they're supposed to in a good balance so that's what functional is and
neuroplasticity that's the brain's ability to change to
manage all of this so everything that you do everything that you learn you
learn how to walk you learn how to talk you learn how to catch a ball you write
a certain way you prefer one hand over the other those are all habits and as a
result of those Abbot's you have developed a certain
pattern in your brain but thanks to neuroplasticity thanks to the ability of
the brain to change and rewire you can change habits so having cold hands and
feet having an overactive sympathetic nervous system is a habit you have done
more things in your life to trigger sympathetic things then you have to
trigger parasympathetic things and that's not too hard in our day and age
because we have chemical structural and emotional stresses so anything that gets
your tense or frustrated or overwhelmed or angry or irritated is going to
trigger a sympathetic response and once we get so used to this that we don't
even notice now it's a chronic habit it's just kind of there in the
background it's we think that's normal because we had so much of it for so long
but we can change this thanks to neuroplasticity so here's how that works
the brain is like a muscle and whatever part you work out more
the stronger those parts are going to get so if you were to have you have two
arms if you were to workout one arm only that one would grow bigger than the one
you didn't work out if you were to hurt your arm and put it in a cast then after
two months when the cast comes off then that muscle is atrophied the same
principles work for the brain because the things that you use more grow
stronger the things you use less grow weaker and in the case of the brain it's
not muscle work obviously but it's brain work which means signals receiving and
transmitting and that's what manages your sympathetic and your
parasympathetic nervous system so anytime that you fire off more
sympathetic you make that part stronger anytime you fire off more
parasympathetic you make that stronger so now if we start breathing on a
regular basis if we breathe in for five seconds we fire
sympathetics we breathe out for five seconds we fire parasympathetics we're
bringing them back into balance we're paying attention we create a conscious
pattern to balance these things so if you do this once then it's like taking
one piano lesson you're not going to be a concert pianist it's like trying
practicing writing with your non favorite hand once you're not going to
get very good at it you're not going to create a habit but if you do it once or
twice a day for weeks and months and you keep this up for six nine twelve months
now you are slowly rewiring you're slowly changing the habits and thanks to
neuroplasticity there's really no limit to this your brain is only there to
process your lifestyle so if you change your lifestyle your brain will change to
accommodate the new lifestyle that's the beauty of this how long is it going to
take no one knows some people might have just
a little bit of sympathetic dominance to to chip away at they might have
tremendous results in a couple of weeks other people might be so stuck so to
speak have such a strong dominance and have an inflexible nervous system that
they might have to go three to six months to even notice a change and this
is where it gets frustrating because we have this quick mindset we have this
instant gratification give me a pill and change something but it doesn't work
like that with functional issues it doesn't work like that with with
physiology sure you may be able to create some change immediately during
the time that you're breathing but it might take months to create a new habit
a new pattern in your nervous system I couldn't say tell you how long it would
take but I can tell you that it would be worth it no matter how long it takes if
it takes a year before you start noticing tremendous changes then wasn't
it worth that year a few minutes feeling relaxed every day to get a
completely different health picture okay I would say that's worth it
how long does it last again we have to understand their plasticity it's in
constant motion it's constantly changing it's never sitting still it's always
processing your lifestyle so it's gonna last as long as you keep this in balance
if you breathe for a while you get great changes your rack and relaxed your
practice meditation you do all these different things to balance out your
autonomic nervous system and your relaxation state but you still live in a
stressful world you still have a stressful job you still have traffic you
still watch the news you still have have noise and chaos around you well then
it's gonna last as long as you do these exercises but if you find a lifestyle
that sort of balances itself then you may not have to do as much in the long
run but once you get to doing it you probably notice that it feels so good
that you don't want to stop and the last thing I want to say about this is the
most important of all and this is the parasympathetic nervous system doesn't
just handle vasodilation so getting warm hands and feet is not the primary
benefit your parasympathetic regulates and controls your digestion your immune
system your reproduction and your healing so are these things that you see
a lot of problems with do people have digestive problems do people get a lot
of heartburn you see a lot of ads for antacids and and proton blockers do
people get a lot of colds and flues do you see a lot of ads for for cold
medications do you see a lot of ads for get your flu shot you betcha
reproductive issues and now we're not just talking the ability to reproduce
but fertility we're talking libido we're talking erectile dysfunction so again
these are huge huge huge issues because people are not doing so well their
stress is shutting down there parasympathetic nervous
system and we're operating on a fraction of our healing capacity so the
temperature of your hands is just the tip of the iceberg so to speak because
the true benefits lies in the fact that once you work on this and get good at it
and you change your neuroplasticity and you get a better balance a better
homeostasis it starts affecting all kinds of things if we don't understand
the bigger picture we don't see how far-reaching it is then we may not stick
with it so thank you so much for watching share this video when as many
people as you can because this is life-saving stuff and if you have any
comments or questions for future videos or this one please let me know I'll do
my very best to address those as well thanks for watching