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Dental disease became rampant, and the incidence of crooked teeth and jaws increased tenfold in the Industrial Age.
About three-quarters of modern humans have a deviated septum clearly visible to the naked eye, which means the bone and cartilage that separate the right and left airways of the nose are off center.
For me and the majority of the population, the best medicine, Gelb said, is preventative. It involves reversing the entropy in our airways so that we can avoid sleep apnea, anxiety, and all the chronic respiratory problems as we grow older. It involves expanding the too-small mouth. • • •
the first step to improving airway obstruction wasn’t orthodontics but instead involved maintaining correct “oral posture.” Anyone could do this, and it was free.
In January 2018, Mike uploaded a YouTube video warning Zuckerberg that he was going to die ten years early if he didn’t correct his cranial dystrophy posture.
Unlike other bones in the body, the bone that makes up the center of the face, called the maxilla, is made of a membrane bone that’s highly plastic.
Chewing. The more we gnaw, the more stem cells release, the more bone density and growth we’ll trigger, the younger we’ll look and the better we’ll breathe.
The more time infants spent chewing and sucking, the more developed their faces and airways would become, and the better they’d breathe later in life.
our noses and mouths are not predetermined at birth, childhood, or even in adulthood. We can reverse the clock on much of the damage that’s been done in the past few hundred years by force of will, with nothing more than proper posture, hard chewing,
Naropa harnessed the power of his breath to keep himself from freezing to death. The practice became known as Tummo, the Tibetan word for “inner fire.”
Navy SEALs use Tummo-style breathing to get into the zone before a competition or black ops mission. It’s also especially useful for middle-aged people who suffer from lower-grade stress, aches and pains, and slowing metabolisms. For them—for me—Tummo can be a preventative therapy, a way to get a fraying nervous system back on track and keep it there.
the vagus nerve, a meandering network within the system that connects to all the major internal organs. The vagus nerve is the power lever; it’s what turns organs on and off in response to stress.
To some researchers, it’s no coincidence that eight of the top ten most common cancers affect organs cut off from normal blood flow during extended states of stress.
This practice of heavy breathing along with regular cold exposure was later discovered to release the stress hormones adrenaline, cortisol, and norepinephrine on command. The burst of adrenaline gave heavy breathers energy and released a battery of immune cells programmed to heal wounds, fight off pathogens and infection.
Tummo heated the body and opened up the brain’s pharmacy,
In simple terms, these diseases are the result of an immune system that goes rogue and starts attacking healthy tissues. Joints become inflamed, muscles and nerve fibers waste away, rashes cover the skin. These ailments go by many names: rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, Hashimoto’s disease, type 1 diabetes.
Autoimmune disease definìtion
Men, mainly in their 20s, who’d suddenly been diagnosed with arthritis and psoriasis or depression, who, weeks after practicing heavy breathing, no longer suffered any symptoms.
Here’s the information: To practice Wim Hof’s breathing method, start by finding a quiet place and lying flat on your back with a pillow under your head. Relax the shoulders, chest, and legs. Take a very deep breath into the pit of your stomach and let it back out just as quickly. Keep breathing this way for 30 cycles. If possible, breathe through the nose; if the nose feels obstructed, try pursed lips. Each breath should look like a wave, with the inhale inflating the stomach, then the chest. You should exhale all the air out in the same order.
At the end of 30 breaths, exhale to the natural conclusion, leaving about a quarter of the air left in the lungs, then hold that breath for as long as possible. Once you’ve reached your breathhold limit, take one huge inhale and hold it another 15 seconds. Very gently, move that fresh breath of air around the chest and to the shoulders, then exhale and start the heavy breathing again. Repeat the whole pattern three or four rounds and add in some cold exposure (cold shower, ice bath, naked snow angels) a few times a week.
This flip-flopping—breathing all-out, then not at all, getting really cold and then hot again—is the key to Tummo’s magic. It forces the body into high stress one minute, a state of extreme relaxation the next. Carbon dioxide levels in the blood crash, then they build back up. Tissues become oxygen deficient and then flooded again. The body becomes more adaptable and flexible and learns that all these physiological responses can ...
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“[Tummo] is for the reconstitution of man’s immune system,” Daubard proclaimed. “It’s a fabulous way for the future of man’s health.”
Whenever the body is forced to take in more air than it needs, we’ll exhale too much carbon dioxide, which will narrow the blood vessels and decrease circulation, especially in the brain. With just a few minutes, or even seconds, of overbreathing, brain blood flow can decrease by 40 percent, an incredible amount.
A Book on Breath by the Master Great Nothing of Sung-Shan, offered this advice: Lie down every day, pacify your mind, cut off thoughts and block the breath. Close your fists, inhale through your nose, and exhale through your mouth. Do not let the breathing be audible. Let it be most subtle and fine. When the breath is full, block it. The blocking (of the breath) will make the soles of your feet perspire. Count one hundred times “one and two.” After blocking the breath to the extreme, exhale it subtly. Inhale a little more and block (the breath) again. If (you feel) hot, exhale with “Ho.” If
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Chesney told me that the habit, also known as “email apnea,” can contribute to the same maladies as sleep apnea.
Humans “rust” as well. As the cells in our bodies lose the ability to attract oxygen,
But we don’t call this “tissue rust.” We call it cancer.
Breathing slow, less, and through the nose balances the levels of respiratory gases in the body and sends the maximum amount of oxygen to the maximum amount of tissues so that our cells have the maximum amount of electron reactivity.
“Concentrate on just one fluid movement from inhale to exhale,”
Modern medicine, they said, was amazingly efficient at cutting out and stitching up parts of the body in emergencies, but sadly deficient at treating milder, chronic systemic maladies—the asthma, headaches, stress, and autoimmune issues that most of the modern population contends with.
30 pounds of air that passes through our lungs every day and that 1.7 pounds of oxygen our cells consume is as important as what we eat or how much we exercise.
“If I had to limit my advice on healthier living to just one tip, it would be simply to learn how to breathe better,” wrote Andrew Weil, the famed doctor.
By night, the constant flow of unpressurized, unfiltered air flowing in and out of our gaping mouths collapsed the soft tissue in our throats to such an extent that we both began to experience persistent nocturnal suffocation. We snored.
The few gasping breaths Stephen Curry takes before dunking a basketball, or a sick kid huffs when he has a fever, or you take in when you’re laughing with your friends—this temporary mouthbreathing will have no long-term effects on health. Chronic mouthbreathing is different. The body is not designed to process raw air for hours at a time, day or night. There is nothing normal about it.
Carl Stough spent a half century reminding his students of how to get all the air out of our bodies so that we could take more in. He trained his clients to exhale longer and, in the process, do what had long been considered biologically impossible.
As basic as this sounds, full exhalations are seldom practiced.
Your diet should consist of the rougher, rawer, and heartier foods our great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers ate.
The perfect breath is this: Breathe in for about 5.5 seconds, then exhale for 5.5 seconds. That’s 5.5 breaths a minute for a total of about 5.5 liters of air. You can practice this perfect breathing for a few minutes, or a few hours. There is no such thing as having too much peak efficiency in your body.
Hard chewing builds new bone in the face and opens airways.
Box Breathing Navy SEALs use this technique to stay calm and focused in tense situations. It’s simple. Inhale to a count of 4; hold 4; exhale 4; hold 4. Repeat. Longer exhalations will elicit a stronger parasympathetic response. A variation of Box Breathing to more deeply relax the body that’s especially effective before sleeping is as follows: Inhale to a count of 4; hold 4; exhale 6; hold 2. Repeat. Try at least six rounds, more if necessary.
4-7-8 Breathing This technique, made famous by Dr. Andrew Weil, places the body into a state of deep relaxation. I use it on long flights to help fall asleep. Take a breath in, then exhale through your mouth with a whoosh sound. Close the mouth and inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of four. Hold for a count of seven. Exhale completely through your mouth, with a whoosh, to the count of eight. Repeat this cycle for at least four breaths. Weil offers a step-by-step instructional on YouTube, which has been viewed more than four million times.
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When we don’t breathe out completely, these toxins sit in the lungs and fester, causing infections and other problems.
overbreathing can also cause calcium levels to drop in your blood, which can result in numbness and tingling, muscle spasms, cramps, and twitching.
In 2014, Hof took a group of 26 random people, aged 29 to 65, up Mount Kilimanjaro. Many in the group suffered from asthma, rheumatism, Crohn’s, and other autoimmune dysfunctions. He taught them his version of Tummo breathing, exposed them to periodic bouts of extreme cold, then hiked 19,300 feet to the top of Africa’s tallest mountain. Oxygen levels at the top are half of what they are at sea level. The success rate of experienced climbers is about 50 percent. Twenty-four of Hof’s students, including those with autoimmune disorders, made it to the summit in 48 hours. Half the group ascended
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Turkish gum called Falim, which came in flavors like carbonate and mint grass.
