I still vividly remember the first time I went to a Bikram yoga class. It was a real struggle. I could barely catch my breath in the stifling heat, my sanity evaporating with every bead of sweat I produced. For what felt like an eternity, I was doing my best, following my instructor’s guidance, hanging on every word, wondering when the torture was going to end, when suddenly and unexpectedly, my world was rocked, turned upside down.
All it took was my instructor repeating a sentence she had probably said thousands of times before, “Okay, good job everyone. That concludes today’s warm up exercise. Now let’s get ready to start our session.”
I was incredulous. That was just the warm up session?!?! I’m completely gassed and we didn’t even start yet?! What the hell did I sign myself up for! I must be some kind of sadist.
Well, as it turns out there’s a reason why yoga classes start out with breathing exercises: all of the untold medical benefits they provide such as increased endurance and feeling more refreshed. And now we can add one more benefit to the list: helping our immune systems fight off the coronavirus.
As Science Alert puts it:
“Inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth. It’s not just something you do in yoga class – breathing this way actually provides a powerful medical benefit that can help the body fight viral infections.
The reason is that your nasal cavities produce the molecule nitric oxide, which chemists abbreviate NO, that increases blood flow through the lungs and boosts oxygen levels in the blood.
Breathing in through the nose delivers NO directly into the lungs, where it helps fight coronavirus infection by blocking the replication of the coronavirus in the lungs.”
Now that I know that I may need to start taking Bikram yoga again to work on my breathing technique! Then again, I basically already live in a natural Bikram yoga studio: Scottsdale, Arizona. So, maybe I’ll just stick to breathing through my nose from now on! And if you want to give yourself a better chance of surviving COVID-19 you may want to consider doing the same.
How you breathe could help you fight off COVID-19.
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