Knowing how to keep lungs healthy is important to ensure overall health. This article tells you 5 things you can do right if you’re interested in how to keep your lungs healthy.
Hold your breath for more than 2 minutes and you’ll quickly realise how important your lungs are. Yet, because breathing is such a natural activity that not many of us are bothered about learning how to keep lungs healthy.
If you’re unlike the unbothered majority and are now wondering how to keep your lungs healthy, then here are 5 things you can do right now to ensure that you continue breathing well:
How to keep lungs healthy #1: Exercise
When learning about how to keep lungs healthy, you’ll find that many experts agree exercise plays an important role.
According to the American Lung Association, physical activity encourages our heart and lungs to work harder in order to supply additional oxygen to our muscles.
“As your physical fitness improves, your body becomes more efficient at getting oxygen into the bloodstream and transporting it to the working muscles. That's one of the reasons that you are less likely to become short of breath during exercise over time.” (1)
#2: Drink green tea
A study published in the Journal of Nutrition lending more information on how to keep lungs healthy found that the incidence of chronic obstructive lung disease decreased from 14.1% to 5.9% after study participants went from never drinking green tea to drinking it two or more times a day. (2)
If you’re interested in how to keep your lungs healthy, the benefits of drinking green tea should not be ignored.
#3: Diaphragmatic breathing
While jogging and other related exercises can do wonders in your journey on how to keep your lungs healthy, there are also simple breathing exercises which you can do from the comfort of your own home. One such breathing exercise is known as diaphragmatic breathing.
According to the Rush University System for Health’s director of respiratory therapy Keith Roberts, diaphragmatic breathing uses the awareness of the diaphragm muscle, which separates the organs in the abdomen from the lungs. (4)
"By concentrating on lowering the diaphragm as you breathe in, you'll get a much deeper inhale,” he says.
There is also much more readily available information online on other types of breathing techniques if you want to learn how to keep lungs healthy.
How to keep lungs healthy naturally #4: Perform controlled coughing
The Cleveland Clinic recommends controlled coughing as a method to loosen and carry mucus through our airways. The issue with uncontrolled coughing is that it causes airways to collapse and spasm, trapping mucus. (3)
So, while this article hopes to inform you how to keep lungs healthy, it wouldn’t be complete without also sharing how to perform the controlled cough. Here’s Cleveland Clinic’s instructions:
- Sit with both feet on the floor. Lean slightly forward. Relax.
- Fold your arms across your abdomen and breathe in slowly through your nose.
- To exhale: lean forward, pressing your arms against your abdomen. Cough 2 to 3 times through a slightly open mouth. Coughs should be short and sharp. The first cough loosens the mucus and moves it through the airways. The second and third cough enables you to cough the mucus up and out.
- Breathe in again by "sniffing" slowly and gently through your nose. This gentle breath helps prevent mucus from moving back down your airways.
- Rest
- Perform again if needed.
Having lungs full of mucus is counterproductive to the journey of how to keep your lungs healthy. So practice controlled coughing whenever you need to.
How to keep your lungs healthy #5: Use an air purifier
It goes without saying that one of the biggest hindrances to healthy lungs is healthy air. Which means learning how to keep lungs healthy requires that you also learn how to reduce your exposure to air pollution.
Pulmonologist Dr Rachel Taliercio from the Cleveland Clinic says that air purifiers do indeed help you keep your lungs healthy. (5)
“By filtering out fine particles, purifiers help clean the air you breathe and lessen the potential negative effects of pollution,” she says.
All you need is a well-functioning air purifier that filters pollutants, viruses, and contaminants. Better yet a portable one like #QuairPlasmaMini, one you can bring with you anywhere, anytime.
This smart air purifier comes with a bonus feature - Bipolar Ionization Technology that is able to emit charged ions into the air that latch onto airborne contaminants and pollutants, and remove them!
As a result, it will neutralize the air, and render out any contaminants and pollutants. Read more about it here.
Being able to breathe is the most basic of human needs. Therefore, keeping your lungs healthy should be a knowledge everyone should learn for a better overall health, as well as quality of life. Hopefully these 5 tips will encourage you to take a closer look at how well your lungs are functioning.
References
- https://www.lung.org/lung-health-diseases/wellness/exercise-and-lung-health
- https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/148/1/70/4774510?login=true
- https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/8697-coughing-controlled-coughing
- https://www.rush.edu/news/8-tips-healthy-lungs
- https://health.clevelandclinic.org/can-air-purifiers-improve-lung-heart-health/