Page 200 - Wasserstoff Medizin

parasympathetic nervous system activity – the relax, recuperate, regenerate system –
which calms people down.

Vagus Nerve

Breathing retraining increases vagal nerve tone. The vagus nerve is the primary pacifying
nerve in the body. Increased vagus nerve tone activates parts of the body that need
activating and quells the parts that need to be relaxed.

Dr. Fred Muench said, “The breath’s effects on the vagus occur primarily during
exhalation. During exhalation, your heart rate decelerates and during that period of
deceleration, the vagus becomes active. Shallow, rapid breathing patterns inhibit the
vagus because the period of vagal activity is too short and the nerve does not have time
to pacify the other nerves that it touches. It really is a simple mechanism. By slowing
down your breathing, you create more vagal activity, accentuating its relaxing and
regenerating effects.” With devices such as the Frovlov we can train our self to decelerate
our breathing through prolonging our exhalation.

In the beginning, one can take deep breaths, the secret is to unlock your diaphragm and
return to the way you breathed when you were born. For total beginners in conscious
breathing this is difficult because the diaphragm is frozen. When we close our hearts and
feelings of vulnerability, we tend to stop breathing with the diaphragm.

Conscious Breathing and its Effect on the Heart

According to yoga, energy flows more freely through the heart when we breathe into it
and focus our attention on that area – energy flows where attention goes. Breathing is
directly linked to and directly affects the heart. The regular practice of diaphragmatic
breathing significantly improves heart rate variability and coherence. All dynamics of the
heart are improved when we breathe correctly. The more a person improves their heart
rate variability (HRV) the healthier they become. This is good for ischemic heart patients
who have diabetes. xxxi Heart rate variability is indispensable in distinguishing healthy
subjects from patients with cardiovascular disease.

Heart rate variability (HRV) is an indicator of the cardiac autonomic control. Yogic, or
what is known as belly breathing (deep abdominal breathing vs. shallow rib cage
breathing), modifies the autonomic status by increasing sympathetic activity (reduced
vagal activity). Its uncanny how accurately low HRV scores and trends align with illness.

HRV is a more useful psychophysiological measure than heart rate alone. The heart rate
is controlled by neural as well as other factors. Hence, a decrease in heart rate may be
related to an increase in vagal tone, a decrease in cardiac sympathetic activity, as well as
other, non-autonomic factors. Heart rate variability (HRV) spectrum is indicative of beat-
to-beat autonomic control. xxxii

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