Stuff I Learned #7

-
The Respiratory Pump
The heart serves as a pump for the blood, though this pump is inadequate to get all the blood from your legs back up to your heart/lungs to be refreshed. If you've ever found your calves and ankles swollen after sitting for awhile, you've had the firsthand experience of how the heart cannot lift the blood up and out of the legs by itself. Besides the heart, what returns this depleted blood back to the heart?

For a long time, it was thought that the contraction of skeletal muscles was the primary helper in pushing the depleted blood back to the heart. While it's true that the rhythmic contraction of skeletal muscle does push blood upstream and back to the heart, the rise and fall of the diaphragm is also a  significant contributor in pumping depleted blood back to the heart. In fact, UW researchers have recently published a report that the respiratory pump may actually return more blood to the heart than the skeletal muscle does!

So, what does this have to do with anything? The respiratory pump functions in the presence of diaphragmatic breathing. And diaphragmatic breathing is generally considered a go-to technique within the oeuvre of yoga practice.

In a blog posting I wrote more than 6-years ago, I discussed how the diaphragm moves during breathing, and common ways that its movement goes awry. In addition to the many benefits of healthy, diaphragmatic breathing on the autonomic nervous system, now it appears as though there are also direct benefits for the circulatory system, too!

Have a great week, and happy breathing!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

You have lots of... things

-
Image
The hearse pulled into my family’s driveway at the appointed hour. My parents mentioned that an artist was stopping by, though I had no idea the artist’s entrance would imprint so indelibly in my mind. From his ginormous, black hearse, to the wild hair and beard, this man-in-black was the antithesis of the early-1970s, suburban world that I inhabited. My adoptive parents were thoroughly suburban. We had lots of stuff, and hungered for the stuff that we didn’t have. I thought nothing of this – it’s how all my friends and I lived. With one sentence, however, the artist showed me another view of all this stuff, initiating a conflicted relationship with stuff that I’ve been working with for 50+ years. Repurposed hearses are really big station wagons that can haul lots of things. As he entered our house, he hesitantly said “You have lots of… things .” The pause on “things” was pregnant with meaning, and even though I was scarcely of school-age, I grokked the layered meanings implied by the
Read more

Sweets and Your Mitochondria

-
Image
The vitality of your cellular mitochondria are a significant predictor of your health. To support your overall health, it's best to avoid low-fiber foods that are sweet. Fruit is sweet, though is generally high in fiber. A donut, on the other hand, is low in fiber and sweet. The metabolic pathways of each are significantly different, and interact with enzymes in your liver in very different ways. This plant-based donut did not check the whole-foods box Metabolic health is your mitochondria working at peak efficiency, and your liver is a mitochondria factory. When you eat low-fiber foods that are sweet, the AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) in your liver isn't able to bond with the receptors that initiate the production of healthy mitochondria. While your tissues may be crying out for refreshed mitochondria, the factory doors are locked when you consume low-fiber, sweet food. Not all sweet food is created equal - there are many types of sugars, such as sucrose, fructose, lac
Read more

Worklife Bardo

-
Image
  I’m currently parked in a Bardo. What, you may ask, is a Bardo? According to meditation teacher Andrew Holecek, the Tibetan word “Bardo” is translated as “gap, interval, intermediate state, transition process or in between…” The next chapter of life has yet to be written, and the final page of the previous chapter has been turned. Last month I graduated – a milestone I eagerly anticipated since my first day of grad school, nearly seven years ago. While I (mostly) appreciated the process of earning the Ph.D., I never lost sight of the goal. I was not in grad school for the sake of being in grad school – I consistently had a sense of purpose… almost a mission. Interestingly, that mission took multiple twists and turns throughout the duration of the process. Now that the final page on the grad-school chapter has been turned, the first pages of the next chapter aren’t what I expected. The various twists and turns appeared to lead into a long hallway. Like MIT’s Infinite Corridor , this h
Read more