Recently I have become a huge fan of Dr Phil. I hit a point a few weeks ago during my caffeine withdrawals where i needed some inspiration. I was really in a dark place reflecting on my life and all the things I want to do.
I needed help. So I start searching. I then started listening to a Joe Rogan podcast with Dr Phil and I was attracted immediately to what he was saying.
I found his podcast Phil in the Blanks and I am hooked to hearing his southern drawl and amazing information. In particular he has a series called Living by Design.
If you need to make some changes in life. This is a great place to start. He will help with your mental chatter and he can give you tools to restart and get your life moving in the direction you want it to go. Give it a try… what do you have to lose?
I have been dealing with anxiety and racing thoughts for at least 16 years now. Around the age of 22 I was prescribed anti-depression/anti-anxiety medications. I hated them, I did not like being a zombie. The withdrawals when you try to get off of them were even worst. I wound up taking about 4 different medications for a little over a year before deciding to get off medications completely and search for better answers.
Since then its been up and down for many years trying to figure things out. Most of the time I feel great, but from time to time I can really let my mind wander and its causes anxiety to flare up. So what do we do about it? Its time to fight back and take control little by little.
As I would read and research I remember there was always an article that would pop up mentioning “breathing” or “regulating your breathing” or “learn to meditate”. Finally it sunk in… Why is there always a recommendation to learn how to breath to reduce anxiety and why is learning how to breath so important?
Quick Answers During a panic attack normally caused from anxiety, we over breath or hyperventilate causing a flood of oxygen into our system. This overflow of oxygen along with quick shallow breathing will trigger our panic receptors. Breathing properly or using breathing techniques can help us regulate our heart rate and allow our body’s to relax.
Long Answers Most people aren’t really conscious of the way they’re breathing, but generally, there are two types of breathing patterns:
Chest (Thoracic) breathing
Belly (Diaphragm/Abdominal) breathing
Chest Breathing When we are anxious or experiencing a panic attack we tend to take rapid, shallow breaths that come directly from the chest. This area of the upper chest is where the panic receptors live. This type of breathing is called thoracic or chest breathing.
Belly Breathing This is when the inhale of your breath causes the belly to stick out rounded. Then as you exhale the belly goes to a normal resting position. The diaphragm is where your calming receptors are located so our belly breathing tells your body to calm down. The more we exercise this diaphragm area the better and more effective your breathing will be when we need it.
There are many other benefits that belly breathing can have such as:
It helps you relax, lowering the harmful effects of the stress hormone cortisol on your body.
It lowers your heart rate.
It helps lower your blood pressure.
It strengthens the diaphragm and lungs.
It improves your core muscle stability.
It improves your body’s ability to tolerate intense exercise.
It allows air/oxygen to fill other deeper spaces of your lungs
It slows your rate of breathing so that it expends less energy.
It reduces stress
It is a basic meditation breathing pattern
How to Belly Breath
Try This Test Let see where you are breathing from, the chest or the tummy. Put your left hand on your chest and your right hand on your belly, which is just below your rib cage above your belly button. Then breathe how you normally would breathe. Are you breathing from the chest are or you breathing correctly from your diaphragm.
Why is it important to strengthen the lungs? If we look at a photo of your heart we can notice that our heart has a direct connection to the lungs. This is something unique to our system, no other organ has a direct connection to the heart. Just looking at that photo says “bad lungs bad heart”. Also in Eastern medicine if the lungs are unhealthy it will overflow to the liver.
Your First Breathing Exercise This video below is Wim Hof and he is a master of breathing. If you can learn this breathing technique, I think it will change the way you feel about breathing exercises. It is extremely powerful and can cause you to pass out so be careful and lay down when attempting for your first few tries. Its very intense and its proven to create an Alkaline environment inside your body from all the oxygen you will bring in. You will be left feeling charged and renewed. Its hard work, but its worth it.
Learn from the master himself Wim Hof
Tummo (Fire) Breathing http://anthonyernst.com/tummo-breathing/ See the video below this paragraph or use the above link. Tummo is a little more advanced version of the video above. It shows how to sink your breath into your diaphragm. This in my favorite technique and its has been a huge relief for me when I’m experiencing anxiety. I will go between the basic Wim Hoff breathing and Tummo breathing on a daily basis.
Some Philosophy Dr Phil said somewhere that if you keep taking withdrawals from your bank and never put in any deposits… you will find your self broke. Same goes for your body, if you are not depositing or investing into your body and all you do is take withdrawals… One day your body will be broke. Breathing exercises strengthens the lungs and energizes your body to be more under your control. Learning how to work our bodies and unlock its potentials.
One interesting belief in Eastern Medicine is that you only get so many breaths in our lifetime. The more control we have over that expenditure the better we can control of our thoughts.
My Opinions Mastering your Anxious mind… The cure isn’t overnight and its not going to be easy. It’s going to take an accumulation of changes that then result as the reward. Actions create results. Good Actions = Good Results.
If you want to make a difference in your life, don’t do the same things you did yesterday that caused failure. Today we push ourselves to do the things that might have been once considered too difficult. Overcome and adapt, don’t sit and wait for the fix, get off the couch and find happiness.
I do believe that breathing and breathing exercises are one of the keys to solving your anxious mind. Stop looking to the future and live now in this moment. Comfort is addicting, get uncomfortable and explore who you are and experience why we feel certain ways. Breathing will allow you to relax, work on your health and be a better more focused human in life. Lets do this.
More Info and Breathing Technique Resources:
He has trained Jiu Jitsu under Master Rickson Gracie
Claims that cannabis use is associated with lower cognitive functioning are largely based upon the findings of a single longitudinal study. The paper, published by Madeline Meier and a team of Duke University researchers in 2012, reported that the onset of cannabis use in early adolescence was associated with an average decline of eight IQ points by middle-age.
However, a critique of Meier’s study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
opined that the reported differences in IQ were consistent with
socioeconomic differences among the study’s participants and likely were
not attributable to marijuana use. (This criticism is hardly surprising
as data has historically shown
that those of greater economic means tend to test higher on IQ tests
than those who are poorer, and critics have also raised questions as to
whether the test itself may possess inherent racial biases.) It countered
that the Duke team likely “overestimate[d]” the impact of marijuana on
IQ and opined that the “true effect [of cannabis exposure] could be
zero.”
This criticism is given additional merit by the fact that several
later and better controlled studies have failed to replicate Meier’s
initial findings. For example, a British study of more than 2,000 teens reported
that cannabis exposure prior to the age of 15 “did not predict either
lower teenage IQ scores or poorer educational performance … once
adjustment is made for potential confounds.”
Researchers at the University
of Southern California, Los Angeles, and at the University of Minnesota
similarly assessed the potential relationship between cannabis and IQ in
two longitudinal investigations of adolescent twins. They reported:
“We find little evidence to suggest that adolescent marijuana use has a
direct effect on intellectual decline…. The lack of a dose–response
relationship, and an absence of meaningful differences between
discordant siblings lead us to conclude that the deficits observed in
marijuana users are attributable to confounding factors that influence
both substance initiation and IQ rather than a neurotoxic effect of
marijuana.”
In fact, even Meier appears to concede this point in her later work. Writing in the journal Addiction in 2018, she and her colleagues acknowledged:
“Short-term cannabis use in adolescence does not appear to cause IQ
decline or impair executive functions, even when cannabis use reaches
the level of dependence. Family background factors explain why
adolescent cannabis users perform worse on IQ and executive function
tests.”
Most recently, a new study published in The Lancet being widely publicized this week claims
that an estimated 30 to 50 percent of psychosis cases in Europe are due
to cannabis exposure. However, this study does not establish causation,
nor could it because of the observational nature of its design. In
fact, the authors clearly state in the abstract that they are “assuming
causality.” Given the fact that such a cause-and-effect relationship is
yet unproven and there is no consensus among experts that such
causation exists, this would appear to be a troubling leap for the
authors to take and it should not go unnoticed. Moreover, it is well
established that those with psychiatric illness typically use all
intoxicants at greater rates than the general public, so the fact
that those admitted to institutions for first-episode psychosis are
more likely to consume cannabis than are those in the general population
is hardly surprising. But it is not evidence that marijuana in any way
causes the condition. Finally, the fact that cannabis has been
used by various populations for decades at disparate rates, yet rates of
psychosis and other psychiatric disorders have generally remained static over this same period of time, strongly argues against a direct causal relationship.
The Developing Brain
While the use of alcohol has been unequivocally associated with
deleterious effects on brain morphology in both adults and adolescents,
claims that cannabis exposure significantly damages the developing brain
are far less persuasive.
Specifically, a team of University of Colorado investigators in 2017
assessed the impact of marijuana exposure and alcohol ingestion on brain
structure in groups of adults and adolescents. They reported
that, “Alcohol use severity is associated with widespread lower grey
matter volume and white matter integrity in adults, and with lower grey
matter volume in adolescents.” (Changes in white matter are associated
with the onset of certain neurodegenerative diseases while grey matter
contains most of the brain’s neurons.) By contrast, “no associations
were observed between structural measures and past 30-day cannabis use
in adults or adolescents.”
In 2018, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, Perlman
School of Medicine performed a systematic review of 69 studies
(published between the years 1973 and 2017) assessing the relationship
between adolescent cannabis use and cognition. Researchers reported no
significant long-term deficits in memory, attention or other aspects of
cognitive functioning that could be independently attributed to cannabis
use, regardless of subjects’ age of initiation.
They concluded
that, “Associations between cannabis use and cognitive functioning in
cross-sectional studies of adolescents and young adults are small and
may be of questionable clinical importance for most individuals….
[R]esults indicate that previous studies of cannabis in youth may have
overstated the magnitude and persistence of cognitive deficits
associated with [marijuana] use.”
Most recently, University of Pennsylvania researchers compared brain
scans of adolescents who used cannabis occasionally (one to two times
per week) and frequently (more than three times per week) versus matched
controls (similarly aged teens who abstained from the plant). They concluded,
“There were no significant differences by cannabis group in global or
regional brain volumes, cortical thickness, or gray matter density, and
no significant group by age interactions were found…. In sum, structural
brain metrics were largely similar among adolescent and young adult
cannabis users and non-users.”
Long-Term Exposure
While some have theorized that marijuana exposure over the long term
may be associated with an adverse impact on the brain, clinical
assessments of frequent cannabis consumers challenge concerns. For
instance, cumulative lifetime cannabis exposure is not associated with deficits in cognitive performance following drug abstinence.
Long-term exposure is also not associated with changes in working memory. In a 2015 Canadian clinical trial
assessing the safety of daily cannabis consumption, users demonstrated
no identifiable differences in neurocognitive skills compared to
non-using controls. These findings were similar to those of a U.S. trial
assessing the health of four Compassionate IND patients (federally authorized medical marijuana consumers) who had smoked cannabis daily for a period of up to 27 years. Authors concluded that, “No consistent or attributable neuropsychological or neurological deterioration has been observed.”
Most recently, University of Colorado scientists compared magnetic
resonance imaging scans in 28 cannabis users over the age of 60 versus
matched controls. Cannabis-consuming participants in the study, on
average, had used marijuana weekly for 24 years. The authors reported
that long-term cannabis exposure “does not have a widespread impact on
overall cortical volumes while controlling for age” despite over two
decades of regular cannabis use on average. This is in contrast to the
large, widespread effects of alcohol on cortical volumes that might be
expected to negatively impact cognitive performance.
Facts, Not Fears, Should Guide Marijuana Policy
An estimated one out of five Americans now resides in a jurisdiction
where the adult use of cannabis is legally regulated, while more than 30
states have enacted statutes authorizing its medical access. Public
support for marijuana policy reform has also steadily increased over the
past decade, and now two out of three Americans endorse
cannabis legalization. It is time for politicians to reject the
unsubstantiated “reefer rhetoric” and fear-mongering of the past and
move forward to amend U.S. cannabis laws in response to the emerging
science, public opinion and the plant’s rapidly changing cultural
status.
Editor’s note: This article was updated on March
20, 2019, to address a study that estimates 30-50 percent of psychosis
cases in Europe are due to cannabis exposure.
