hello syber siblings!

since shallow breathing tends to become a habit with us parkies
this might be especially relevant for us

janet

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Take a deep, relaxing breath -- you may lose a few pounds
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Copyright 1997 Nando.net             Copyright 1997 N.Y. Times News Service

(July 31, 1997 00:51 a.m. EDT) -- Think you know the latest trend in health
and fitness? Don't hold your breath. It's -- gasp! -- breathing.

Olympic athletes are hiring breathing coaches. Californians are filling
their lungs at trendy Hollywood "oxygen bars." In fact, the marketing of
breathing is so hot, "GQ" magazine called it "the Hula-Hoop of the '90s."

The latest?

A new book that says you can actually lose weight -- just by breathing.

The book, Jump Start Your Metabolism With the Power of Breath, was written
by Merriam, Kan., author and breathing coach Pam Grout. Grout said she lost
10 pounds in three weeks without even trying, simply by starting a series
of breathing exercises. Her book includes a variety of breathing exercises
that she calls energy cocktails.

"The last thing I was trying to do was lose weight," Grout said. "I was
just trying to cope. But then I lost 10 pounds and had all this energy. And
I thought, 'This is really interesting.' "

Grout researched breathing. Studied it. Became a coach. Now her
self-published book (which was just picked up by Simon & Schuster) has been
getting national exposure. Besides appearing on several national television
talk shows, including "Crook & Chase," she's had her book mentioned in
several major magazines.

Hold on.

Breathing books? Breathing bars? Breathing coaches?

Don't we already know how to breathe?

Not as well as we think, Grout said.

"Nine out of 10 people are not getting the full capacity that they could,"
Grout said. "Our lungs are capable of holding a couple of gallons of oxygen
per breath, but we're settling for only a couple pints."

Even when we take "deep breaths," she said, we're usually just taking the
oxygen into our chests, not deep down toward our bellies where we really
need it most.

(To see if you are breathing properly, Grout suggests the belly breath
test. Lie down. Put one book on your belly and another on your chest. Take
a breath. If the book on your chest rises higher than the one on your
belly, you're not breathing as effectively as you could.)

Such shallow breathing, Grout says, impoverishes our cells, slows our
metabolism and leads to a variety of health consequences. But good news,
she said. People can reduce stress, feel more relaxed and -- most
importantly -- "energize" their metabolisms and lose weight by performing
specific, deep breathing exercises.

"Oxygen is the big kahuna!" Grout proclaims on the back of the book. ...
When you don't give your body enough oxygen (and 90 percent of us don't)
your body has no choice but to store fat."

But Gerald Kerby, a pulmonologist and professor of medicine at the
University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan., said Grout's
contention was more baloney than breakthrough.

"It's nonsense," the lung expert said. "The main way to control your weight
is to control the amount of food you put into your body."

As for "pumping up" your metabolism?

"She's got it backward," he said. "Oxygen doesn't drive metabolism.
Metabolism determines how much oxygen the body needs to take in. ... You
don't force oxygen into muscles to make them consume glucose and other foods."

All Grout knows is, breathing exercises worked for her.

"Here I was, a single mom, totally run down," she said. "And a friend said,
'You need to try these breathing exercises.' In the course of the
three-week trial, my energy just exploded. Plus, the other thing that
happened is I lost 10 pounds!"

She cited several doctors who supported her positions on the health and
weight-reducing benefits of proper breathing.

One was Sheldon Saul Hendler, an internist, biochemist and associate
clinical professor of medicine at the University of California at San
Diego. Hendler also wrote a book about breathing in the late '80s called
The Oxygen Breakthrough.

While he supported books that encouraged better breathing, Hendler could
not support Grout's assertion that breathing alone could produce weight loss.

"It's unfortunate that she is stressing weight loss," he said. "That's what
I have a problem with because there are much more important reasons to
learn how to breath correctly than to lose weight."

Such reasons, he said, include relaxation, anxiety and stress reduction and
improved performance for athletes, musicians, singers and speakers.

Hendler said Grout's book still could be valuable.

"You don't want to throw out the baby with the bath water," he said. "There
is no doubt breathing is important in a lot of ways. When people start
trying to improve their health in one way, it often extends to other
things. They may get more exercise, they may pay more attention to their
diet. Can breathing itself cause weight loss? I don't think so. But if it
then leads to taking better care of your health generally by exercising and
better nutritional habits, it could lead to weight loss."

By JAMES A. FUSSELL, Kansas City Star
<http://www.nando.net/newsroom/ntn/health/073197/health8_13616.html>
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