How Breathing Exercises Help for Cold Hands And Feet PERMANENTLY

Breathing exercises for cold hands and feet? I'm gonna explain everything that

you need to know so you really get it

Hey I'm Dr. Ekberg with Wellness For Life and if you like to truly master

health by understanding how the body really works make sure that you

subscribe and hit that notification bell so that you don't miss anything. So I

recently did a video on cold hands and feet and I explained some of the basics

but then I have several people asked me about that video one in particular Theleon

who asked so what we have to do breathing exercises to improve

circulation and warm our hands and that is exactly right so we're going to dig a

little bit deeper into this so you really get the full understanding the

second question that he asked that's a great one was his cold hands and feet

something that never goes away so we're gonna answer that one as well toward the

end so make sure you stay tuned so to really understand the big picture we

have to look at some of the basics of the body how it works so first of all

yes it is the blood circulation that's going to warm your hands and feet and

your core temperature is somewhere around 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 37

degrees Celsius that's the core temperature that's the temperature of

the blood and the tissues inside your body so as the blood circulates through

the body it takes that heat with it and hands and feet they're kind of bony if

you haven't noticed they are mostly bone and connective tissue tendons they don't

really have a lot of muscles or active tissue that generate heat it's not the

fingers that work it's the muscles in the forearm so the engine sits a bit a

distance away from the fingers so because there's nothing generating heat

out here the hands are almost entirely dependent on blood circulation for that

warmth so as the blood circulates it takes the heat with it out to the

fingers so if you're sitting that's about 74 degrees let's just call

that the a good comfortable temperature now your body has enough energy it has

enough heat to keep a good steady supply of warm blood to the hands because the

your body is 98.6 the room is 74 and your body has enough energy from its

basal metabolic rate to produce enough energy to make you comfortable it

doesn't have to save energy it can freely and generously supply the hands

with warmth however if you were to sit half-naked in freezing temperatures

now that's an emergency and now your body doesn't have the resources it

doesn't have the energy to keep up with that extreme energy loss because your

body is losing heat to the environment the greater the temperature difference

the quicker you lose the heat and if it's a big difference like from 98.6 to

freezing now your body has to conserve energy because that's an emergency so

now it doesn't have the energy to freely circulate it and instead it's gonna pull

the blood back to the core to save your life because your brain and your heart

and your vital organs are more important to sustain life than your extremities

are so that's the first part to understand that yes in a warm room

you're supposed to have warm hands in a comfortable room your blood your fingers

should stay somewhere around 90 degrees give or take a few degrees that's a

comfortable normal temperature but of course then in an emergency when you

have to pull resources back your fingers aren't supposed to be warm anymore so

whether you have warm or cold fingers it does depend on the environment but in a

comfortable room it's supposed to work so now we have to look at what is it

that determines how that blood circulates and it is the autonomic

nervous system which has two branches is called a simple

pathetic or fight/flight portion of the nervous system and the parasympathetic

which is your feed breed so the sympathetic acts in emergencies and the

parasympathetic acts when we're supposed to digest have our immune system going

defend ourselves from microbe for reproduction and for healing

so the sympathetic nervous system the fight flight is constrictive it

constricts blood vessels so that makes the blood flow faster out to muscles in

an emergency but in chronic stress it also constricts to keep the blood

away from the fingers so now they get cold and this works like a seesaw

whenever it's not an on/off switch but whenever the sympathetic nervous system

increases activity the parasympathetic nervous system is going to decrease

activity so these branches of your autonomic nervous system is what

determines how much blood circulation gets into the hands so the next question

is what does breathing have to do with this it has everything to do with it

because when you breathe in your heart beats faster when you breathe out your

heart beats slower and that heart rate is also determined by your sympathetic

and your parasympathetic nervous system so when you breathe in and your heart

speeds up then that sympathetic nervous system is increasing in activity and

when you're breathing out and your heart slows down then your sympathetic is

decreasing and your parasympathetic is increasing its activity so breathing is

very tightly linked to this balance that determines your circulation so why does

the body do this is it random is it smart you bet it's really really smart

because the autonomic nervous system the sympathetic and the parasympathetic it's

a resource allocation system it prioritizes resources so when you're

sitting in the freezing cold then it's an emergency and the resources

are pulled back to save your life by keeping your vital organs alive and the

same thing happens when you're breathing that it's also a type of prioritization

that when you breathe in there is more air more oxygen in the lung for the

blood to pick up so it makes more sense to send the blood there more and faster

so your heart speeds up during an in-breath and when you breathe out there

is less oxygen in the lungs so it makes sense to slow down a little bit this way

we have we optimize the utilization of the blood so if your average heart rate

is maybe 65 then it's probably around 70 on an in-breath and about 60 on an out

breath that's a normal and good amount of heart rate variability the healthier

you are you basically the more you have so by practicing breathing you can

create a balance here because as you breathe in you fire off your

sympathetics as you breathe out you fire off your parasympathetics but the way

most people breathe is that they breathe in to fire the sympathetics and they

breathe out and then breathe in and they breathe out so they breathe out much

much too fast to allow that parasympathetic nervous system to engage

that's why the in-breath and the out-breath have to be somewhere around

four to five to six seconds to allow that parasympathetic to engage so you

can tell this immediately if you just take a slow breath in and a slow breath

out just let it out very very slowly you can notice how you relax instantly and

that's because you activate that parasympathetic nervous system and if

you practice this on a regular basis then you can start changing this balance

permanently so I would suggest that you do five or ten minutes at a time

or twice a day because doing that you're going to start creating a habit and this

is where people don't quite get how far-reaching how profound this benefit

can be and this is about the question the next question is this something that

never goes away so now we have to understand one more concept called

neuroplasticity and we have to understand that this balance and the

neuroplasticity and the brain and the cold hands and feet all of these things

relating to physiology are what we call functional something that's functional

is not structural okay a structural problem is let's say that you had a

nerve from your brain to the arm and if that nerve is completely severed let's

say in an accident now there is no function in that arm because there's a

structural lesion that wire just isn't there anymore it's been cut that's a

structural problem it isn't there but a functional problem means that the wire

is there there's a transmitter and a receiver and it's just not working at a

hundred percent it's working a little to not enough it's working not enough or

it's working too much it's out of balance that's a functional problem and

ninety-five percent or so of all the problems people have basically anything

except accidents are functional problems they're not structural problems so cold

hands and feets and digestive issues and diabetes etc they're all functional

problems they're the parts are there they're just not doing exactly what

they're supposed to in a good balance so that's what functional is and

neuroplasticity that's the brain's ability to change to

manage all of this so everything that you do everything that you learn you

learn how to walk you learn how to talk you learn how to catch a ball you write

a certain way you prefer one hand over the other those are all habits and as a

result of those Abbot's you have developed a certain

pattern in your brain but thanks to neuroplasticity thanks to the ability of

the brain to change and rewire you can change habits so having cold hands and

feet having an overactive sympathetic nervous system is a habit you have done

more things in your life to trigger sympathetic things then you have to

trigger parasympathetic things and that's not too hard in our day and age

because we have chemical structural and emotional stresses so anything that gets

your tense or frustrated or overwhelmed or angry or irritated is going to

trigger a sympathetic response and once we get so used to this that we don't

even notice now it's a chronic habit it's just kind of there in the

background it's we think that's normal because we had so much of it for so long

but we can change this thanks to neuroplasticity so here's how that works

the brain is like a muscle and whatever part you work out more

the stronger those parts are going to get so if you were to have you have two

arms if you were to workout one arm only that one would grow bigger than the one

you didn't work out if you were to hurt your arm and put it in a cast then after

two months when the cast comes off then that muscle is atrophied the same

principles work for the brain because the things that you use more grow

stronger the things you use less grow weaker and in the case of the brain it's

not muscle work obviously but it's brain work which means signals receiving and

transmitting and that's what manages your sympathetic and your

parasympathetic nervous system so anytime that you fire off more

sympathetic you make that part stronger anytime you fire off more

parasympathetic you make that stronger so now if we start breathing on a

regular basis if we breathe in for five seconds we fire

sympathetics we breathe out for five seconds we fire parasympathetics we're

bringing them back into balance we're paying attention we create a conscious

pattern to balance these things so if you do this once then it's like taking

one piano lesson you're not going to be a concert pianist it's like trying

practicing writing with your non favorite hand once you're not going to

get very good at it you're not going to create a habit but if you do it once or

twice a day for weeks and months and you keep this up for six nine twelve months

now you are slowly rewiring you're slowly changing the habits and thanks to

neuroplasticity there's really no limit to this your brain is only there to

process your lifestyle so if you change your lifestyle your brain will change to

accommodate the new lifestyle that's the beauty of this how long is it going to

take no one knows some people might have just

a little bit of sympathetic dominance to to chip away at they might have

tremendous results in a couple of weeks other people might be so stuck so to

speak have such a strong dominance and have an inflexible nervous system that

they might have to go three to six months to even notice a change and this

is where it gets frustrating because we have this quick mindset we have this

instant gratification give me a pill and change something but it doesn't work

like that with functional issues it doesn't work like that with with

physiology sure you may be able to create some change immediately during

the time that you're breathing but it might take months to create a new habit

a new pattern in your nervous system I couldn't say tell you how long it would

take but I can tell you that it would be worth it no matter how long it takes if

it takes a year before you start noticing tremendous changes then wasn't

it worth that year a few minutes feeling relaxed every day to get a

completely different health picture okay I would say that's worth it

how long does it last again we have to understand their plasticity it's in

constant motion it's constantly changing it's never sitting still it's always

processing your lifestyle so it's gonna last as long as you keep this in balance

if you breathe for a while you get great changes your rack and relaxed your

practice meditation you do all these different things to balance out your

autonomic nervous system and your relaxation state but you still live in a

stressful world you still have a stressful job you still have traffic you

still watch the news you still have have noise and chaos around you well then

it's gonna last as long as you do these exercises but if you find a lifestyle

that sort of balances itself then you may not have to do as much in the long

run but once you get to doing it you probably notice that it feels so good

that you don't want to stop and the last thing I want to say about this is the

most important of all and this is the parasympathetic nervous system doesn't

just handle vasodilation so getting warm hands and feet is not the primary

benefit your parasympathetic regulates and controls your digestion your immune

system your reproduction and your healing so are these things that you see

a lot of problems with do people have digestive problems do people get a lot

of heartburn you see a lot of ads for antacids and and proton blockers do

people get a lot of colds and flues do you see a lot of ads for for cold

medications do you see a lot of ads for get your flu shot you betcha

reproductive issues and now we're not just talking the ability to reproduce

but fertility we're talking libido we're talking erectile dysfunction so again

these are huge huge huge issues because people are not doing so well their

stress is shutting down there parasympathetic nervous

system and we're operating on a fraction of our healing capacity so the

temperature of your hands is just the tip of the iceberg so to speak because

the true benefits lies in the fact that once you work on this and get good at it

and you change your neuroplasticity and you get a better balance a better

homeostasis it starts affecting all kinds of things if we don't understand

the bigger picture we don't see how far-reaching it is then we may not stick

with it so thank you so much for watching share this video when as many

people as you can because this is life-saving stuff and if you have any

comments or questions for future videos or this one please let me know I'll do

my very best to address those as well thanks for watching