Lung Health

Dec. 6, 2005 — -- Dr. Mehmet Oz and Dr. Michael Roizen say that even though we do it all day, every day -- most people do not breathe correctly. The authors of the best-selling book "You the Owner's Manual: An Insider's Guide to the Body that Will Make You Healthier and Younger" visited "GMA" with three missions in mind: correct Diane Sawyer's breathing, clear the air about congestion, and promote lung health.

Oz went in for the kill. He ordered Sawyer out of her chair and instructed her on their breathing technique.

"Now we take a deep breath and the most important thing is to pull the diaphragm, the muscle beneath the lungs, down," he said. "So start pulling it out and you see your stomach comes out first, and only then does your chest start to come up."

"You've got to breathe through your stomach?" Sawyer asked. Oz responded yes.

Oz said that there would be an aching sensation when the breath was completely inhaled, then as the breath goes out, the belly should come in and the chest go down.

"That's a deep breath," he said. "It's the key to almost all meditative processes. It helps us meditate, and it cleanses our body's lymphatic system, which is the garbage disposal system of our body."

Oz said people should breathe that way about 10 times each day. It also helps to relieve stress.

The only way one can truly enjoy those deep breaths is if their lungs are not congested, of course. Roizen said congestion, which is increasingly common this time of year, occurs because the lungs, which are like sponges, have absorbed too much. Wheezing occurs for similar reasons, but in the tubes that line the lungs.

"What happens is pollen or any kind of toxic element runs into the airways … when they go in there they stimulate a reaction," Oz said. "It's there for our benefit -- to kill bacteria, but when not done correctly, it leads to mucus secretion, fluid, and stricture -- constricture of those airways. So the breathing tubes literally close down and that traps air in your lungs."

Roizen said an easy way to test how free one is of congestion is to walk up stairs.

"If you walk up as fast as you can walk down two flights of stairs and can do it, two flights in a row, that's good," he said. "That means you're at a low risk for surgery and you can also have sex. They're both the same amount of work."

Snoring, Roizen said, is also an outgrowth of congestion.

"Well, if you can't get air in, you can't exchange it," he said. "The problem with snoring is that when you can't get air in, it gets more difficult to get the rest of your body oxygenated."

It can be lessened by 30 percent, he said, by losing 10 percent of one's body weight. Or, Oz said, use breathing strips.

The doctors also reiterated the danger of smoking and second-hand smoke, and told people not to buy an air filter unless it had a Hepa element to it, which helps clean the air. Plants, they said, will help clean the air in one's home as well.