4 times you should pay attention to your breathing

Woman with insomnia

2. When insomnia strikes

In 2012 Suzanne M. Bertisch of Harvard Medical School and her colleagues reported, based on survey data, that more than 20 percent of American insomniacs do breathing exercises to sleep better.

In 2015 Cheryl Yang and her team at National Yang-Ming University in Taiwan showed that 20 minutes of slow breathing exercises (six respiration cycles per minute) before going to bed significantly improves sleep. Insomniac participants went to sleep faster, woke up less frequently in the night and went back to sleep faster when they did wake up. On average, it took them only 10 minutes to fall asleep, almost three times faster than normal. The investigators attributed the results both to the calming mediated by the parasympathetic system and to the relaxing effect of focused breathing.

Read: Say goodbye to tension in 5 quick steps

Easy Health Options Staff

By Easy Health Options Staff

Submitted by the staff at Easy Health Options®.

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