Chest breathing and abdominal breathing

Breathing is the process of exchanging gases back and forth. We need to pay attention to regulating our breathing during the process. Everyone does this, but not everyone knows that breathing is also a science, and there are also many things to pay attention to when breathing. Some people breathe rapidly, while others breathe slowly. Many people may have a rapid breathing sound when they are anxious or calm, but they cannot feel it. What is the difference between chest breathing and abdominal breathing?

Breathing is a process of gas exchange

To achieve the process of gas exchange, there needs to be a pressure difference between the inhalation and exhalation flow. How did our bodies come into being?

What about the air pressure difference? This is achieved by changing the volume of the cavity.

Therefore, chest breathing is the most common breathing method that we all know. The principle of chest breathing is to expand the volume of the body through the expansion of the chest cavity (linked by bone and flesh structure), forming an air pressure difference.

Let air into your lungs. The abdominal breathing we are going to discuss in this article mainly relies on the diaphragm (used to separate the chest cavity

The diaphragm (a layer of muscle membrane in the abdominal cavity) presses down to create a pressure difference, allowing air from outside the body to enter. In principle, the diaphragm presses down.

As a result, what we see is a bulge in the upper abdomen.

Chest breathing

From the process of breathing movement, we can know that breathing movement is mainly completed by the contraction and relaxation of two parts of respiratory muscles, which are manifested as activities in the chest and abdomen respectively.

One is that the contraction and relaxation of the external intercostal muscles causes the movement of the ribs and sternum, causing the anterior-posterior and lateral diameters of the thorax to increase, and the main manifestation is chest movement; the other is that the diaphragm contracts, causing the upper and lower diameters of the thorax to increase, and the main manifestation is abdominal movement. When inhaling, the diaphragm contracts, the bulge of the diaphragm descends, and the upper abdominal organs such as the liver and spleen descend accordingly, so that the anterior abdominal wall protrudes outward; when exhaling, the opposite happens, and the anterior abdominal wall returns to its inward position.

The breathing movement that is mainly based on the movement of the ribs and sternum is called thoracic breathing; the breathing movement that is mainly based on the movement of the diaphragm is called abdominal breathing.

During thoracic breathing, only the alveoli in the upper half of the lungs are working, while the alveoli in the middle and lower lobes, which account for four-fifths of the entire lungs, are "resting". If this goes on for years, the middle and lower lobes of the lungs will not get exercise and will be disused for a long time, which can easily lead to aging of the lungs, loss of elasticity, poor respiratory function, and inability to obtain sufficient oxygen to meet the oxygen needs of various tissues and organs, affecting the body's metabolism. The body's resistance decreases, making it easy to suffer from respiratory diseases, especially in the autumn and winter, when the elderly are prone to pneumonia if they occasionally catch a cold. Degenerative diseases of the lungs often affect the middle and lower lobes of the elderly, which is closely related to the disuse of the middle and lower lobes caused by long-term chest breathing. Therefore, chest breathing is not good for the health of the lungs.