011 Dr. Rosalba Courtney – Life is in the Breath

You can go without food or water or even sleep but a few minutes of not breathing and you can’t survive. Dr. Rosalba Courtney joins us to explore the importance of breathing and some tips to breathe well. What does it mean to breathe well? Why is this so important? Why is it important to breathe through your nose? What impact it has on your body?
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Dr. Ron Ehrlich:                   Hello and welcome to Unstress. I'm Dr. Ron Ehrlich. Do you know, if you don't eat for a few weeks, you will probably eventually die. If you don't drink for a few days, there's a good chance you will as well. But it only takes 5, 10 minutes at the very most, most people wouldn't go more than three or four of breathing before you stop breathing and are dead. I mean, breathing is without a doubt one of the most important functions we perform and we do it from the moment we are born to the moment we die. And we know that the secret to good health is to keep breathing for as long ... well, the secret to a long life is to keep breathing for as long as you can. But the secret to a healthy long life is to breathe well for as long as you can. And what does that actually mean?

Well, my guest today is Dr. Rosalba Courtney. And she is an osteopath who after many years, let's just say over 30 years of clinical practice thought, well, what was the most important thing she could learn to improve in the health of her patients? Guess what, she did a PhD about seven or eight years ago on dysfunctional breathing. What is it? How do you measure it? What's the clinical significance meaning what's the everyday significance? And now, these actually are questions after almost 40 years of dental practice that I also thought was worth asking too. I included a chapter on breathing in my book, but we go into quite a lot of detail here. And if you think noses is just that thing on the front of you face to separate your two eyes, well actually, there are over 30 functions of the nose. And we don't go into all of them, but we go into quite a few of them.

And if you think breathing is just about oxygen, well, no it's not. There's a whole lot more to it than that. There's an awful lot we go through here. I thought it was a great conversation, I hope you do too. This is my conversation with Dr. Rosalba Courtney. Welcome to the show Rosalba.

Dr. Rosalba Courtney:     Well, good morning Ron. Thank You.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich:                   Rosalba, we're talking about breathing today obviously and people kind of take it for granted, can I just start from a really basic point and that is why do we breathe?

Dr. Rosalba Courtney:     Well, breathing is our most important function in that you can't go very long without breathing. Probably the primary purpose of breathing is, exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide so you have oxygen for energy. But there's a lot more to breathing, breathing has lots of different functions that many people are unaware of that go beyond just the exchange of those gases.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich:                   I thought there were and that's was the lead-in because-

Dr. Rosalba Courtney:     Yes. Of course. Of course-

Dr. Ron Ehrlich:                   We know that you if you don't eat, you could live for a few weeks and if you don't drink you could live for a few days, but breathing you've got, how long have you got before you're gone? Breathing.

Dr. Rosalba Courtney:     It's not very long. Some people, the records for breath holding and getting longer and longer. And I think people have gone, some of the records are 10 minutes, I've even heard about 20 minutes. But most of us couldn't go longer than say five minutes and that would be it. Yeah. It's really fascinating. That kind of chemical side of breathing, which is the regulation of oxygen and carbon dioxide, there's another aspect to that which is really important that a lot of people aren't aware of which is that breathing is one of the major regula...