Lung Disorders 139Improving Air Quality and Exercising the Lungs
You can improve the air in the home and workplace by using an air
cleaner that produces negatively charged ions—or better yet, one that
emits negative (alkaline) and positive (acidic) ions in the same ratio in
which they occur in nature.
The volume of air we breathe into the lungs is also a factor in their
health. Most of us don’t breathe in enough air and, as a result, the lungs
don’t have the force to breathe out all the stale air lodged in the alveoli.
This stale air takes up space, reducing the lungs’ oxygen capacity. The
easiest way to get rid of this stale air lodged in the lower lobes of the
lungs is to become a deep breather.
The best exercise for strengthening the diaphragm and rib muscles
so that the lungs can take in more oxygen and therefore have the force
when exhaling to pull out the stale air, is by mimicking the panting of
dogs—open your mouth, stick out your tongue, and breathe deeply.
One individual who profi ted from this exercise was Jack Smith, a pro-
fessional photographer. Jack developed emphysema at the age of
seventy-three. He believes his exposure to asbestos was responsible.
When he was twenty-seven, he took pictures of the interior of a naval
ship while it was being sprayed with asbestos. He had forgotten about
this until the diagnosis of emphysema jogged his memory. Jack’s chi-
ropractor recommended panting as a way to strengthen the alveoli,
and Jack has performed this exercise for an hour each day ever since.
He also bought an ionizing air cleaner for his apartment. A breathing
test, taken a year after he began exercising his lungs and installed an
air cleaner, showed that his breathing was almost normal (95
percent).
Too much exercise appears to have the same effect as emphysema in
terms of preventing the lungs from breathing in enough oxygen. This
is indicated by the results of the breathing tests taken by two groups of
individuals, one comprising patients with emphysema and the other
highly trained athletes. It was conducted by Carl Stough, a former
opera singer who trains people with lung problems to breathe correctly.
He writes in his book, Dr. Breath, that the results of the breathing tests
of his emphysema clients were about the same as those of the Olympic
sprinters in the control group!^10