8 Habits to Improve Your Lung Health at Any Age!
Regarding health, some things should be instilled into one’s lifestyle from the start. When you make sure that a child or a teenager develops certain habits, their life improves drastically.
Your lungs, like your brain and heart, need constant effort from your side. The easiest way to keep your lungs healthy and avoid the future possibility of developing difficulty in breathing/COPD is simply changing or adopting habits that will strengthen your lungs.
You can however adapt these habits at any point in your life. Why? Because breathing without difficulty while doing regular or strenuous activities is an admirable goal. Don’t just wonder how to improve lung health, do something to improve it!
1- Diaphragm Moving Respiration
Normal breathing doesn’t depend on your diaphragm’s movement completely for respiration. This breathing technique is utilized specifically in cases where someone has breathing problems. However, including it in your daily routine can help you feel better and make sure that you have healthy lungs.
Teach everyone around you to inhale deeply for a few seconds, and this will force the diaphragm muscle to contract and create space for air to get in. Next, when they exhale, it should also be for 2-3 seconds- this allows the stagnant air to get out. This exercise will help with airflow and make your lungs healthier.
2- Exercising Daily
Exercise is good for your mind, your heart, your bones, your muscles, and your lungs- basically your whole body will thank you if you take up exercising. Exercise is your answer to the, ‘How to improve my lung health?’ question.
Make sure to exercise daily for a period of 20 to 60 minutes. Exercising will increase your body’s tolerance to work in stressful conditions and make you feel good as endorphins and dopamine start running through your blood vessels.
3- Laugh Your Heart Out
Apart from the benefits of laughing to your mental health, laughing can also help move the air in your lungs. When you laugh out loud, the dead air sitting in the depth of your lung gets the chance to get out. You feel fresh and good after a good laugh with your friends- here’s another scientific reason why that happens!
4- Keen Eye on Infections
We have all been there! We get chest infections, we cough out loud and we get colds. What do we ignore? We ignore the chance to go and see a physician that can help us out.
Do you or does your loved one have a fever and a cough? Well, this is your sign, go see a doctor. Make it a habit to go see a doctor whenever you get any infection. While we talk about getting healthy lungs, how can we ignore the role of a good professional?
Do not ignore your regular visits to the doctor for health checkups. A doctor can help you chase away infection in the early stages. This care can potentially save you from developing bronchitis, difficulty in breathing, or COPD later in your life.
5- Stay Away From Polluted Spaces and That Also Includes Smoking Areas!
We currently live in times where wearing a mask has become a part of our lives. These masks also filter out the pollution in the air that you breathe in! You can always wear a mask to help you out with getting clean air whenever you go out.
The best solution, in this case, is obviously staying away (or avoiding altogether) all the places that have high carbon and smoke content. But when you can’t stay away, wear a mask!
Keep your children, teens, and all your loved ones away from cigarette smoke. If someone smokes, make them stop or leave the room.
Talk about how bad the habit of smoking is and how much it can impact everyone in close vicinity to the smoker. You can check out our other posts about smoking and its effects on lungs here.
Healthy lungs are a blessing that everyone should appreciate! Maybe your reminders can push others to take care of their health.
6-Count Your Breaths
Another good habit to adopt is counting how long you can breathe in. Inhale and count to five seconds and then exhale for five seconds. Repeat this cycle to make your lungs breathe better. You can easily teach this technique to people of any and every age.
This small habit can help you keep your lungs healthy.
7- Hydration Solves All of Your Life’s Problems
We are not exaggerating in any way when we say that you can get healthy lungs by drinking water. Your lungs have a mucus lining that is exaggerated when anyone gets a lung infection. This mucus lining gets unusually viscous when dehydration is present. A well-hydrated person would have less viscous mucus in their lungs.
Another discovery was increased histamine in the body after dehydration. Histamine increase tends to show up as an allergic reaction of a milder form- runny nose and sneezes with eye irritation.
You can circumvent both of these issues by drinking loads of water. Healthy lungs should be everyone’s goal and drinking water doesn’t just lead to healthy lungs, it leads to a healthier body.
8- Eat Healthy to Breathe Healthy!
Take note of what you and your loved ones are consuming. Healthy eating can positively change the very makeup and reactions within the respiratory system. The inclusion of a fibrous diet and lentils is good for the working of your lungs. The more whole grains you consume, the more anti-oxidants and anti-inflammatory elements are introduced into your body. Vitamin E and C are important not only for the structure of the microscopic cell of your lungs, they are also important for lung protection!
On the other hand, consumption of sugar, too much salt, alcohol, processed meat, and fast food is not good for you. The nitrites in processed meat can cause worsening of your body’s defense mechanism- inflammation. The sulfites and ethanol in your alcoholic drink will create trouble for you if you already have asthma or cause damage to the lungs. More salt in the diet has been related to the development of asthma and bronchitis! Exclude these ingredients as much as you can from your diet. If you cannot exclude the harmful ingredients, make sure that you use less of them till the habit of their use leaves you.
Healthy lung foods should be included in your everyday diet. Most of the foods are not only good for your lungs, they’re also great for your heart.
Conclusion
Healthy lungs are an easy consequence of healthy habits. The habits we’ve mentioned are all great for keeping lungs healthy and prevent the possibility of COPD, asthma and other lung diseases. Healthy lung foods and good water intake are the easiest things that can change the course of your lung’s life!
Difficulty in breathing can occur at any point in your life and the reason could be physical stress or any health concern. The least we can do is make sure that our bodies can fight off any such eventuality. Changing habits for the better can help you save yourself from the later possibility of COPD or other lung problems. Now you don’t need to wonder how to improve lung health, you can just adopt all of the habits we’ve mentioned!