Stop coughing at night: breathing exercise
This exercise was used by over 200 Soviet and Russian doctors who have been practicing the Buteyko breathing method. They taught it to many thousands of patients with asthma, COPD, bronchitis, and pneumonia. (I translated many Russian medical papers.) This simple breathing exercise stops or reduces duration of bouts of coughing due to better body oxygenation and calmer nerves.
Practical actions before bouts of coughing (Prevent coughing)
When you feel that you are likely to cough in minutes or seconds, immediately relax all your muscles. Next, after your usual exhalation pinch the nose and hold your breath only until the first discomfort or stress. Keep the mouth closed all the time. Your breath hold will be less than 20 s. (You are hyperventilating and the body has too small amount of oxygen in tissues!) Immediately release your nose when you get first signs of air hunger. Now your goal is to maintain or preserve this light comfortable level of air hunger (mild self-suffocation) for a few minutes. How?
Instead of your usual large inhalation, take a slightly smaller inhalation (about 20-30% less than before) and then immediately relax all muscles, especially upper chest and all other breathing muscles. Take another (smaller) inhalation and again completely relax. With each breath, take the same small or reduced inhalation and then completely relax. The breathing is frequent during this reduced or shallow breathing but this is OK. If you coughing is persistent, try to breathe even less gradually increasing air hunger (suffocate yourself!).
Practical actions during coughing (Stop coughing)
During normal breathing at rest the air travels though nasal cavities at a speed of 8 km/h. When we cough, the air rushes out at 120-160 km/h. Coughing through the mouth creates a huge air pressure graduate that can easily damage or even rupture alveoli, our tiny air sacks, which make gas exchange in the lungs possible. Coughing is particularly dangerous for people with bronchitis or emphysema.
Hence, close your mouth tightly with your arms and start coughing and breathing only through the nose. It may feel unusual at the beginning, but it is not difficult to learn. After some attempts and/or days, you should go further and cough with your mouth and nose closed. This is crucial, if you want to improve your health.
When you breathe less you IMPROVE body oxygenation and get calmer nerves due to increase in CO2 and O2 content of body cells. Impossible?
Breathing and oxygenation
First of all, heavy breathing and coughing through the mouth or nose reduces body oxygenation. This simple fact is easy to check. You already measured your stress-free breath holding time after exhalation. The test is very sensitive to body oxygen content. Remember to exhale and hold your breath only till the first stress or discomfort. When you finish the test and release your nose, you should be able to breathe as before the test. Normal breath holding time is about 40-60 s. People with bronchitis, sinusitis, and other respiratory problems have about 20 s of oxygen or even less. This is the paradox of breathing: those people, who breathe heavy at rest, have less oxygen in tissues. The effect is based on CO2 regulatory functions and is explained on web pages of this website.
Second, if you retrain or normalize your breathing pattern permanently, your body oxygenation will be improved. When you can comfortably hold your breath for 30 or more seconds 24/7, your coughing and many other negative symptoms will disappear. This clinical observation is based on experience of thousands of Soviet and Russian patients who learned the Buteyko breathing method. The therapy was developed by Soviet physiologist Dr. Konstantin Buteyko, MD. In the 1960s he led the scientific project for the first Soviet space missions and studied interactions among breathing, air composition, body oxygenation, and various diseases. He discovered that sick people breathe much more than the medical norm and this is the cause of their health problems. The Buteyko method is approved by Russian Ministry of Health for treatment of asthma and heart disease, but many other chronic diseases, like bronchitis, COPD, asthma, cancer, diabetes, chronic fatigue, insomnia, and arthritis, are possible only in conditions of chronic tissue hypoxia.