Persistent Cough Remedies: Easy Breathing Exercises

Cough remedies include an easy breathing exercise developed and used by more than 170 Soviet and Russian medical doctors. This exercise calms down urge-to-cough receptors and increases body-O2 content. It works well even at night. An additional cause of persistent cough is chronic inflammation due to positive body voltage. This problem can be solved by normalization of electrical voltage of the human body.

Why do people with asthma, bronchitis, COPD, cystic fibrosis and some other conditions suffer from persistent coughing?

Minute ventilation rates (chronic diseases)

Condition	Minute ventilation	Number of people	All references or click below for abstracts
Normal breathing	6 l/min	-	Medical textbooks
Healthy Subjects	6-7 l/min	>400	Results of 14 studies
COPD	14 (±2) l/min	12	Palange et al, 2001
COPD	12 (±2) l/min	10	Sinderby et al, 2001
COPD	14 l/min	3	Stulbarg et al, 2001
Asthma	13 (±2) l/min	16	Chalupa et al, 2004
Asthma	15 l/min	8	Johnson et al, 1995
Asthma	14 (±6) l/min	39	Bowler et al, 1998
Asthma	13 (±4) l/min	17	Kassabian et al, 1982
Asthma	12 l/min	101	McFadden & Lyons, 1968
Cystic fibrosis	15 L/min	15	Fauroux et al, 2006
Cystic fibrosis	10 L/min	11	Browning et al, 1990
Cystic fibrosis*	10 L/min	10	Ward et al, 1999
CF and diabetes*	10 L/min	7	Ward et al, 1999
Cystic fibrosis	16 L/min	7	Dodd et al, 2006
Cystic fibrosis	18 L/min	9	McKone et al, 2005
Cystic fibrosis*	13 (±2) l/min	10	Bell et al, 1996
Cystic fibrosis	11-14 l/min	6	Tepper et al, 1983

The chart below explains the mechanism of persistent coughing: it is a self-perpetuating activity that naturally leads to more persistent coughing unless one learns how to cough correctly without reduction in body- and brain-O2 content and without creating more inflammation.

Cough remedies instructions

Most natural remedies for persistent cough

Remedy No. 1. Learn how to cough only through the nose (i.e., with your mouth closed all the time). It will help you to reduce irritation of airways and bronchospasm, and will increase oxygen levels in body cells and the brain.

Remedy No. 2. After you have mastered Remedy No. 1 (it may take 1-2 days), learn how to cough with the mouth and nose closed. You simply need to keep the mouth closed and the nose pinched. This will further increase your body and brain oxygenation.

These 2 easiest remedies are often sufficient to stop or reduce bouts of persistent coughing and gradually to recover. However, you can subdue coughing even faster if you use the most potent anti-coughing breathing exercise called "reduced breathing".

Remedy No. 3. Sit down in a comfortable position, preferably at an ordinary table, on a straight chair. While having the bout of coughing, try your best to relax and at the end of your usual exhalation, pinch your nose and hold your breath (the mouth should be closed all the time) until you experience moderate discomfort.

If you cannot hold your breath due to severe coughing, pinch your nose and keep your mouth closed while coughing without any air exchange. Why? Your goal is to increase the CO2 content in your airways so that you calm down the cough-receptor cells that become irritated due to several mechanical and biochemical factors during acute-coughing bouts. These nerve cells stimulate the breathing centre in the brain both to initiate and to continue coughing.

After the breath hold, when you get a moderate or distinctive desire to take a breath, take only a small (or short) inhalation (one small sniff) and do it only through your nose. After this small inhalation, focus on relaxing all body muscles again, especially in the upper chest and shoulders, in order to exhale slowly. If coughing is present, your goal is to limit your air or gas exchange to very small amounts. Ideally, the exhalation must be natural and unforced. Then take another (smaller) inhalation and again completely relax to exhale.

With each breath, your goal is to take a small or reduced inhalation and then completely relax even though you still have a cough. You should gradually create a more-distinctive-air hunger while relaxing your body muscles. You will soon experience a strong desire to breathe more. Maintain this desire until your coughing subsides.

Your breathing can be quite frequent during this reduced breathing exercise (with frequent short inhalations). If you do the exercise correctly (you will breathe up to 30-50% less air while being relaxed), you will notice 2 signs:
- Your arms and feet will get warm in about 1 minute after starting this exercise
- The nasal passages will become more open and moist in about the same 1-2 minutes.

Permanent remedy for persistent cough

After testing thousands of their patients, the Russian medical doctors (who developed this exercise) found that persistent cough is possible only in those people who have less than 20 seconds for the body-oxygen test. As a result, the permanent persistent-cough remedy is to slow down the unconscious- or automatic-breathing pattern closer to the medical norm in order to get more than 20 seconds for the body oxygenation test.

This breathing exercise is among the most powerful cough remedies.

An additional cough remedy is grounding the human body to achieve the same negative electrical potential as Earth (free electrons reduce inflammation). This method is explained on this page: Earthing, while easy (almost free) grounding techniques can be found here: How to ground yourself.

Nearly all people experience complete relief from coughing when they achieve more than 30 seconds for the body-oxygen test 24/7. This is the ultimate cough remedy, achievable with application of those breathing exercises and lifestyle changes that increase body O2.

References

J Assoc Physicians India. 2000 Mar;48(3):343-5.
The role of cough and hyperventilation in perpetuating airway inflammation in asthma.
Singh V, Chowdhary R, Chowdhary N.
Department of Pulmonary Medicine, SMS Medical College, Jaipur-302 016, India.
Air flowing through a pipe exerts frictional stress on the walls of the pipe. Frictional stress of more than 40 N/m2 (velocity equivalent of air 113 m/s) is known to cause acute endothelial damage in blood vessels. The frictional stress in airways during coughing may be much greater, however, since the velocity of air may be as high as speed of sound in air. We suggest that high levels of frictional stress perpetuate airway inflammation in airways which are already inflamed and vulnerable to frictional stress-induced trauma in patients with asthma. Activities associated with rapid ventilation and higher frictional stress (e.g. exercise, hyperventilation, coughing, sneezing and laughing) cause asthma to worsen whilst activities that reduce frictional stress (Yoga 'Pranayama', breathing a helium-oxygen mixture and nasal continuous positive airway pressure) are beneficial. Therefore control of cough may have anti-inflammatory benefits in patients with asthma.

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Jpn J Physiol. 1991;41(6):879-91.
Influence of central respiratory activity on the cough response in anesthetized dogs.
Suzuki H, Kondo T, Yamabayashi H, Kobayashi I, Ohta Y.
Department of Medicine, Tokai University School of Medicine, Isehara, Japan.
Cough responses evoked by mechanical stimulation of the tracheobronchial mucosa in anesthetized and tracheostomized dogs were studied... Coughing could be evoked when the dog was made apneic either by hyperventilation or by the Hering-Breuer reflex...

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Handb Exp Pharmacol. 2009;(187):263-76.
Clinical cough I: the urge-to-cough: a respiratory sensation.
Davenport PW.
Department of Physiological Sciences, Box 100144, HSC, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32610, USA.
Cough is generated by a brainstem neural network. Chemical and mechanical stimulation of the airway can elicit a reflex cough and can elicit a cognitive sensation, the urge-to-cough. The sensation of an urge-to-cough is a respiratory-related sensation. The role of the respiratory sensation of an urge-to-cough is to engage behavioral modulation of cough motor action. Respiratory sensations are elicited by a combination of modalities: central neural, chemical, and mechanical. Stimulation of respiratory afferents or changes in respiratory pattern resulting in a cognitive awareness of breathing are mediated by central neural processes that are the cognitive neural basis for respiratory sensations, including the urge-to-cough. It is proposed that the urge-to-cough is a component of the cough motivation-to-action system. The urge-to-cough is induced by stimuli that motivate subjects to protect their airway by coughing...

Reference pages: Breathing norms and medical facts:
- Breathing norms: Parameters, graph, and description of the normal breathing pattern
- 6 breathing myths: Myths and superstitions about breathing and body oxygenation (prevalence: over 90%)
- Hyperventilation: Definitions of hyperventilation: their advantages and weak points
- Hyperventilation syndrome: Western scientific evidence about prevalence of chronic hyperventilation in patients with chronic conditions (37 medical studies)
- Normal minute ventilation: Small and slow breathing at rest is enjoyed by healthy subjects (14 studies)
- Hyperventilation prevalence: Present in over 90% of normal people (24 medical studies)
- HV and hypoxia: How and why deep breathing reduces oxygenation of cells and tissues of all vital organs
- Body-oxygen test (CP test) : How to measure your own breathing and body oxygenation (two in one) using a simple DIY test
- Body oxygen in healthy: Results for the body-oxygen test for healthy people (27 medical studies)
- Body oxygen in sick : Results for the body-oxygen test for sick people (14 medical studies)
- Buteyko Table of Health Zones: Clinical description and ranges for breathing zones: from the critically ill (severely sick) up to super healthy people with maximum possible body oxygenation
- Morning hyperventilation: Why people feel worse and critically ill people are most likely to die during early morning hours

References: pages about CO2 effect:
- Vasodilation: CO2 expands arteries and arterioles facilitating perfusion (or blood supply) to all vital organs
- The Bohr effect: How and why oxygen is released by red blood cells in tissues
- Cell oxygen levels: How alveolar CO2 influences oxygen transport
- Oxygen transport: O2 transport is controlled by vasoconstriction-vasodilation and the Bohr effects, both of which rely on CO2
- Free radical generation: Reactive oxygen species are produced within cells due to anaerobic cell respiration caused by cell hypoxia
- Inflammatory response: Chronic inflammation in fueled by the hypoxia-inducible factor 1, while normal breathing reduces and eliminates inflammation
- Nerve stabilization: People remain calm due to calmative or sedative effects of carbon dioxide in neurons or nerve cells
- Muscle relaxation: Relaxation of muscle cells is normal at high CO2, while hypocapnia causes muscular tension, poor posture and, sometimes, aggression and violence
- Bronchodilation: Dilation of airways (bronchi and bronchioles) is caused by carbon dioxide, and their constriction by hypocapnia (low CO2)
- Blood pH: Regulation of blood pH due to breathing and regulation of other bodily fluids
- CO2: lung damage: Elevated carbon dioxide prevents lung injury and promotes healing of lung tissues
- CO2: Topical carbon dioxide can heal skin and tissues
- Synthesis of glutamine in the brain, CO2 fixation, and other chemical reactions
- Deep breathing myth: Ignorant and naive people promote the idea that deep breathing and breathing more air at rest is beneficial for health
- Breathing control: How is our breathing regulated? Why hypocapnia makes breathing uneven, irregular and erratic.

Or go to Hyperventilation Symptoms

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