Four Powerful Ways to Oxygenate Your Body

!±8± Four Powerful Ways to Oxygenate Your Body

Healthy cells in your body are aerobic, meaning they need oxygen. Of all nutrients required by the human body, oxygen is second only to sunlight.

In 1931, Otto Warburg won a Nobel Prize for the connection he discovered between oxygen and cancer. His studies showed that the number one cause of cancer is a lack of oxygen in the cellular environment. Warburg determined that cancer cells are anaerobic, meaning they thrive in an oxygen-depleted environment. Conversely, cancer cells cannot live in an oxygen-rich environment.

Warburg also wrote about oxygen's relationship to the pH of cancer cells and the body's terrain. He said that cancer maintains a lower pH, as low as 6.0, due to lactic-acid production and elevated CO2. Warburg believed that higher pH (more alkaline) meant higher concentrations of oxygen, and vice versa.

What Warburg discovered for cancer is true for all degenerative disease. Oxygen and a healthy pH balance are the foundational keys to a healthy body. The following are four powerful ways to oxygenate and improve your body's terrain.

1. Deep belly breathing. Shallow breathing (or chest breathing) causes a constriction of the chest and lung tissue over time, decreasing oxygen flow and delivery to your tissues. Deep, rhythmic belly breathing expands the diaphragm muscle, the cone-shaped muscle under your lungs, expanding the lung's air pockets, invoking the relaxation response, and massaging the lymphatic system.

A simple breathing exercise anyone can do is to simply lie on the floor with a book on your stomach. Begin breathing by pushing the book up with your belly while breathing in through your nose. Fill the belly first with air, then the diaphragm and finally the chest. Reverse the process on exhaling. You can also join a class that reinforces deep-breathing techniques, such as yoga, qigong, or tai chi.

2. Ionized drinking water. The importance of drinking enough water daily to stay hydrated is essential for cellular hydration. Like the earth, we are approximately 70 to 75 percent water. Without proper hydration, our cells, tissues, and organs literally shrivel and wither on the vine. We need to drink between 50 to 100 percent of our body weight in ounces each day!

The question is, what type of water should we drink? Tap water is loaded with chemicals and heavy metals. Bottled water is not much better, most of which is acidic and unhealthy. I also do not recommend distilled water or reverse osmosis water. Both of these waters are devoid of living energy and minerals, which are critical to our body's acid-alkaline balance.

The best solution is to invest in a high-quality water filtration device for your home. I highly recommend the kangen water system because it produces filtered ionized water that is several times more hydrating than other waters and is also high in antioxidant potency.

3. Alkaline diet. One of the best ways to increase the alkalinity of our bodies is to eat a vegetarian diet with a high concentration of raw foods. If you're not ready to eat mostly raw, organic food or to give up meat, I encourage you to educate yourself about which foods are more alkaline forming. There are many acid-alkaline diet books and foods charts available online that you can study.

One of the most alkalizing foods that everyone will want to incorporate in their diets is chlorophyll. Remember: chlorophyll is the substance in plants that allows them to absorb light from the sun and convert that light into usable energy.

Eating a diet high in chlorophyll (dark green veggies and super greens) will help to oxygenate the cells. Super greens come in different formulas and may include wheatgrass, alfalfa grass, barley grass, chlorella, spirulina, blue-green algae, and so forth. Many of these come in powdered form and are mixed in water or juice.

4. Exercise. Aerobic exercise floods the body with oxygen and rids it of waste via the lymphatic system. Just as blood is circulated throughout the body by the heart, exercise is what circulates the lymph. If the lymph doesn't circulate, then the tissues become oxygen-depleted because they are clogged with metabolic waste.

One of the best ways to exercise is to jump on a rebounder, or mini-trampoline. As you bounce, your cells get gently massaged and the lymph is completely flushed within a few minutes.

Walking, yoga, qigong, and swimming are moderate forms of exercise that alkalize and oxygenate the body. The key for your optimum health is simply to find some type of exercise that you enjoy and will practice daily!