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Acidic/Alcaline foods
@grapes Thanks for the feedback. You're right, I wouldn't be here on a vitamin A toxicity forum if Buteyko breathing only had worked for me 🙂 but it seems to have worked for many people with more discipline to actually do the exercises everyday. However, I'm pretty sure if I had really bad asthma I would do them religiously.
My personal experience: I know I sleep better and feel more refreshed in the am if I nose-breathe overnight using a bit of tape on my mouth ...and during the day it's amazing how often I catch myself mouth breathing. I think this tendency to mouth breathe can get worse as you get older.
Apparently, when we mouth-breathe/over-breathe, we blow off too much CO2. The respiratory centre in our brains get used to this lower CO2 level and this encourages more over-breathing. It's a bit of a vicious circle. The Buteyko exercises very slowly train our respiratory centre to accept a higher level of CO2. (These exercises can be a simple as holding your breath for 4 seconds every minute for a period of time... they can be somewhat boring and so require discipline to do them!) When our breathing normalizes/lessens, all our tissues get oxygenated better. This has a systemic effect so it's one of those things often looked at as too good to be true. I was surprised to learn that CO2 is actually the gas that regulates our breathing.
This website https://www.breathingcenter.com/Blog has some interesting reading/testimonials and you'll notice how Sasha talks in her videos....she talks on the out-breath but then closes her mouth and breathes in through her nose. She thinks people who talk for a living, such as teachers, end up blowing off too much CO2 chronically but can learn to avoid this.
She also worries many people teaching Buteyko aren't trained or teaching it properly. For asthmatics especially... if the progression isn't very slow, the exercises could precipitate an asthma attack.
That's all I should write about BB on a VA forum. I was initially prompted by this acid/alkaline thread since breathing does affect pH quite profoundly. To me it seemed no different than people experimenting by avoiding oxalates as well as VA. If someone is inspired to look into this more...great. If not... great too. Just something else that might help. 🙂
@grapes I meant to add, that yes, our food choices do matter but because of Grant's books and testimonials from others I've experienced a big shift in my thinking about 'nutrition'. In North America, with our ample food supply, I'm totally agreeing with what I've read lately, that health for us appears to be more about avoiding toxins. And supplements, if they work, it seems it's often because they mitigate the effects of toxins. Even the words 'nutrient dense' that I used to aim for, kind of makes me bristle now. Huge change in thinking for me!