{"id":1201,"date":"2022-11-18T07:57:32","date_gmt":"2022-11-18T07:57:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yoga-vs-qigong.com\/blog\/bhramari-nitric-oxide\/"},"modified":"2022-11-18T07:57:32","modified_gmt":"2022-11-18T07:57:32","slug":"bhramari-nitric-oxide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yoga-vs-qigong.com\/en\/blog\/bhramari-nitric-oxide\/","title":{"rendered":"Bhramari Pranayama and Nitric Oxide: The Physiology of a Humming Breath"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Bhramari
Bhramari pranayama and nitric oxide<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bhramari is Sanskrit for \u201cbee.\u201d In this pranayama you exhale with an \u201cmmm\u201d sound, like a buzzing bumblebee. The technique looks almost childish, but it has a fascinating physiological explanation, which I came across while writing my yoga therapy thesis. I had to work through a pile of scientific papers on yoga techniques, and among them was a story about nitric oxide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where nitric oxide in the nose comes from<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Nitric oxide (NO) is a small gas molecule the body makes on its own. One place where there is a lot of it is the paranasal sinuses. The sinus lining produces NO all the time, and the concentration inside is high. The sinuses connect to the nasal cavity through narrow openings, so during quiet breathing the air in them is renewed slowly, and only a small fraction of the gas gets out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The experiment that explained it<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In 2002 two Swedish physiologists, Eddie Weitzberg and Jon Lundberg, published a short paper with a telling title: \u201cHumming greatly increases nasal nitric oxide.\u201d In ten healthy volunteers they compared a quiet exhale through the nose with a humming one. During humming, the NO concentration in the air leaving the nose rose about fifteenfold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a physicist, what I like most is the mechanism. Sound makes the air in the nasal cavity oscillate, and those oscillations act like a pump: gas from the sinuses is actively mixed through the narrow openings with the air in the nose. The sinuses do not start producing more NO; they simply get ventilated better. The authors themselves suggested humming as a simple test of whether the sinus openings are clear and left possible therapeutic effects for future research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What the body uses NO for<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Thousands of papers have been written about this molecule, and more appear every year. In 1992 the journal Science named NO \u201cMolecule of the Year,\u201d and in 1998 Robert Furchgott, Louis Ignarro and Ferid Murad received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering nitric oxide as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short, here is what it does:<\/p>\n\n\n\n