SO WHAT IS THIS ALL ABOUT?
The diaphragm is the key muscle of respiration and it has a bunch of groovy and amazing functions other than just helping you breathe. For instance it is involved in circulation of blood and lymphatic fluid, it is involved in balancing your CO2 and pH levels, and it is also involved in keeping you psychologically stable by balancing the autonomic nervous system. I am kinda obsessed by it and got in to a habit of measuring it in patients with dysfunctional breathing. What I noticed was that lots of patients seemed to have wasting of this muscle compared to other previously researched groups? So, the study was born after a bunch of thinking and writing and ethics and committees!!
I am measuring the thickness of the diaphragm using ultrasound in healthy females (both overweight and normal weight) and in females with a breathing pattern disorder (your breathing might feel a bit funny and you might have symptoms of chest tightness, anxiety, cold hands and feet, gut bloating etc etc.)
If you are sharp, you might wonder, why females and why the weight groups?? Well the simple answer is statistics – to have a robust study we need to control variables such as gender. We also need to group variables that we know affect diaphragm thickness (such as weight) into specific subgroups up front!!!! Complicated stuff!!
I’ve also removed a bunch of variables like asthma, lung disease, back pain etc etc to keep it tight too!! Check out the details below!!
Important dates – the study is running from 2018 through to the end of 2019! I am really hoping to be finished by then ha ha!!
I have finished the first stage (I have mostly completed the normal weight group) and what I need help with is Stage 2 of the study: Overweight healthy females and Overweight females with a breathing pattern disorder.
HOW DO WE DEFINE OVERWEIGHT?
FOR THE PURPOSES OF THE STUDY IT IS A BMI OVER 25
You can check out your BMI using this online calculator:
https://www.heartfoundation.org.nz/wellbeing/bmi-calculator
If you are interested please email me at scottpeirce@hotmail.com or bw@breathingworks.com