Sometimes doing an action can take the place of taking a certain medication.
Positive morning affirmations can work like an antidepressant. Grounding can decrease inflammation. Chiropractors routinely prescribe exercise routines to relieve pain.
Some doctors have said, “If exercise were a drug, I’d give everyone a prescription.”
Sometimes what you’re doing is making a drug with your own body.
Other times you’re stretching out tendons and ligaments that are pulling on others to relieve pain.
It’s generally better to do something rather than take something. You can save money, avoid drug interactions, side effects, and often enjoy other wide-ranging benefits.
These actions can often be fun. Exercise can prevent and treat depression; gardening can too. Meeting with friends can fight depression too.
Coughing and deep breathing have been shown to reduce the need for antibiotics when a person is bedridden. It mimics a person’s actions when they’re up and walking around. The device can provide a visual cue as to how deep you need to breathe. You can clear phlegm out of their lungs by coughing.
Timed breathing and isometric hand exercises
Regarding fighting insomnia, some long-term, not-commonly-known interventions for these problems are timed breathing and isometric hand exercises. Both can calm you down before bed and make it easier to fall asleep. These exercises aren’t considered to be strenuous though strenuous exercise isn’t necessarily bad. While strenuous exercises 90 minutes before bedtime make it harder for some people to sleep, they can actually relax others.
Some exercise machines have received FDA approval to treat high blood pressure, but they won’t work quickly to treat it. They’re better considered a long-term solution to a blood pressure problem. Another benefit of this is that while they take time, one can do the exercises while doing something else. They also won’t come with the side effects of blood pressure medicines.
Another benefit: if you suffer from a roiling mind at bedtime, many people anecdotally report the exercises help with that.
You can do them while watching TV or even under the covers before bed. They can fit into many routines.
There are free and commercial versions of these treatments. The free versions cover the general idea of the treatment but the exact program is untested.
After six weeks of use, the two commercial versions of these blood-pressure control exercisers, Resperate and Zona, show reductions of about 10 percent in the top and bottom blood pressure numbers. That’s not bad. That’s what you’d expect to see from a blood-pressure medication.
Respirate is an FDA-approved device that leads the user through breathing exercises with tones.
The device from Zona Health leads one through handgrip exercises that have similarly been studied.
Whether you can combine handgrip exercises with breathing exercises isn’t clear. Both are helpful for overall fitness; being fitter is better than being less fit.
The Zona Plus competes with handgrips, though you could do much the same thing with squeezing the heck out of any object from around the house. A big advantage to using the commercial product is similar people have studied the product. You can assume that if you use the product as directed, you’ll have similar results. Trying to get the same effects with a non-commercial version will have less-predictable results.
Resperate competes with free smartphone apps like My Calm Beat and Breath Ball. It’s important to note Breath Ball and My Calm Beat say nothing about blood pressure control. They are, rather, targeted toward relaxation. If Resperate helps blood pressure, however, Breath Ball and My Calm Beat should help too. The actions they have you take are similar and could lead to similar outcomes.
Relaxation before bed is hard to quantify objectively. You can give it a subjective rating on a scale of one to ten by paying attention to how you feel. After a week, ask yourself if you feel like it helps you relax and sleep better. If so, you might want to continue.
Blood pressure, on the other hand, can be measured objectively. Measure it with your at-home blood pressure cuff. Make a note of it in your dream journal. It’s a handy place to record it, though if you want to discuss the readings with your doctor you might want to write it again somewhere else before taking it to his or her office. Some of those dreams you’ve recorded could be distracting.
For further reading:
Isometric exercises before bed
How to use prayer beads to help you go to sleep.
Cuddling can be convenient energy healing.
Don’t forget to make it decaf coffee before bed.
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Updated January 26, 2023