Breathing Helps Stop That Pain

Newsclip, July 1958:

It's not the pain-killing properties of aspirin which make it so beneficial for arthritic patients.

"Instead, it's the huffing and puffing produced by large doses of aspirin which really control the aches, pain and stiffness.

"This was suggested here yesterday by Drs. Frederick Kahn, Daniel Simmons, and Howard Weinberger of UCLA and the Los Angeles VA hospitals.

"Physicians have long known, they said, that normal doses of aspirin won't help arthritis patients. It takes dosages of about 15 tablets a day to control arthritic pains.

"But at these doses, they said, aspirin produces what is called 'hyper-ventilation' – the patient constantly breathes deeply and rapidly, often while he's at rest. In turn, this hyper-ventilation lowers the amount of carbon dioxide in the blood.

"To check their suspicions, the Los Angeles doctors put victims of arthritis in an iron lung and made them over-breathe without any aspirin.

"The relief of pain and other symptoms, they found, was just as effective as that achieved with aspirin."

Note: The above is valuable information that we can use every day of our lives. Deep breathing reduces pain and relaxes the entire system. Do NOT use any aspirin-type product to help you do that breathing: There is a poisonous chemical in "headache pills" which causes the stomach to bleed internally each time it is taken, whether in tablet or powder form.