Ever wondered how much air your lungs hold? Been noticing that you get winded easier and struggling to catch your breath that used to be a breeze? Then you may have been wondering how to increase your lung capacity.

Here it is in a nut shell:

• Deep Breathing Exercises: Practicing deep or diaphragmatic breathing can expand your lungs, strengthen respiratory muscles, and improve overall lung capacity.
• Count Your Breaths: Gradually increasing the time you spend inhaling and exhaling can enhance lung capacity. This involves counting the duration of each breath and slowly extending it over time.
• Singing: Singing regularly helps control breath, expand lung tissue, and strengthen respiratory muscles, contributing to increased lung capacity.
• Lifestyle Changes: Limiting exposure to pollutants, quitting smoking, and incorporating regular exercise into your routine can significantly improve lung function and capacity.

If you’re familiar with getting winded or having to stop and take really deep breaths, you know the importance of improving your lung capacity. But you may not know that this can naturally happen as we age.

As we age, we tend to live a more sedentary lifestyle, and the efficiency of our lungs decline over time. That scenario happens simply because when we were younger we were more active and demanded more from our lungs.

How To Increase Your Lung Capacity?

Of course, you may not be interested in improving your lung capacity for an athletic performance. However, increasing your lung capacity will help you boost your overall health, energy levels, and quality of life, no matter how old you are.

As you increase and improve your lung function, you’ll naturally reduce fatigue, increase endurance, and go about daily activities-without feeling short of breath.

Part of increasing your lung capacity is expanding the amount of air your can take in. Lung capacity varies from one person to another.

On average our lungs hold about 6 liters of air between the two. (Six liters is about 6 1/3 quarts.)

Physical lung size doesn’t shrink as we age, but they lose their elasticity. As they lose the suppleness, the amount of air they once held decreases. The primary reason for them losing their elasticity is lack of use because we seem to become less active as we age.

While it’s natural for our lungs to decline a little over time, other factors can also affect their capacity.

These include a sedentary lifestyle, obesity, and chronic lung diseases like asthma or COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). There are other factors too, but these are the main ones.

You may not be aware if your lung capacity has decreased over time. Symptoms like shortness of breath or difficulty breathing might make you wonder why.

Maybe you’re feeling more fatigued than usual. In fact, this decrease in lung capacity may even get you falsely diagnosed with COPD.

And by the way, if you are dealing with any one of the Three Main Types of Lung Diseases, these exercises will help.

However, there is good news, so don’t become overly alarmed! Your lungs aren’t destined to stay this way forever. You can do something about it. You can increase your lung capacity through breathing techniques, exercises, and lifestyle changes.

How to enhance lung capacity for better health

Your lungs are more than import for your overall wellbeing, health, and fitness. They are crucial for every bodily function. Working on increasing your lung capacity natually enhances their health along with:

• Providing you with more day to day energy
• Improving and supporting your immune function
• Reducing the risk of chronic diseases, including lung diseases
• Is a must if your are already dealing with chronic lung disease

Lung health is crucial to overall well-being, as it ensures the body receives the oxygen needed for all its functions.

Practice Deep Breathing or Diaphragmatic Breathing

Deep breathing helps expand your lungs and reach their full capacity. As you fill your lungs with air, it stretches the lung tissue and strengthens the respiratory muscles.

Diaphragmatic breathing focuses on strengthening the diaphragm too, which is important for taking deep breaths. It’s also called belly breathing, and helps improve the rate at which your lungs expand and contract.

1. To start deep breathing, get comfortable first. You can either sit or lie down.
2. Inhale slowly and deeply through your nose and allow your belly to rise as your lungs fill with air.
3. Place your hand on your belly or diaphragm and feel it go up and down. This is to make sure the air goes way down into your lungs and not just sitting up high in your chest.
4. Hold your breath for 3 to 5 seconds to give your lungs time to expand fully and stay expanded.
5. Now exhale slowly and completely through your mouth and let your abdomen fall.
6. Repeat 5 to 10 times at least. The more the better! It’s better to start off with around 5 breaths and do more each day to keep from having sore chest muscles.

Regular deep breathing exercises can gradually increase your lung volume, which is the amount of air your lungs can hold. With practice, you will be able to take in more air with each breath.

If you have been leading a sedentary lifestyle, your airways might have become narrowed. If they are not exercised, they become sedentary too! Deep breathing can help open them up and improve your overall lung capacity.

Diaphragmatic breathing is particularly beneficial to people with COPD. This technique can improve your COPD symptoms over time, although it can’t reverse the condition.

Count Your Breaths

Increasing the time you inhale and exhale can also help increase your lung capacity.

To know how long this is for you, count how long it takes for you to do a normal breath in and exhale it. It might take you five counts to inhale and five counts to exhale for example.

To increase this number, add one more count to each breath you take and practice until you’ve comfortably extended the time it takes you to inhale and exhale.

Remember that it should be a gradual process that won’t strain your lungs or cause any muscle discomfort. After a week what’s your count? After a month is it even better?

Sing and Have Fun While Increasing Your Lung Capacity

Yes, singing can help expand your lung capacity. Singing requires you to control your breath and expand your lung tissue.

It strengthens your respiratory muscles as you hold notes or sing long phrases. Like any exercise, consistency is key. You may be like me and not be able to carry a tune or just not have a very pleasant singing voice?

None of that matters when you’re singing to increase lung capacity. Not at all! Just let her rip. Who knows you may even get better with practice.

So start singing regularly and often and know you are keeping your lungs in tip-top condition!

Make Some Lifestyle Changes

Your lifestyle can also affect your lung capacity. You must limit yourself from being exposed to air pollutants and toxins, including toxic cigarettes.

These include other people’s cigarettes too! Get them to not smoke around you and don’t be afraid to stick up for your health. (Surely you’re not a smoker and worried about your lung capacity?)

You need to exercise, and when you do, you are exercising your lungs. When you go walking why not practice your deep breathing at the same time? You will get double the benefits!

Summing Up

Your lung capacity may decrease as you age, but you can do something about it. You can improve their function with the above techniques, and improve your overall respiratory health. With persistence and dedication, you can increase your lung capacity and be the envy of all balloon blowers!