Effects of diaphragm breathing exercise and feedback breathing exercise on pulmonary function in healthy adults.
Min-Sik Yong, Hae-Yong Lee, Yun-Seob Lee
PMID 28210046WHAT IT FOUND
Healthy adults improved both slow vital capacity and forced vital capacity after either feedback breathing or diaphragm breathing.
Forced vital capacity after exercise differed between groups, but the study does not make clear which exercise should be preferred.
Key findings
01Slow vital capacity and forced vital capacity were higher after exercise than before in both groups.
02After exercise, forced vital capacity differed significantly between groups, while slow vital capacity did not.
03The reported post-exercise values were slow vital capacity 6.44 ± 1.3 liters for the feedback group and 6.05 ± 1.3 liters for the diaphragm group; forced vital capacity 3.30 ± 0.6 liters and 3.27 ± 0.7 liters.
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What it does not show
Only 31 healthy adults were studied, so the results do not apply to people with neuromuscular, orthopedic, or cardiopulmonary conditions. The paper does not report how many exercises, repetitions, or sessions were performed, so the dose cannot be reproduced. No blinding of participants, testers, or analysts is described, and the randomisation method is not detailed. Measurements were taken only before and after the exercise, so there is no evidence about how long any change lasts. The between-group forced vital capacity result is hard to translate into practice because the paper reports a significant difference but does not make clear which exercise should be preferred.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that diaphragm breathing is superior to feedback breathing. Both groups showed post-exercise increases in slow vital capacity and forced vital capacity, and the paper does not report a clear clinically preferred method. It also used healthy adults only, so it does not show what would happen in patients with respiratory disease.