This study focused on breathing exercises involving Souffle
® (POLA PHARMA). Therefore, this study experimentally investigated the effects of training activities on circulatory dynamics, autonomic nervous system activities, and central nervous system activities in order to improve knowledge regarding the proper way to perform breathing exercises before and after cardiac surgery. To prevent bias related to factors such as age, medical history, and current therapy, 10 healthy adults were included in the study, and their autonomic nervous activities and brain waves were continuously monitored during the control period, the breathing exercise period (using SOUFFLE, for 5 minutes), and the recovery period. The heart rate and blood pressure variation as well as the cerebral cortex activity for the training period were significantly higher than those for the control and/or recovery periods, and the parasympathetic activity for the value for 5 minutes after the exercise was significantly lower than that for 20 minutes after theexercise ( p < 0.05 for all). The participants’ heart rates increased to the maximum level after 3 minutes of exercise and decreased to the average level in 15-20 minutes. The results suggest that (1) the breathing exercise induced fluctuation in circulatory dynamics, which caused heart strain ; (2) the breathing exercise activated cardiac sympathetic nervous activity and inhibited parasympathetic nervous activity ; (3) breath control involving Souffle
® activated cerebral cortex activity and led to brain wave fluctuation, especially in alpha waves ; and (4) it is appropriate to conduct training within 3 minutes per session and resume training after a break of a minimum of 15-20 minutes,especially during preoperative training.
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