FF 16: Develop the best breathing habits for a healthy life

Dean O’Rourke lets us in on the secret of breathing properly to promote health and well-being for the whole family.

Dorte Bladt: I’m so excited to have this next speaker with us today. I saw a young person come into my practice the other day and they had just found this guy in… well, actually, they’d been recommended to see this guy and I was like, whoa, I found someone in Newcastle. So I’m so pleased.
Thank you for joining us this morning. This is Dean O’Rourke. I’m really pleased to have you here.
Dean O’Rourke: Thank you.
Dorte Bladt: Tell us a little bit about yourself?
Dean O’Rourke: Well, my health journey has been an interesting one. I started out as a Health Phys Ed teacher many years ago after doing it at Newcastle Uni. I found I was getting more and more interested in the health side of things and less and less interested in the sports side of things.
But what happened to me is I developed a very severe and chronic case of hay fever. I was suffering it all year round, not just in spring but all year round, taking all of the drugs that the doctor was giving me and getting sicker and sicker and it just seemed like there was no end to it. So in utter desperation, I went looking for answers.
When I started doing that, it changed the course of my life, essentially cured myself of the condition. I’ve been medication-free and symptom-free for many years now. And it changed my career, what I do.
Dorte Bladt: Excellent. So what do you actually do?
Dean O’Rourke: I specialize in breathing and orofacial function. So I help people with any breathing-related problem, any chronic respiratory problem, or any problem that they might have related to that. It’s a very specialized area. There’s not many people that do what I do.
Dorte Bladt: No. It’s so exciting you’re here.
Dean O’Rourke: So I’ve been doing it for over a decade now in Newcastle and on the Central Coast.
Dorte Bladt: When you say that you’re specializing in breathing, it’s one of those things we do many times a day and we could sort of lift our eyebrows and say, “You know what? I’ve done it for many years now.”
So tell us a bit about what you’re looking for.
Dean O’Rourke: That’s often the way people think about breathing and the reality is there’s a lot of misconception about breathing and a lot of misinformation as well. A lot of people do think it’s just something you do and you just stop doing it one day.
Dorte Bladt: Hopefully not too soon.
Dean O’Rourke: That’s right. But the reality is there is a right and wrong way to breathe and, when I discovered that, a whole new world opened to me. The reality is that dysfunction can range from mild through severe. It can happen at any age. And if you are on the dysfunction spectrum, it can lead to a whole heap of health problems, well, problems people suffer.
Genetics plays a role in that, or maybe the severity of it, but, very often, the trigger or the path they go down is because of their breathing function. The reality is you’re breathing 24/7. So if it’s not right, it’s affecting you 24/7. It’s the foundation of your health.
Most people you ask them what the two most important things to their health are, they would say diet and exercise. As important as those two things are, I’m not in any way saying they’re not important, but the reality is breathing is well in front than those two things. The only thing that comes close to breathing in terms of critical function, in terms of what you need to do to promote it would be hydration. And hydration is a distant second to breathing, still.
But most of us just take breathing for granted and we’re unaware of how much it may be affecting our health.