> In this case, it is entirely logical to me that breathing can modify circulatory patterns pumping more blood to your joints, thereby promoting healing for arthritis.
By this logic, people with tachycardia would be much faster at healing, right? Since all that you can do with breathing techniques directly (without discussing how this might affect your mind etc.) is to increase your pulse and maybe arterial pressure. Why exactly increased pulse would reduce the inflammatory auto-immune response that is the cause of arthritis is beyond me. If anything, I would expect increased blood flow to increase the auto-immune response and make the arthritis worse.
Not the person you're responding to, but my experience as a runner and someone who practices breathing is that it does engage some specific mechanisms that promote certain kinds of blood flow. I think your intuition here is off, and you're treating the body as a pretty simple machine rather than something that has some pretty sophisticated feedback mechanisms between the mind and the body.
As I said, I am open to explanations that this is a mind/body effect.
I am not open to explanations that breathing fast/deep in itself, through the extra blood flow that it can obviously generate, are directly therapeutic for arthritis. This was, by my understanding, GP's preferred explanation.
No. Pulse rate is not necessarily correlated to volume of blood flow. You can have a high pulse rate, and often do, _because_ your heart is weak and failing to pump sufficient blood.
Deep breathing actually tends to slow your heart rate down. I don't know what it does to overall blood flow rate. But, I wouldn't be surprised if it directed more blood flow to your capillaries and other areas that don't typically get great blood flow, similar to how your body pumps more blood to your extremities when you are warm.
General advice, keep an open mind. When people say things that give you an emotional reaction, ask yourself if it's possible you are getting that reaction because you are afraid they might be right.
By this logic, people with tachycardia would be much faster at healing, right? Since all that you can do with breathing techniques directly (without discussing how this might affect your mind etc.) is to increase your pulse and maybe arterial pressure. Why exactly increased pulse would reduce the inflammatory auto-immune response that is the cause of arthritis is beyond me. If anything, I would expect increased blood flow to increase the auto-immune response and make the arthritis worse.