Interesting facts from the president of PowerLung
I e-mailed Carolyn Morse, president of PowerLung in response to a posting on a COPD forum that said straws, stirs, balloons, bubbles were as good as spending any money on a lung exercisor. The entire topic came up when someone said they used the Breather and felt it was helping her. As you all know, I am a great advocate of the PowerLung and feel it has helped me considerably. I thank Carolyn for her prompt response to me and I want to share it with all of you.
Well, there is a lot to be said on this topic and I may go overboard with the technical side. Let me know if I miss anything or you have more questions.
Breathing by using a product that restricts the air flow you are only adding to what you already have -- restricted breathing! You need help really strengthening the muscles and re-learning deep breathing to overcome the restrictions you deal with every breath you take.
1. PowerLung is the only product available to provide flow independent, full range of motion, progressive threshold resistance to train deep breathing while strength training all 12 sets of respiratory muscles as you breathe with PowerLung. PowerLung is independently adjustable for inhale and exhale to accomodate different PowerLung uses and offers different models to accomodate different levels of users. PowerLung uses patented technology to accomplish this. PowerLung products are listed with the FDA as Class I Devices for respiratory muscle training in the physical medicine category. Here is a link to an independent study using PowerLung with information on respiratory muscle training; the diagram on page 2 is especially interesting
http://www.powerlung.com/us/en/information/evidence/trueblood.htm. You can download the study to print or read online.
2. Flow restriction (where the resistance is created by restricting or cutting off the flow of the air) at best only offers some exercise to encourage breathing. Using The Breather and any other "flow restrictive" product is in fact the same as using different sizes of straws, or tubing, pursed-lip breathing or even whistling. As a matter of fact, if you have been in the hospital and have any of the devices they gave you, you have a flow restrictive device. The fact that people don't use them, even when they bring them home, attests to the fact that their results are limited. Plus, this is actually older technology and has been proven in published studies to in fact de-train the muscles and shorten the breath. Shortness of breath is not the desired result! Here is a link to an excerpt from the study:
http://www.powerlung.com/us/en/information/studies/belman.htm
3. Just as a matter of record, the FDA does not "approve" devices of this kind and we are strictly forbidden, as is The Breather and any other product, to say it is "FDA Approved". Class I devices can never make medical claims that begins at a Class II level. At the Class II level, a device may be designated as authorized to be sold by prescription only or over the counter. The FDA is authorizing the company to sell the device in a particular manner for a particular use by a particular group of people. In order to make medical claims about helping specific ages in the diagnosis, treatment or cure of a disease the device company must prove the device, through clinical studies, and the FDA can then authorize the company to make these claims in advertising. Currently none of the products that are advertised on the internet are authorized by the FDA to claim they can diagnose, treat or cure any condition for any age. Those that are authorized as therapeutic devices are authorized to be sold by prescription only. The real truth of the matter is that most of the products currently advertised on the internet have not even taken the time to present their product to the FDA and are not authorized to make the claims they make. Most of them do not even have studies on their own products but instead list studies done using other products. Here at PowerLung, we refer to those as background studies. The studies shown on our website as Clinical Evidence are independent, third party studies published in peer-reviewed publications (print and online) or presented at peer conferences.
You can also encourage people to contact us at
info@powerlung.com to ask any PowerLung questions. Let me know if I missed the point or if there are areas that need more information.
Sincerely,
PowerLung, Inc.
Carolyn Morse
800.903.3087 Toll Free
713.465.1180 Telephone
713.465.5742 Fax
www.powerlung.com
cmorse@powerlung.com
PS: Here's a link to a comparison chart and PowerLung advantages on our website:
http://www.powerlung.com/us/en/products/compare/index.htm
http://www.powerlung.com/us/en/information/advantage/index.htm
