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Asthma Under Attack by Russell Lander, The Bulletin (Australia) 8 October 1996

For 14 years I have been on asthma medication but on February 9 this year I threw out my spray and have remained drug-free and well for some six months.For those who suffer from chronic asthma, this assertion is likely to engender astonishment or extreme scepticism, as this now very common medical condition is generally regarded as intractable, requiring lifelong preventative drug treatment. Doctors won’t promise that you’ll never get off asthma drugs because they don’t know the precise cause of what is now an epidemic. I hope my story will encourage chronic asthmatics to consider an alternative approach to what is now regarded as standard treatment reliever and preventer medication delivered by puffers, turbuhalers and nebulisers, and cortisone and theophylline tablets. Needless to say, each of these treatments comes with its own suite of side effects and asthma sufferers who follow this course are riding a tiger. Technique: My wife heard from her physiotherapist about the Buteyko breathing technique and we decided that, with our daughter Jennie, we would do the course. A Buteyko instructor, one of a number of practitioners in Australia teaching the technique, took us through a series of breathing exercises, explaining the theory as he went along. It is surprising how many people have heard about what has become known as “That Russian breathing technique”, but few, it seems, actually do a course. Our two-week course, conducted at home, comprised five sessions of about one-and-a-half hours each. During this period we had to practise a routine and time our results. The instructor encouraged us to reduce our use of reliever medications within a comfort zone but not to reduce the preventers. I chose to stop all medication at a stroke on day one of the course, even though the instructor had advised against it. Like many great ideas, the Buteyko approach seems deceptively simple, but is actually quite complex to apply. In essence, the method advocates taking in small breaths through the nose, breathing out gently and holding the breath for extended periods. At first it is foreign to the asthma sufferer but with a little practice it soon becomes second nature. So how does it work? Konstantin Pavlovich Buteyko is a 73-year-old Russian doctor whose research over many years revealed that deep breathing far from being a virtue can be harmful, and that shallow breathing is the natural way to inhale. Deep breathing, he claims, depletes the bloodstream of carbon dioxide, causing blood vessel spasms and oxygen starvation. This in turn may bring about asthma, headaches, rapid heart beat and a number of other medical conditions. Gulp: Asthmatics tend to gulp in too much air and their efforts to exhale as much as possible to make way for the next hard-won breath deprives the bloodstream of carbon dioxide, a smooth muscle dilator. The effect is that the more asthmatics strain to take in extra air, the less oxygen is actually being released to the body’s cells. Buteyko’s technique of breathing through the nose is alien to most asthmatics because more air can be inhaled via the mouth than the nose, and in any case the nose may well be blocked. But there are four good reasons why breathing through the nose is beneficial to asthmatics. It regulates the temperature of the air, filters it, humidifies the lungs and limits the volume of air that can be inhaled. The Buteyko method teaches how to unblock the nose and how to maintain nasal breathing all day and all night. Since giving up all asthma drugs, I have noticed a number of positive changes. I am generally calmer, my hands are steadier, I have stopped suddenly feeling breathless, I can sleep peacefully right through the night instead of waking feeling choked, I have stopped bruising badly at the slightest knock or scratch (attributed to cortisone use), pain experienced in my upper back over many years associated with hyperventilation has disappeared and I seem to have more cash. That is not to say that I haven’t had asthmatic symptoms occasionally, but I have been able to overcome these by following the book, as it were lowering the breathing rate, softening exhalation and holding the breath for extended intervals every five minutes or so. The Buteyko method has worked for my daughter, Jennie, too. Now 28, she has been a chronic asthmatic from the age of two. On numerous occasions she has been rushed to casualty in a state of dire breathlessness, sometimes put on a cortisone drip for days. Since doing the course she has come down from a towering 25 or more puffs of Ventolin each day to none at all. She has also been able to reduce her preventer medication from six to two puffs of Pulmicort a day. The Buteyko method of controlled breathing has worked wonders in my family and I urge asthma sufferers to be open-minded about it. Although it is not currently covered by health funds, sufferers should weigh the cost against that of regular asthma medications, doctors’ fees and possible hospitalisation. And, anyway, what price quality of life?  ...

Breathe Easily, and Learn to Live Again by Sally Magnusson, The Herald, Glasgow, 12th August 1996

I have just watched a roomful of people who have suffered terribly from perhaps the most rampant disease of this generation, long thought to be incurable, begin to recover from it. Dramatically. Almost incredibly. Within five days. I am still reeling from the experience, still finding it hard to take in the possibility that my own son, whom I have been pumping full of asthma medication for five of his eight years, could soon be shot of all of his inhalers for good. Some have gone already. He woke this morning without a wheeze, able to breathe freely through his nose for the first time in ages. As I write he is out playing football without ventolin in his pocket. I honestly wouldn’t have believed it when he and I sat down last week in London’s Hale Clinic with 20 fellow asthmatics, including two other young boys. We had come, like everyone else, because I had heard that the Buteyko method of reconditioning your breathing had been producing amazing results in asthmatics, and I was willing to try anything. But we were all pretty sceptical. How, we wondered, as we sat nervously in rows waiting for the first class to begin, could five one-hour lessons in breathing achieve what a lifetime of inhalers and pills and special vacuum cleaners had failed to do? There were people in that class who need nebulizers two or three times just to get through a normal day, people who could no longer climb stairs, people with medecine cabinets like a pharmacy, people of all ages and both sexes whose whole lives were dominated and ruined by the perpetual fight for air. And how ridiculously simple it turned out to be. It wasn’t, we were told, that our bodies were fighting for air at all; they were getting too much of the stuff. The key to this theory is carbon dioxide. For oxygen to pass efficiently into the blood we need a certain amount of carbon dioxide; this is lost when we over-breathe. In other words – and this is standard textbook stuff – by breathing too much we actually get less oxygen. The radical claim made by the Russian physiologist, Professor Konstantin Buteyko, is that asthmatics are three or four times more than they should.They’re not doing it in an acute, obvious way; the crux of Buteyko’s theory is that this over-breathing is often not clearly visible in the patient; it is “hidden hyperventilation”. He suggests that diseases such as asthma, hypertension, stenocardia, strokes, haemorrhoids, eczema, and a good many others are the body’s defence mechanisms against the excessive loss of CO2 through over-breathing. So an asthmatic spasm is not a message to the body to breathe more; it’s a plea to breathe less. And the more we force open the airways with bronchodilators like ventolin and take big, deep gulps of air, the more harm we do in the long run. The body simply strengthens its defences and tries to get the message across again, and again, and again. I’m no scientist; I’m certainly no doctor. I’ll leave it to those who are better qualified to assess whether Christopher Drake, the Buteyko practitioner who ran our course, is right to assert that “you can’t have shallow breathing and asthma – the two simply cannot go together”. All I can say, mustering as much journalistic detachment as I can, is that it seems to work. And, if he’s right, any asthmatic with the not inconsiderable willpower required to sustain the breathing exercises could be off medications in a matter of weeks. A Multi-million pound pharmaceutical industry would feel the pinch, of course, but I dare say the country’s three million asthmatics could live with that. Sharon Cutler, a 39-year-old teacher from Kent, certainly could. Even I, who had watched her struggle with the Buteyko exercises each evening and gradually begin tomaster them, was taken aback by the changes she reported at the end of the week. My shorthand could hardly keep up with the outpouring of emotion when I asked her what she thought. “I feel fantastic,” she said, “and extraordinarily happy. I’ve had no asthma since the second day. I feel so much more energetic. My appetite’s fallen and my weight has just dropped off. I can walk distances. I can manage stairs. “My life until this week has consisted of going to work, coming home collapsing in a chair, and wheezing. Now I feel as if I’ve got my life back. The only time I felt this good before was in the two or three minutes after I came off the nebulizer. I feel as if I’ve had a body transplant. What have I been doing this past forty years?” Angela McAnally, from Glasgow, said she felt wonderful. “I can’t say how tremendouse I feel already.” Gary Phillips, from Wales, said he could breathe through his nose for the first time in years. Similar responses were coming from all sides, with the most dramatic results being reported by the most seriously affected asthmatics. One lady told Drake: “Thank you for giving me my life back.” Of course only time will tell wether the improvrement continues, especially once the long-term steroid inhalers, which we were urged not to discard too hastily, are reduced. But Christopher Drake claims a 97% long-trm success rate, and the tributed of his former pupils certainly back him up. He showed me a letter from Nick Jacobs (34) of London, a chronic asthmatic since the age of six who was on steroids, repeated antibiotics, Serevent twice a day – and felt in a state of permanent decline. “I stopped taking the Ventolin on the third day of your course and have not taken it since”, he wrote, “I am now taking no medication whatsoever and I am in control of my asthma. I am beginning to forget that I have asthma at all. “I am shocked and delighted by the efficacy of the method. ‘Miraculous’ is an emotive an non-scientific word but comes closest to describing how I view the application of this simple and logically founded method. I am grateful beyond my ability of expression.” So, what happens to achieve such dramatic results so quickly? Well, remarkably little, actually. On each of the five evenings we learned to forget everything we ever imbibed at our mother’s knee about the efficacy of breathing and practiced instead how to take infinitesimal, almost suffocation breaths through the nose.And we learned to stop asthma attacks – which we’re told will happen less and less as shallow breathing becomes second nature – by holding our breath for an inordinate time to get carbon dioxide levels up. As many of the class were soon discovering, these exercises at the first hint of a wheeze will diperse it completely. Within a couple of days, the elderly man on the nebulizer had abandoned it for one puff of ventolin, and by the third day he reported that he had got through a 5am asthma attack spasm with the exercise alone. He felt he was on his way. We were told not to come of steroids too fast. We should wait until we had been clear of symptoms and breathing well for a few weeks and then reduce gradually in consultation with a GP. Christopher Drake, who has overseen the recovery of so many blighted lives in this way, is an angry man. Despite the conclusion of the chair of childhood diseases at the First Moscow Institute that “Buteyko’s method proved to be very effecient in the complex treatment of bronchial asthma”, despite authoritative trials in Australia and a success rate of over 90%, Drake can’t get a hearing in Britain. The National Asthma Campaign is dismissive. “There is no medical evidence that a person with stable asthma is consistently over-breathing” it says. Christopher Drake wants to set up British trials to provide the evidence. He wants Buteyko’s reasoning assessed by independent scientists. Above all he wants open minds. Perhaps Scotland’s medical establishment, with it’s proud indendent history, could provide these. “Everyone believes asthma is a complicated, mysterious, disease”, he says, “So we spend millions os pounds researching the dust mite that has been with us forever, we clean carpets, we sell the dog, we buy special bedding and afterwards – more asthma. These are only triggers. The simple fact is that asthmatics breathe three or four times more than the physiology books say they should and the medications make it worse.” Next month Drake is holding Scotland’s first Buteyko course in Glasgow, preceded by an explanatory seminar that is free and open to all. Every GP, every asthma nurse, everybody who has ever looked into the asthma abyss, and despaired, ought to be there.  ...

Breathing Life Into Medical Theories by Sally Magnusson, The Herald, Scotland, Monday January 6 1997

When the BBC programme Frontline Scotland reveals the results of the two months it spent following the progress of asthma sufferers using the Buteyko breathing method, it will be reopening a medical controversy which has been simmering in Scotland for some months. Ever since the practitioners of the method, developed by the Russian professor Konstantin Buteyko, began their breathing classes in Glasgow, heralded by the astounding claim asthma can be corrected by shallow breathing, opinion has been sharply divided. Doctors by and large feel the theory that all asthmatics breathe incorrectly doesn’t hold water. They say only the tiny percentage who hyperventilate acutely are likely to be helped by changing their breathing. Prof Buteyko, however. argues all asthmatics breathe more than they should , the degree of over-breathing determines the severity of the asthma, and that by improving their breathing they will improve their asthma. It’s a theory passionately supported by the growing numbers of asthmatics who have persevered with the method and found their asthma improving, sometimes dramatically. Since every course brings together all types of asthma, whether exercise induced or allergy based, mild or severe, acquired in childhood or later in life, and since the majority of sufferers appear to benefit, a far higher proportion than the 4% or so of acute hyperventilators are seeing an improvement in their asthma. Four months ago, The Herald followed the progress of several people who took part in the first Buteyko workshop in Scotland. At the end of the five evening-course, the diaries they kept chartered, in every case, a reduction in symptoms. The real challenge, however, would be in the weeks ahead, as they sought to persevere with a breathing method that requires considerable effort. With Frontline Scotland set to reveal the results of another such course, it seemed appropriate to chart the progress of that first group. Pam Duncan, from the Isle of Arran, says it has changed her life. She has been able to start a new job, after being unable to cope with the last one because of her asthma. Her family have insisted she change her message on the answer-phone because she sounds so different from the wheezy character who recorded the original one. “I was on so much medication I can barely remember it all. Now I’m off everything except Uniphyllin (which I’ve reduced from 400mg twice a day to 300mg once a day ) and the steroid inhaler Flixotide which will be the last one to go. I’m also off Prozac which I was on for the depression I was getting because I was always so ill with asthma. “I’ve had three chest infections since the course, which I had to be on antibiotics for, but I haven’t needed to increase the asthma medication, which is amazing” Meridith Cooper from Rhu has found the breathing exercises extremely hard work. “If I stick at it, I’m well. If I lapse, the asthma returns. But I am very, very impressed . I haven’t used Ventolin in four months an I’m ready now to half my dosage of steroids”. The huge reserves of willpower required to sustain the Buteyko method seems to be the main reason it doesn’t work for everyone. In a culture hooked on instant remedies, the physical effort and mental stamina it takes to recondition a lifetime’s breathing habit comes as a shock. A hospital physician who enrolled four of his NHS patients on a Buteyko course was extremely disappointed with the results. Two did not even finish the course. Meredith Cooper’s brother Guy Nelson was also on the first course. He had asthma induced solely by exercise, which in a sports lover was a major handicap. He found it difficult at first to play hockey with his mouth tightly closed, but eventually began to experience definite improvement. He now feels in control of his asthma. One of several children on the course, Amy Birchard, 9, has persevered with the exercises and feels much better. Her father, Paul Birchard said “I feel it’s a truthful theory and it works”. Joanne Webster, 16, from Angus, has also been able to reduce her medication, she has more energy and feels warmer. Her consultant was very impressed by the improvement in her condition. Alasdair, 18, Fearghas, 8 and their mother, Fiona Lyon, did the course together as a family. Alasdair reports that they have not used their inhalers at all since then. They can all now go into houses where there are cats and dogs without suffering. “It’s very hard work,” said Alasdair, “but it’s worth it.” Elaine Gillespie, 17, from Greenock, was a severe asthmatic on high doses of drugs, who looked and felt ill all the time. She is amazed at how much better she has been. She was able to come off most of the drugs and has felt hugely better without the shakiness and the fluctuating heart-rate she had been experiencing as side effects. Her one set back has been a bout of pneumonia, but she intends to restart the breathing method once she recovers. “I think everybody should be able to do this” she said. “It should be on the NHS” Whether the Buteyko method ever makes it on to the NHS, which currently spends hundreds of millions of pounds on asthma drugs, depends on clinical trials which may take years to carry out. So far the only controlled study has been staged in Australia, where 40 asthmatic patients were divided into two groups which followed either a Buteyko regime or standard asthma treatment and relaxation techniques. After six weeks there was a 90% reduction in the symptomatic medication in the Buteyko group compared with a 5% reduction in the other. There was also a significant improvement in the quality of life of the Buteyko group. Australian respiratory physicians expressed surprise at the results. The Buteyko practitioners in this country, Alexander Stalmatski and Christopher Drake, operate out of London’s Hale Clinic. Research studies are under way but it may be a long time before the clinical trials that could prove or disprove the Buteyko theory are up and running.  ...

It’s Enough to make you gasp by Sally Magnusson, The Herald, Glasgow, 7 October 1997

The research establishment won’t fund it. The medical establishment won’t countenance it. In GP surgeries up and down the land it’s been dismissed as irrelevant. But among the people, among those patients who – despite the best efforts of the cleverest people in the medical profession – still can’t breathe properly and are frittering away their health on increasingly noxious asthma drugs, the Buteyko method is not so easily patronised. Now at last these people have a champion. Dr Gerald Spence, a 43 year old GP in the East End of Glasgow, has spent the last year considering the claims of the Russian Professor Konstantin Buteyko that Western medicine has got the approach to asthma all wrong. He has become increasingly convinced that. Buteyko is right to see asthma as a breathing disorder which can be corrected by retraining our breathing. When The Herald first brought the claimed successes of the Buteyko method to public attention more than a year ago, Dr Spence – virtually alone among his profession – was concerned enough at his own impotence in treating asthma effectively to attend a Buteyko workshop and see what was going on. At Shettleston Health centre we spend £100,000 a year on asthma treatment – that’s a tenth of the whole budget.” he says “But it’s not working. Constantly we have to increase the potency of the medication, and it’s very distressing to see patient’s intake go up and up, without them getting any better.” What he found at the Buteyko workshops was asthmatics of every shape, size, age and degree of severity, all but a few declaring themselves hugely better and able within days to reduce the sometimes vast amounts of medication previously needed to control their asthma symptoms. He was interested, but profoundly sceptical. Nobody teaches Buteyko’s theories in this country’s medical schools. The Siberian born physician, whom the medical committee of the Russian Parliament is currently considering for nomination for a Nobel Prize in Medicine, argues that all our ideas about deep breathing being good for us are fatally flawed. He argues that the more you breathe, the less oxygen actually gets to the cells of your body. This is because the air around you contains a much smaller proportion of carbon dioxide than your own body.Carbon dioxide is essential for the body’s uptake of oxygen. Breathing too much results in a deficit of carbon dioxide, which reduces the level of oxygen in the blood and tissues. According to this theory, asthmatics are breathing two, three, sometimes even four times as much as they should, and constriction of the airways is the body’s defence. The body is asking to be given less air, not more. Reliever drugs to open the airways will, therefore, give temporary relief, but will soon force the body into stronger defences, which leads to more drugs, and so on, in an increasingly vicious spiral. Barely able to believe that the answer to asthma could be that simple, Dr Spence was nevertheless spurred on by the results he was seeing. He decided to follow the progress of 60 asthmatics who had paid £290 to learn how to retrain their breathing. Of the 41 who responded to his survey over a six month period (27 females and 15 males aged from six to 77 years) 34 had continued with the exercises and reported significant reductions in asthma medication; indeed 12 people no longer used preventer or reliever at all. A further two had stopped the exercises but concentrated on breathing through their nose; both had stopped their reliever inhaler and one the preventer. Five people had abandoned the breathing method and described their asthma as unchanged. “I am amazed at how well people have done” says Dr Spence. “I didn’t expect these results. People were writing huge screeds on the back of the questionnaires, saying they had never felt better in their lives. I don’t need fancy statistical techniques to see their is something very important going on.” In the letter he sent with the latest part of his survey he wrote, “Although this questionnaire does not have the rigour of a clinical trial, I feel that it provides very strong evidence that Buteyko breathing exercises, if continued, can control the symptoms of asthma and that medication can be reduced and in many cases stopped without apparent harm. *Boosted by the results of the survey, Dr Spence has begun teaching his own asthma patients the Buteyko principles. When I joined him on his afternoon off he was sitting in a room in the surgery with a group from his asthma list, discussing how they were progressing after five days of breath-holding exercises and shallow breathing. All were enthusiastic. Mary Lafferty, so disabled by asthma that she can’t take a job and is hooked up permanently to a drip which she carries in a pouch round her waist, was telling him she was amazed at how much better she felt. She spend s her time in and out of hospital. “I’ve been dead about 10 times”- and said this week had seen a great improvement in her condition. “I want to get rid of this bag” she said. “That’s the first step” Dr Spence nodded. “If Buteyko is correct she’ll be off that bag before long”, he said “because what we are trying to do here is make medication redundant.With asthma., you go by symptoms. If a patient is feeling better, you begin carefully to reduce the medication. A doctor doesn’t need double-blind trials to see whether a patient has improved or not.” Therese Donaldson, 23, an administration officer from Barlinnie, said her asthma had become agonisingly bad over the past few months. But this week had been “amazingly helpful”, and in consultation with Dr Spence she had already been able to reduce the high doses of medication. Rita Nimmo, a marketing distribution manager, said “It’s been a definite help in five days. I couldn’t believe it. I had all the girls in my department helping me with the exercises, because it’s hard to hold your breath for long periods. I’ll certainly continue because I feel in control of my asthma for the first time” Leslie Gibbons, a police support officer, talked of shallow breathing being a “tremendous help”. Support worker Kevin Patterson was delighted with the start he had made. Dr Spence himself was surprised at how quickly they had all managed to reduce their breathing. As a group they were well motivated – so scunnered by the increasing amounts of medication needed to control their asthma that they were ready to work hard at self-help. He realises that other patients may not yield such good results, but has seen enough now to be convinced that Buteyko has got it right and his own profession’s indifference is a dangerous misjudgement. “We doctors check patient’s weight, blood pressure, all sorts of things. What we never check is how much they are breathing or how fast they are breathing. The trouble is that hyperventilation, or overbreathing, is taught at medical school as an acute condition. The effects of chronic hyperventilation are never studied, as far as I can recall . “Doctors ignore breathing and concentrate on the amount of stuff they can get into the asthmatic chest. Buteyko says the opposite – that only by reducing the drugs that open the airways, and by reducing the air, will asthma go away. “There’s a staggering amount of research money around. It’s time some of it went into researching this theory. Their reluctance to take it seriously brings into disrepute the whole research establishment. As doctors we tend to be influenced by individual things that happen to our patients, not by fancy medical trials. I have seen this work, therefore I am going to promote it”. At his surgery in a part of Glasgow where there is much deprivation and where asthma is on the rise as it is everywhere – partly, he believes, through over prescription of drugs – Gerald Spence is now preparing for battle. With nobody in the UK apparently prepared to do the rigorous trials that would settle the matter conclusively, he has only one small weapon: he has seen it work. He is depressed by the continuing indifference of his fellow health professionals, although some may respond to an invitation from Buteyko practitioner Christopher Drake to watch the method being taught to asthmatics every evening this week at a workshop in the Health and Stress Clinic in Glasgow’s Clarkston Road. Dr Spence now believes with some passion that doctors who want the best for asthmatic patients should consider the Buteyko insights on shallow breathing. “Any GP surgery could do what I’m doing” he says. “Any asthma nurse. And in the long run this would not be a job for doctors at all, but for nursery nurses and gym teachers, parents and everyone. They should be saying all the time “Mouth shut”. All that ‘Take a deep breath, fill your lungs with air’ – it’s a load of rubbish.” He knows there is a great deal of hostility to Buteyko, especially among hospital doctors. “I feel despondent at the thought of the battle that’s ahead ,” he says, “but I’m ready. The man who came up with the theory that germs caused ulcers was laughed at once.”  ...

Doctors Test Drug-Free Asthma Cure By Alan Forbes, The Scotsman, 07th Jan 1997

A Doctor is testing a controversial treatment for asthma on two of his patients. Dr Gerald Spence, a Glasgow GP, is examining the so-called Buteyko method to see if it can reduce the need for asthma drugs which account for 19 per cent of spending at his practice in the East End. Dr Spence saw the method being demonstrated on sufferers in Glasgow who were charged Pounds 295 each to learn the technique. The Buteyko practitioners, Alexander Stalmatski and Christopher Drake, who are holding courses for sufferers around Britain, claim that asthmatics can control their illness and reduce the amount of medication they take by learning to hold their breath. They say that asthma attacks are brought on by hyperventilation, or too much deep breathing, and symptoms can be reduced by shallow breathing. Both men, who are based at the Hale Clinic in London, gave a five-day course in Glasgow in September. Since then, virtually every member of a group of 25 people studied after the course has reported a major improvement in their condition. Dr Spence, who is based at the Shettleston Health Centre, says that one of his patients, a man, has reported a dramatic improvement. The other patient, a girl, has shown some improvement. The Buteyko method, named after a Russian professor, Konstantin Buteyko, has been criticised by members of the medical profession and the National Asthma Campaign, who say it cannot cure asthma. Doctors are also concerned that sufferers may face serious problems if they stop taking their medication after learning the technique. Dr Michael Smith, who writes the medical column ‘Up Stethoscope’ in The Scotsman, has also criticised Christopher Drake’s course and his ‘lucrative’ course fee. Dr Smith said recently that there was some theoretical support for high levels of carbon dioxide to help to widen the airways, but added ‘the rest is (I speak politely) highly suspect.’ Tonight, however, people who took part in the Glasgow course will speak on television about the benefits they felt they got from the Buteyko method. In BBC Scotland’s Frontline Scotland report at 9:30pm, Donna Esslemont, 13, from Eaglesham, says she can go out with her friends more often after learning the breath-holding technique. ‘I sleep with a tape over my mouth to keep it closed and at school I take 112 steps while holding my breath. Before, I could only go 20 steps, but I feel so much better now,’ Donna said. Anne Kemp, 77, a widow from Milngavie, said she used inhalers frequently and had trouble climbing the hill from the shops to her home until she learned the Buteyko method. ‘I can manage the hill much better now and I feel no need to take the inhaler with me.’ Mrs Kemp said her daughter, who lives in Australia, says the technique is more commonly accepted there. Dr Spence said that although he was guarded about the Buteyko method he was not dismissing it. ‘I don’t think its practitioners (Stalmatski and Drake) are great ambassadors because their courses are pretty chaotic, but I do think they have got something there,’ he said. ‘It could be argued that people who pay Pounds 295 for a course would say they got something from it, but it does seem to give some improvement. There seems to be an inexorable rise in the cost of asthma drugs to the health service and anything that reduces that must be welcomed.’ Dr Spence said he hoped to introduce Buteyko-style treatment on a wider basis at Shettleston, but only after he was convinced that people already using the method were showing long-term benefits. He said the technique should not be tried by asthma sufferers without proper instruction.  ...

A Breath of Fresh Air for Asthmatics By Andrew Denholm, The Daily Mail, Page 21, 07th Jan 1997

Asthma sufferers in Scotland yesterday hailed a controversial Russian breathing technique that is currently confounding established medical opinion. The little-known Buteyko method, currently being used by a group of 40 asthmatics, is showing remarkable results. Two months after a week-long Buteyko course costing pounds 295 per head most of the group had reduced their medication dramatically and were able to control their asthma attacks. ‘It’s been a very interesting experience, hard but very helpful, ‘ said 77-year-old Anne Kemp, from Milngavie, near Glasgow. ‘Before, my breath would catch all the time and I couldn’t even walk back up the hill to the shops without getting out of breath, and I would take Ventolin and steroids to counteract that. ‘Two months is not a long time to make a big statement about it, but I think it has been of benefit to me.’ Thirteen-year-old Donna Esslemont, from Eaglesham, outside Glasgow, has also been helped by the programme. ‘I think it has worked. I do all the breathing exercises every day and I am getting better and better, ‘ she said. ‘I can do a lot more sport and play with my friends without having to worry about an attack, and I am using less drugs.’ Buteyko practitioner Alexander Stalmatski says the technique works because asthmatics breath more than they should do. ‘The degree of over-breathing determines the severity of the asthma and by improving breathing we can improve asthma, ‘ he added. However, despite the seemingly high rates of success, the majority of doctors remain sceptical and both the medical profession and the National Asthma Campaign are concerned that people will stop taking their medication.According to a BBC Scotland Frontline investigation being screened tonight, about 1,500 people die from the disease in the United Kingdom every year, and there are an estimated three million sufferers. The number of children admitted to hospital with asthma has increased fourfold since the 1980s and there is no known cure and no known cause. The only treatment is increasingly higher doses of drugs such as Ventolin and steroids. Last year the health service spent nearly pounds 500 million on these drugs, 70 per cent up in the previous six years. Dr Gerald Spence, a GP at Shettleston in Glasgow, says his practice spends 19 per cent of its budget on asthma drugs and he is now taking a serious look at the alternatives. ‘There does seem to be an inexorable increase in the use of these drugs over the years. It was because we seem to be having to up the ante all the time that I decided to take a look at an alternative, ‘ he said. ‘I must admit I was flabbergasted by it because it is so simple and so easy. I felt uncomfortable because for years I have been prescribing drugs in increasing amounts, and this breathing technique provides a great deal of relief.’ Dr Spence has now decided to conduct tests of the technique at his practice with a view to paving the way for proper clinical trials.  ...

A Breathing Technique Offers Help for People With Asthma, the New York Times, November 2, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/health/03brod.html?_r=1 I don’t often write about alternative remedies for serious medical conditions.Most have little more than anecdotal support, and few have been found effective in well-designed clinical trials. Such trials randomly assign patients to one of two or more treatments and, wherever possible, assess the results without telling either the patients or evaluators who received which treatment. The treatment, a breathing technique discovered half a century ago, is harmless if practiced as directed with a well-trained therapist. It has the potential to improve the health and quality of life of many people with asthma, while saving health care dollars. I’ve seen it work miraculously well for a friend who had little choice but to stop using the steroid medications that were keeping him alive. My friend, David Wiebe, 58, of Woodstock, N.Y., is a well-known maker of violins and cellos, with a 48-year history of severe asthma that was treated with bronchodilators and steroids for two decades. Ten years ago, Mr. Wiebe noticed gradually worsening vision problems, eventually diagnosed as a form of macular degeneration caused by the steroids. Two leading retina specialists told him to stop using the drugs if he wanted to preserve his sight. He did, and endured several terrifying trips to the emergency room when asthma attacks raged out of control and forced him to resume steroids temporarily to stay alive. Nothing else he tried seemed to work. “After having a really poor couple of years with significantly reduced quality of life and performance at work,” he told me, “I was ready to give up my eyesight and go back on steroids just so I could breathe better.” Treatment From the ’50s Then, last spring, someone told him about the Buteyko method, a shallow-breathing technique developed in 1952 by a Russian doctor, Konstantin Buteyko. Mr. Wiebe watched a video demonstration on YouTube and mimicked the instructions shown. “I could actually feel my airways relax and open,” he recalled. “This was impressive. Two of the participants on the video were basically incapacitated by their asthma and on disability leave from their jobs. They each admitted that keeping up with the exercises was difficult but said they had been able to cut back on their medications by about 75 percent and their quality of life was gradually returning.” A further search uncovered the Buteyko Center USA in his hometown, newly established as the official North American representative of the Buteyko Clinic in Moscow. “When I came to the center, I was without hope,” Mr. Wiebe said. “I was using my rescue inhaler 20 or more times in a 24-hour period. If I was exposed to any kind of irritant or allergen, I could easily get a reaction that jeopardized my existence and forced me to go back on steroids to save my life. I was a mess.” But three months later, after a series of lessons and refresher sessions in shallow breathing, he said, “I am using less than one puff of the inhaler each day — no drugs, just breathing exercises.” Mr. Wiebe doesn’t claim to be cured, though he believes this could eventually happen if he remains diligent about the exercises. But he said: “My quality of life has improved beyond my expectations. It’s very exciting and amazing. More people should know about this.” Ordinarily, during an asthma attack, people panic and breathe quickly and as deeply as they can, blowing off more and more carbon dioxide. Breathing rate is controlled not by the amount of oxygen in the blood but by the amount of carbon dioxide, the gas that regulates the acid-base level of the blood. Dr. Buteyko concluded that hyperventilation — breathing too fast and too deeply — could be the underlying cause of asthma, making it worse by lowering the level of carbon dioxide in the blood so much that the airways constrict to conserve it. This technique may seem counterintuitive: when short of breath or overly stressed, instead of taking a deep breath, the Buteyko method instructs people to breathe shallowly and slowly through the nose, breaking the vicious cycle of rapid, gasping breaths, airway constriction and increased wheezing. The shallow breathing aspect intrigued me because I had discovered its benefits during my daily lap swims. I noticed that swimmers who had to stop to catch their breath after a few lengths of the pool were taking deep breaths every other stroke, whereas I take in small puffs of air after several strokes and can go indefinitely without becoming winded. The Buteyko practitioners in Woodstock, Sasha and Thomas Yakovlev-Fredricksen, were trained in Moscow by Dr. Andrey Novozhilov, a Buteyko disciple. Their treatment involves two courses of five sessions each: one in breathing technique and the other in lifestyle management. The breathing exercises gradually enable clients to lengthen the time between breaths. Mr. Wiebe, for example, can now take a breath after more than 10 seconds instead of just 2 while at rest. Responses May Vary His board-certified pulmonologist, Dr. Marie C. Lingat, told me: “Based on objective data, his breathing has improved since April even without steroids.The goal now is to make sure he maintains the improvement. The Buteyko method works for him, but that doesn’t mean everyone who has asthma would respond in the same way.” In an interview, Mrs. Yakovlev-Fredricksen said: “People don’t realize that too much air can be harmful to health. Almost every asthmatic breathes through his mouth and takes deep, forceful inhalations that trigger a bronchospasm,” the hallmark of asthma. “We teach them to inhale through the nose, even when they speak and when they sleep, so they don’t lose too much carbon dioxide,” she added. At the Woodstock center, clients are also taught how to deal with stress and how to exercise without hyperventilating and to avoid foods that in some people can provoke an asthma attack. The practitioners emphasize that Buteyko clients are never told to stop their medications, though in controlled clinical trials in Australia and elsewhere, most have been able to reduce their dependence on drugs significantly. The various trials, including a British study of 384 patients, have found that, on average, those who are diligent about practicing Buteyko breathing can expect a 90 percent reduction in the use of rescue inhalers and a 50 percent reduction in the need for steroids within three to six months. The British Thoracic Society has given the technique a “B” rating, meaning that positive results of the trials are likely to have come from the Buteyko method and not some other factor. Now, perhaps, it is time for the pharmaceutically supported American medical community to explore this nondrug technique as well....

How to beat chronic fatigue… by learning to hold your breath, Daily Mail, 22 October 2011

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2052234/Buteyko-breathing-technique-I-beat-chronic-fatigue-learning-hold-breath.html#axzz2KHOFNUE3 When your health deteriorates for no obvious reason it can be a very nerve-racking business. This is what happened to me, 18 months ago, quite unexpectedly. It started with one of those random viruses that knocks you sideways for a day. But recovery never came. Where once I was swimming, running, working out or playing tennis every day, now I couldn’t summon up the energy to play-fight my daughter after school.My strength and stamina had gone. I had a persistent cough and worried it was heart trouble or cancer. After a year, and countless tests and scans, no cause was apparent. Possibly it was chronic fatigue syndrome (ME), but my GP couldn’t say. There was nothing he could do for me, unless I fancied anti-depressants. I’m not going to bore you with details of everything I tried that didn’t work (including antibiotics, homeopathy, and diets), just about the one that did – Buteyko. It sounds like a Japanese martial art but it’s a special breathing technique named after the man who invented it in the Soviet Union in the 1950s, a Ukrainian doctor called Konstantin Buteyko. Medical students have long known that carbon dioxide (CO2) plays a vital part in releasing oxygen from the blood to cells and tissue – the Bohr effect. Buteyko took this further by postulating that most of the chronic medical conditions of our modern age – from asthma to lupus and Crohn’s disease – are the result of a deficiency in our body of CO2, caused by not breathing correctly, in a panicky way, so you take in too much oxygen. On the face of it, this sounds a barking idea. All I can say with certainty is that his method worked in the Soviet Union (where it was popular with the elite of cosmonauts, KGB officers and athletes) and, since it came to the West, it has acquired a very loyal following here too. It is also by far the most gruellingly horrible health therapy I have ever tried. The exercises are easy enough to master. Take a normal breath in, then out, hold your nose and time on a stopwatch how long it takes before you need to take another breath. That’s your Control Pause. Then wait three minutes and do it again, only this time keep holding your breath for as long as you can. That’s your Maximum Pause. Try it now and see how well you do. If you’re in good shape your Control Pause should be at least 30 seconds, though the average is just 17 seconds. The Buteyko method aims to get you up to a Control Pause of around 60 seconds and a Maximum Pause of around two minutes, which is nearly where I am now. But boy was it hard work getting there. It’s essential to have a good Buteyko teacher, like the inspirational Christopher Drake, who trained me (mainly on Skype from his home in Bangkok).In the early stages, you need intensive hands-on help of this kind, first to give you the will to keep going, and to explain all the ghastly side-effects. You feel as if you’re developing flu; you feel feverish, depressed; you get headaches, nausea, violent mood swings and once I found a blister on the roof of my mouth that vanished as mysteriously as it had arrived. And what do you get at the end of this ordeal? Well, three months on and I feel a different man. I’m calmer, I need less sleep (and never have trouble sleeping as I used to), my energy levels are almost back to normal, I’ve lost half a stone and I’m no longer prey to the coughs, colds and sneezes I used to get all the time. A study by the University of Nottingham’s Division of Respiratory Medicine found that patients practising Buteyko breathing exercises twice a day experienced improved asthma symptoms and cut the use of their reliever inhalers by up to two puffs a day. However, there was no improvement to their lung function and they were not able to reduce their dosage of inhaled steroids taken to keep their asthma under control. I won’t say it’s a miracle cure, but people who have done it say they’ve had their lives transformed. And I’m one of them. Courses from £375, www.learnbuteyko.co.uk...

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