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A Shorter Intake of Breath – The Independent Newspaper (UK), 10th June 1996

Hundreds of asthma sufferers claim the Buteyko method has changed their lives. So why does the medical establishment seem suspicious of it? Every four minutes a child is admitted to hospital with a severe asthma attack. Over the next few months the figure is likely to be even higher as pollen counts rise and the weather stays unsettled. We are in the middle of a mysterious asthma epidemic – the number of cases is increasing yearly and there is no cure. The medical response has been to develop more drugs and get people on to them sooner – annual sales of inhalers now top 18 million. A recent pilot project in Kent looking for asthma among children found that for every one known case there was another undiagnosed. All of the children were put on drugs. Many parents are not happy with this approach, but there is no alternative. Or rather there is, but it is being firmly ignored. Last year a couple of newspaper stories described a radical new treatment for asthma which simply involved learning a new breathing pattern. Scores of patients reported that they no longer needed to use drugs and had much better control over their symptoms. One satisfied customer was the MP Jonathan Aitken, who says it reduced his symptoms and made drugs unnecessary. Another was Dr John Stanley of the National Public Health Laboratory, who said, ‘It changed my life. Before, I could barely walk up stairs now I can manage a 10-mile hike. I was using my puffer four times a day as well as steroids and now I’m off all drugs.’ You might think that such results would be welcomed by the National Asthma Campaign – motto: ‘getting your health back’. After all, they are dedicated to relieving the plight of asthmatics and most sufferers worry about the quantity of drugs they have to take. But the campaign’s response to any queries about the Buteyko method, as it is known, is the following statement: ‘We would strongly advise people with asthma not to pay several hundred pounds to be taught a method of treatment that is of unproven benefit.’ The reason they give is that they are not aware of any scientifically validated trials of the method. This claim makes Chris Drake, a Buteyko practitioner, furious. ‘Why do they say it has not been adequately researched when there has been a double-blind clinical trial in Australia and the interim results have been written up in an Australian medical journal? They were the best in terms of help for asthmatics ever published.’ The Buteyko method – it was developed by the Russian physiologist Professor Konstantin Buteyko – involves no mystical concepts, it is firmly based in Western physiology and yet getting it taken seriously by a medical establishment rooted in the drug culture has proved extraordinarily difficult. The technique does make one revolutionary claim: that the problem asthmatics have is that they breathe too much. The reasoning is this. We all know that we breathe in oxygen, which passes through the lungs into the blood stream, and breathe out the waste gas carbon dioxide (CO2). What is not so familiar, although it is in all the physiology text books as the Verigo- Bohr effect, is that we actually need CO2 in the lungs for the oxygen to pass efficiently into the blood. The body needs a concentration of about 6 per cent CO2 and the amount in the air is only about 0.03 per cent. The body’s solution has been for the alveoli – the tiny air sacs in the lungs – to act as CO2 accumulators. But because CO2 is a very light gas, heavy breathing has the effect of diluting the CO2 stored in the air sacs. Professor Buteyko tested thousands of asthmatics and found that all of them were over-breathing. The optimum amount is around 5 litres per minute, but asthmatics were breathing two, three or even four times that amount. The result is that the CO2 levels go down and the body responds by constricting the airwaves – its way of saying, ‘Stop breathing so much!’ The essence of the Buteyko method is that by reducing the level of breathing, the CO2 levels rise and the airways open. It is an interesting theory and would seem easy enough to test. But it hasn’t quite turned out like that. Five years ago a Russian Buteyko trainer, Alexander Stalmatsky began teaching in Australia, which has one of the highest proportions of asthma sufferers in the world. Since he started, some 6,000 people have learnt the technique, including former Australian squash champion Karen Clonda, and media interest has been considerable. One of the most thorough TV programmes was made by Peter Wilkinson, an investigative journalist with his own slot, A Current Affair, for Channel 9. ‘I’m a pretty sceptical bloke,’ says Wilkinson, ‘but this technique really seemed to work.’ His team followed two classes of 30 people each for about three months and found the majority enjoyed considerable benefit. They also contacted 100 patients from the Buteyko centre’s records. About 60 to 70 per cent told the researchers they were much improved. ‘But when we put all of this to the official asthma people they refused to budge an inch.’ The interest generated by media coverage led to the setting up of a trial, which was run by Professor Charles Mitchell of Queensland University. Forty middle-aged, chronic asthmatics, who had had asthma for an average of 23 years, were divided into two groups. The control group – average age, 43 – were given physiotherapy, taught standard breathing techniques and given instruction on drug use. The others – average age, 48 – were taught the Buteyko method. Six weeks after the trial the Australian Doctor ran a story entitled ‘Doctors Gasp at Buteyko Success’. The preliminary findings were that while there was no change in the control group, the Buteyko group had reduced their use of beta agonists (bronchodilators) by 90 per cent and reported an improvement in their symptoms. Eight months later the improvement not only continued, they had also reduced their steroid intake. The method seemed to be vindicated. In fact it was only the beginning of a bitter debate that is still going on, even between the authors of the study. Professor Mitchell describes the results as impressive, but only superficially. The crux of the matter for him was that the trial provided no objective proof that the patients were better. Even though they took fewer drugs and said they felt better, the FEV1 test, a routine test to assess the severity of asthma, showed no change. What’s more, the claims about CO2 didn’t stand up either. ‘We measured CO2 levels,’ says Professor Mitchell, ‘and found no correlation between the patients whose CO2 levels had gone up the most and the ones who improved the most. So it looks as though CO2 is not the relevant factor here.’ All of which is a gross misrepresentation of what actually happened at the trial, according to Tess Graham, co-author of an as yet unpublished paper and the trainer for the Buteyko group. ‘It is such rubbish to say the drug reduction was due to some psychological effect,’ she says, ‘I must be an absolute genius if I can persuade people who have been taking a drug for more than 20 years to stay off them just because I say so.’Graham, a physiotherapist who first became involved when her own asthmatic children lost all their symptoms after learning the technique, has now trained more than 700 patients. She was furious that Mitchell failed to mention anything about the over-breathing results. ‘They weren’t even going to test for hidden hyperventilation to begin with,’ she says, ‘even though it is the central point of the Buteyko method. We measured the patients in both groups and found they were all breathing, on average, 14 litres per minute, three times the healthy amount.’ Afterwards the Buteyko group was down to an average of 9.6 litres while the others had not changed. ‘What’s most important, though, is that those who reduced their breathing the most also reduced their drugs the most. This shows that there’s a logical link between the Buteyko method and a reduction in drug use. Nobody is telling the asthma foundations that.’ The asthma establishment does not even consider over-breathing to be a factor in asthma. The British National Asthma Campaign says, ‘there is no evidence that a person with stable asthma is over-breathing’. This finding, if it is replicated, suggests they are wrong. Given their share of positive results from the trial and the mound of anecdotal reports of success, it hardly surprising that the Buteyko supporters believe they are being ignored and the results played down. ‘The Asthma Foundation is happy to support research into anything that may contribute to asthma – dust mites, dog hairs, fish oil, lack of lipid acids,’ says Chris Drake, ‘but their basic principle is that asthma is incomprehensible and incurable. Come up with a cure and they get worried. On the day our first results came out in Australia the Asthma Foundation put out a story about how a new study had shown margarine might be a factor. Margarine! If we are right a lot of research projects will go down the tube.’...

Could This Mean the End of the Inhaler? – Daily Mail (UK National Newspaper)

Tuesday May 16, 1996 New breathing technique aims to replace drugs. After being warned by the government to stay at home to avoid the recent bad air pollution, Britain’s 3 million asthma sufferers will be eager to hear of a treatment that has just started in this country. The Buteyko method teaches asthmatics to control their symptoms using a breathing technique, rather than conventional drugs. Among the first British patients was Jonathan Aitken, Treasury Chief Secretary, who was treated by the method’s senior practitioner, Christopher Drake. Mr Drake has bought the Buteyko Breath Reconditioning Technique from Australia, where it is undergoing the first clinical trials. A late-onset asthmatic, Mr Aitken had for the past 5 years suffered typical asthma symptoms, including attacks of coughing and breathlessness. Since he started practising the Buteyko method three months ago, his symptoms have become minimal and he no longer uses any reliever medication. ‘I have tried plenty of treatments, but this is the only one that has really worked,’ he says. ‘I think it is a remarkable one that could help many people’. One in 20 British adults suffers from asthma, a chronic and incurable disease affecting the airways. Its prevalence is increasing worldwide, and in the UK it causes 7 million days off work and kills someone every four hours. The primary cause is unknown, but once the condition develops – which can be at any age – symptoms can be triggered be secondary factors such as cold air, exercise, allergens and stress, which cause the airways to contract. Most asthmatics rely on conventional medicine to control symptoms. Preventive corticosteroids act slowly to reduce inflammation, and bronchodilators, such as Ventolin, open the airways and bring instant relief during an attack. Severe asthmatics may be prescribed steroid tablets. Asthma prescriptions cost the NHS (UK pounds) 350m a year (a figure which has doubled over the past decade), yet many specialists and organisations such as the National Asthma Campaign believe there is no real alternative. Mr. Drake, however, is critical of conventional drugs because they treat the symptoms and not the cause. The Buteyko method is based on the findings of a Russian scientist 40 years ago, that asthma is caused by a simple but fundamental and unrecognised disorder: long-term over-breathing. ‘Asthmatics are chronically hyperventilating all the time’ says Mr Drake. Imagine if our body temperature was five times what it should be:we’d be dead. Well, some asthmatics breathe five times more than they should.’ This, he explains, has wide repercussions within the body, the most significant being a loss of carbon dioxide, the bodys own bronchodilator, which ultimately leads to the symptoms of asthma. The Buteyko method uses shallow breathing to reverse the condition. Carbon dioxide levels are restored and the symptoms disappear. The method is simple but it takes commitment to change the breathing habits of a lifetime. ‘Generally, after a couple of days people can learn to control their asthma attacks without bronchodilators.’ says Mr. Drake. ‘After a few more days, attacks are reduced and, if the technique is maintained, patients can become asymptomatic.’ Mr Drake stresses that the method is quite safe as medication is only reduced as peoples symptoms improve. ‘The breathing technique acts like Ventolin, as a bronchodilator. You only take headache tablets if you have a headache; if you don’t have a bronchospasm, why take a bronchodilator?’ Five-year-old Ben Lord-Smith, who lives in Canberra, Australia, was classed as a chronic asthmatic and put on an ever-increasing regimen of preventative drugs after his first life-threatening attack at 18 months. They failed to control the condition: he needed nebulisers day and night and had repeated hospital stays. Yet within 3 days of trying the Buteyko method, Ben was off bronchodilators, and after seven months his GP was able to take him off all asthma medication. ‘To have that threat of death taken away is wonderful’, says his mother Sharon. ‘The drugs worried me – and why would you want to feed children drugs if you’ve got some other way? Now, if he gets occasional symptoms he does the Buteyko technique.’ It was anecdotal evidence like this that prompted the Australian Asthma Foundation to fund the first controlled clinical trial in Brisbane. The preliminary results, reported last month to the Australian Thoracic Society, showed that after 6 weeks, patients using the Buteyko method felt substantially better and had fewer symptoms and had been able to reduce their reliever medication by 90 percent. Although the treatment has aroused some controversy in Australia, Jonathan Aitken said he was surprised. ‘There’s nothing subversive or dangerous about it. It’s just a different breathing method. I dare say it will ruffle the feathers of drug manufacturers and those very set in their ways, but the acid test is: “Does it work or not?” Well, it did for me.’...

Member of Parliament Backs Method by James Hughes-Onslow, The Daily Express, Tues 18th June 1996

A Hacking cough echoed throughout the service in St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster. I apologised for my son’s ashtmatic wheezing to MP Johnathon Aitken, who was sitting in the pew in front. An asthma sufferer himself, Mr. Aitken took a sympathetic view. He recommended me to Christopher Drake of London’s Hale Clinic, where he learned the breathing exercises which enabled him to give up his inhaler. My son and myself (also an asthmatic) will be checking in there this week. The former Treasury Minister has, it seems, persuaded a number of asthma sufferers to try the Buteyko Method. “I read about Jonathon Aitken’s asthma about a year ago,” says Inrgid Beale, who used to run a decorating business in Suffolk until asthma forced her to give it up. “I was on Becotide and Ventolin inhalers and steroids. Despite all this medication, or perhaps because of it, I still had sleepless nights.” But after attending Dr. Drakes clinic in London, Mrs. Beale’s life has been transformed. “I can walk and swim and do things I couldn’t do before. When I take a breath it’s so fresh it’s unbelievable.” And since last August, Mrs Beale has used no medication at all. Despite having helped thousands of sufferers, the Buteyko method is still criticised by the medical authorities and the National Asthma Campaign. When the Hale Clinic wrote to former Health Minister Edwina Currie, who also suffers from asthma, she wrote back saying: “I have all the help I need.” Drake says: “The official line is that there is no known cure. They are always looking for environmental causes, never physiological ones. A lot of people would be very embarrassed if the Buteyko Method is proved correct.”...

Wonder Cure from Russia is Ahead by a Nose by James Hughes-Onslow, The Daily Express, 6th August 1996

Forcing your lungs to breathe less when you are gasping requires discipline. Professor Buteyko was brutal, taping patients’ mouths shut so they had to breathe through their noses. That’s how they did things in Soviet Russia. At the Hale Clinic near Harley St., Chris Drake, who learned the Buteyko method in Russia and practised it in Australia, tells patients to breathe through their noses whenever possible. and to tape their mouths up at night. He advises a minimum of exercise, to avoid heavy breathing, and moderate eating and drinking – large meals make asthmatics breathless. TV Presenter and mother-of-five Sally Magnusson, who went on the 290 (UK pounds) week’s Buteyko course with her eight-year-old son Siggy, said: “It has been very encouraging so far but time will tell.” You start with some shallow breathing. “It’s not easy or relaxing, it’s difficult, horrible,” says Drake. “If it’s joyful, you’re doing it wrong.” Worse is to follow. It is called the pause. You breathe out gently, then hold your breath. You should be able to do this for a minute or more. In our group of nine. Kevin ,the Rastafarian poet managed 10 seconds, and a three-year-old boy couldn’t manage to do it at all. I did 25 seconds, not good enough for Drake. “You are breathing for four people,” he said. “You don’t need so much oxygen. We breathe 10 times more oxygen than we need, and 200 times too little carbon dioxide.” On the second day pauses were getting longer, pulses slower. Blood vessels had expanded, Drake explained, and appetites had diminished. The routine is 4 maximum pauses and 2 medium ones, separated by 3 minute intervals of shallow breathing, doing this 4 times a day. The purpose is to retrain the respiratory centre, the part of the brain which controls breathing. On the third day the father of the small boy complained that Drake had disrupted his entire family’s sleeping pattern. He took his wife and son away and didn’t come back. “That boy is being condemned to a life on drugs”. Drake protested. Valerie, a psychotherapist fellow sufferer, and I were doing pauses of more than a minute by this time, holding our noses, pacing the room to distract ourselves from the pain and had given up symptomatic medication, Serevent in her case. Ventolin in mine. Kevin managed half a minute and was using 3 puffs of ventolin a day instead of 10. On the 5th day Kevin who was sceptical and still hadn’t taped his mouth shut at night, confessed he felt much better. “It’s been a success. This is usually a bad time of year for me. I often end up in hospital it gets so bad.” Valerie was much better, but rather nervous of going back to see her doctor. “It’s been a big success. I expected to be very wheezy when I gave up all the drugs but I’m not.” Sally Magnusson adds: “As a sceptical journalist I feel there must be a catch but I can’t see it yet. Siggy is feeling much better, using fewer inhalers.”...

Stop This Asthma Disgrace by James Hughes-Onslow, The Daily Express 6th August 1996

The Health Secretary, Stephen Dorrell, has announced a five-year, 5 million (UK pound) research programme to identify the cause of asthma. “There is no cure for asthma,” says a spokesman for the National Asthma Campaign. “One thing is certain: the outlook for asthma research has never looked so good.   Yes, asthma research is doing well – it has a rosy future. But, sadly, asthmatics do not. Once, asthma scarcely existed; now treating it is a lucrative with more and more sufferers dependent on expensive drugs.   God preserve asthmatics from the pharmaceutical industry. When it was announced recently that Third World countries had fewer asthmatics than developed countries, the irony was missed by experts who said that it was modern life was too clean. Other specialists say asthma is caused by pollution. The truth is western doctors haven’t got a clue. In Soviet Russia, which was spared the grip of the pharmaceutical lobby, Professor Konstantin Buteyko devised a system of breathing exercises which combat asthma and hay fever effectively. The basis of Buteyko is that we need carbon dioxide in our lungs to process oxygen into the bloodstream.This is a physiological fact, not mumbo-jumbo. Carbon dioxide is known to be connected with the function of the nervous system. When asthmatics become tight-chested, their bodies are trying to tell them to slow down, to take less oxygen and more CO2. Now they are treated with bronchodilators which have the reverse effect, opening up the airways to allow more oxygen in and expelling CO2. Because these inhalers are addictive, they become ever more insidious.. For the pharmaceutical industry, Buteyko’s method is bad news. It requires no drugs at all. GPs are happy to hear about it but they will not recommend it. And there is little incentive in the pharmaceutical industry to cure the disease. I have had prescriptions for Becotide (2 puffs twice a day), Ventolin (for use in a crisis) and Intal (occasionally) for 17 years, and I’ve had 3 serious asthma attacks. Once I was taken unconscious to hospital, where I was put on a drip and kept in for a week. Now, after a one-week Buteyko course, I’ve given up all drugs. I find I’m able to fight off an asthma or hay fever attack. My 11-year-old son Andrew, who has never had an asthma attack but often has an asthmatic cough, has been prescribed even more powerful drugs. Children are often given even more powerful drugs than adults because they can’t be relied on to use inhalers accurately. Yet the NAC says it cannot recommend Buteyko because “it has not undergone properly controlled clinical trials which have been published in a reputable medical journal”. It is this attitude which causes this epidemic....

Doctors Gasp at Buteyko Success by Tony James Front Page of “Australian Doctor” 7/4/95

BUTEYKO breathing hyperventilation exercises in patients with asthma reduced beta agonist use by 90% and improved symptoms, according to preliminary results of a randomised, controlled trial in Brisbane. However, there were no changes in major physiological parameters such as peak flow rate or FEV1 in people using Buteyko breathing. The study was reported at a meeting of the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand in Hobart last week by Dr Simon Bowler, a respiratory physician at Mater Hospital in Brisbane. Dr Bowler said there were no obvious explanations for the apparent short-term benefits of Buteyko breathing. “We were surprised at the results, as we didn’t expect any significant changes,” he told Australian Doctor. Proponents of the technique claimed that hyperventilation and the subsequent increase in carbon dioxide levels could relieve the symptoms of bronchospasm and favourably affect the long- term course of asthma. The study was prompted by publicity about Buteyko breathing and the number of inquirie to asthma foundations and requests for advice from other health professionals it had generated. The study was funded by the Australian Association of Asthma Foundations. Forty patients with well-documented asthma and significant daily use of bronchodilators were recruited and randomised to a Buteyko or control group – 39 remained in the study. The Buteyko group received classes from a Buteyko practitioner for 90 minutes a day for seven days and the classes included direct encouragement to minimise beta agonist use. The control patients received a similar regimen of physiotherapy classes which included standard asthma education, breathing exercises (excluding any hyperventilation) and relaxation techniques. Both groups were carefully instructed to use bronchodilators only as required and not on a routine basis. “We would expect education to influence the patients’ asthma management, but wouldn’t normally expect the other techniques to have any major effect on medication use or respiratory function,” Dr Bowler said. “After six weeks there was a 90% reduction in beta agonist use in the Buteyko group, compared to only a 5% reduction in the control group.” “There was also a signficant difference in quality of life and improvement in symptom scores in the Buteyko group.” “These changes occurred in the absence of any improvement in airflow” Dr. Bowler said. “In this study, there appears to be some short-term benefit from Buteyko techniques in terms of reduced beta agonist use, without obvious cost in terms of worsening symptom scores.” The trial continued for another six weeks to investigate the effect of reducing inhaled corticosteroid use, but the data are yet to be analysed....

Breathe freely if you have Asthma by Jerome Burne, The Sunday Telegraph, 31 December 1995

Asthma, as we all know, is a disease that prevents people getting enough air into their lungs, because the passageways close up. The trouble is we have got it completely wrong. Actually, asthma is the body’s way of saying: “You are breathing too deeply”. Learn to breathe more shallowly and the asthma will disappear. This apparently ridiculous idea is at the heart of a revolutionary new cure for this often chronic and crippling disease which affects one in 20 adults in this country and kills more than 2,000 a year. Traditional treatment aims to force the constricted air passages open with steroids and “broncho-dilator” drugs. However, Australian Christopher Drake, who runs group sessions in the Buteyko Breathing Reconditioning Technique at the Hale clinic in London, believes this is profoundly mistaken. “Within a week we can get 97 per cent of patients off most of their drugs and able to control attacks. “All we use are specific breathing techniques”. Among his successful cases is Jonathon Aitken MP, who had asthma for 5 years before doing the course. “It’s the only thing that has worked for me,” he says. “I think it is remarkable.” Another supporter is Dr. John Stanley, a medical microbiologist at the Central Public Health Laboratory who, although he wants to wait three months before making a final assessment, says that he has not felt so well in years. “I’d had asthma for nine years, and it was gradually getting worse.” The technique was developed in Russia by Professor Konstantin Buteyko. Drake first encountered it in Australia about five years ago, and now an estimated 8,000 Australians have been treated with it. One clinical trial written up in the Medical Journal of Australia, describes the results as showing “unprecedented broad-spectrum improvement”. What makes Buteyko approach so controversial is that it turns our idea of what happens during breathing on its head. In the authorised version, what we all need is oxygen. The job of the lungs is to transfer oxygen into the blood making it bright red and healthy and to breathe out carbon dioxide -the waste product. In the Buteyko version, it is carbon dioxide that gets the lead role. Drake points out, and physiologists would not disagree, that CO2 is vital for control of the major body systems, such as the immune system, the digestion and the heart.Certainly the transference of oxygen to the blood from the lungs depends on the right amount of CO2 being available. “Now it is text-book stuff, but not widely known that for the exchange to work most efficiently you need in your lungs about 6 per cent CO2 and 2 per cent oxygen,” says Drake. “This means that the focus of everyone’s breathing is not, as we all think, getting enough oxygen – there’s lots of it around, 20 per cent in every breath – the problem is getting enough CO2, as each breath contains only.035 per cent. The key role of the lungs is to act as a CO2 reservoir”. The storage tanks are the alveoli – millions of tiny sacs in the lungs where CO2 is transferred into the blood. “When someone constantly takes in too much air,” says Drake, “these reservoirs get diluted with other gases. The asthmatic spasm is a dramatic message from the body that screams ‘Slow down, CO2 reserves running low.’ Literally, the last thing you need at this point is a drug to force your airways open.” It might have remained yet another eccentric personal theory, were it not for the results. “You have to be pretty well motivated,” says Dr. Stanley. “The exercises aren’t easy. They are the opposite of what you have been doing all those years. But within just a few days you get back a control of something as basic as your breathing. And that’s amazing.”  ...

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.  ...

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