Asthma-Free Naturally: Everything you need to know about taking control of your asthma. Patrick McKeown
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influences the other.
The volume of air we inhale and exhale is measured in litres, and measurements are usually taken over one minute. In conventional medicine, the accepted number of breaths a healthy person takes in one minute is ten to twelve, with each breath drawing in a volume of 500 millilitres. In a full minute, this provides the body with a total volume of five to six litres. If a person is breathing at a higher rate of twenty breaths, for example, then the volume will also be higher, and vice-versa. To visualise this amount of air, imagine how much air would be contained in a two-litre soft drink bottle.
Where to now?
So, now you know how the respiratory system works, and you or someone close to you has been diagnosed with asthma. Where to now? A lifetime of drug therapy? Or a proven, natural, physiology-based way of reversing what can be a debilitating condition?
A new beginning is emerging in the treatment of asthma, aimed at getting to the root cause of the problem. By addressing the cause rather than the symptoms that are the effect, sufferers finally have the ability to be able to take control of their own condition, naturally and permanently. This new beginning is based on the life’s work of Russian scientist, Professor Konstantin Buteyko. Before we can begin to look at how you can change your own life, we must take a brief look at his.
Over four decades, Professor Buteyko completed pioneering work on illnesses which develop as a result of breathing a volume of air greater than the body requires. His work provided mankind with probably the greatest discovery to date in the field of medicine.
As a medical student, Konstantin observed hundreds of sick patients, and realised that their breathing was closely related to the extent of their illness. The greater the volume of air which a patient inhaled, the greater their sickness, he discovered. This relationship was so precise that he was able to predict accurately the exact time when ill patients would pass away.
Through his research, he devised a breathing programme for his patients based on reducing the amount of air that passed through their lungs. When each patient applied reduced breathing, all their bodily functions including pulse, volume of breathing per minute and blood pressure were monitored. The resulting data enabled him to refine and improve his method. Buteyko’s theory is based on the life force of any organism: breathing.
Like many other revolutionary findings, it can often take many years before a discovery is acknowledged and incorporated into everyday practice. Take Professor Lister, for example. He discovered that many illnesses such as sepsis could be passed by the contaminated hands of a doctor to a patient. Lister tested his hypothesis by disinfecting his hands before each operation and this resulted in a decrease in the death rate of his patients. It took many years for this discovery to be accepted by the medical community; it was only really accepted when patients’ relatives started demanding that doctors disinfect their hands before operating.
Although research conducted in Russia in 1962 proved unequivocally the soundness of Buteyko’s method, it was not until 1983 that the Committee on Inventions and Discoveries formally acknowledged his work. This recognition was backdated to January 29th, 1962. That backdating alone begs the question: if Konstantin Buteyko’s discovery had been acknowledged earlier, how many more ill people would have been helped?
The first trials held in the Western world were at the Mater Hospital in Brisbane in 1995. After three months, the Buteyko group had seventy per cent less symptoms, ninety per cent less need for reliever medication and forty-nine per cent less need for steroids. Furthermore, those who corrected their breathing the most reduced their symptoms and need for medication the most. An article published in Australian Doctor on April 7th, 1995 was headed ‘Doctors gasp at Buteyko success’.
A second trial was conducted at Gisborne Hospital, New Zealand in 2003 and published in the New Zealand Medical Journal. After six months, the Buteyko group showed an 85 per cent reduced need for reliever medication and 50 per cent reduced need for inhaled steroid.
In the forty-odd years since Buteyko’s discovery, it has improved the health and saved the lives of many thousands of people. Now that his enlightening revelation is becoming better known in the Western world, it will improve the health and save the lives of many more. You could be one of them.
Chapter 2 How is your breathing?
‘Habit is either the best of servants or the worst of masters.’
– Nathaniel Emmons
For the vast majority of people, breathing is an everyday fact of life which occurs on a subconscious level. It is something that is all too often taken for granted – until there’s a problem. Yet breathing is the most important physiological function you can exercise control over and this is something that can easily be achieved through increased attention, observation and will-power. With practice both the rate and volume of breathing can be changed for the better and the only prerequisite is to be aware of the existing breathing pattern.
Claude Lum, a noted physician at Papworth University hospital, Cambridge, described hyperventilation, or overbreathing, as a bad habit that has the effect of lowering carbon dioxide levels. It is only necessary to look at examples such as smoking to realise that bad habits are easy to acquire – and not quite so easy to lose. Changing a habit of a lifetime can initially cause disruption to a daily routine and focus attention on the change that is to be made.
While in extreme cases the fight to combat a bad habit can consume every waking minute, acquiring a good habit can inspire a new wave of self-confidence. Once the new habit has been acquired, even one that requires enormous self-discipline and a large helping of patience, it quickly becomes very easy to live with and can help boost selfesteem and self-belief. The investment of time, effort and concentration in the short term will ensure a reward of positive long-term results.
Making the change to a reduced volume of breathing should be treated as simply acquiring a good habit – one that will reap untold health benefits. Ultimately the benefits can include the complete recovery of an individual with asthma.
Many of Professor Buteyko’s patients who were taught the Buteyko Method remained completely free from symptoms of asthma thirty years later. It was as a result of pressure placed on the Soviet authorities by those who recovered that independent trials into Professor Buteyko’s method were conducted. The results of the trials brought about the full recognition and acceptance of the Buteyko system in the Soviet Union.
What is overbreathing?
First, let’s take a quick look at what overbreathing is, and why we do it in the first place. Clinically, overbreathing is known as hyperventilation; put simply, it means breathing more air than the body needs. The standard volume of normal breathing for a healthy adult is three to six litres of air per minute. Scientific research conducted by Professor Buteyko over three decades, along with scientific trials at the Mater Hospital in Brisbane in 1995 demonstrated that people with asthma breathe a volume of ten to twenty litres per minute between attacks, and over twenty litres during an attack.
Overbreathing causes a loss of carbon dioxide from the lungs. This is not a problem if it occurs only for a short time, because breathing will reduce afterwards to restore the carbon dioxide levels. However, breathing more air than we need over a period of time – and time can mean hours, weeks, months or even years – will result in the day-to-day levels of carbon dioxide remaining low constantly. Our respiratory centre becomes accustomed to or fixed at these lower levels of carbon dioxide and determine them to be ‘correct’. Our respiratory centre will therefore instruct us to overbreathe to maintain these low levels of carbon dioxide even though the rest of our bodily organs and tissues are suffering.
Carbon dioxide is very important for normal bodily functioning (for a more detailed explanation, see Appendix 1), it is logical to assume that the body must have some way to prevent losing it. Narrowing of the airways is caused by inflammation, by constriction of