Video: Stop Asthma Attack in five minutes
by Gina Tillman-Young
Health Impact News
Konstantin Pavlovich Buteyko
In the 1950s, a young Russian doctor was suffering from chronic illness. He had only been given a few years to live due to chronic severe hypertension. As a result of patterns and relationships he observed in his own bouts of illness, he developed a method for treating asthma and other diseases through a series of breathing exercises. The young man was named Konstantin Pavlovich Buteyko, and his simple, free, innovative method for overcoming asthma, other lung diseases and many other chronic illnesses is called the Buteyko method or Buteyko Breathing Technique.
While serving as a resident on night duty in the pulmonary ward, Dr. Buteyko observed that rapid mouth breathing was a common factor in every patient who was experiencing severe respiratory distress. He began to counsel the patients who were in severe distress to slow down their breathing by briefly holding their breath, inhaling and exhaling only through their noses and slowing and calming their subsequent breaths. Patients’ accounts of overcoming respiratory attacks and experiencing diminished symptoms were unanimous. Buteyko used this self-created technique to heal his own “terminal” hypertension, when no other medications or therapies could.
By the early 1980s, Buteyko had dedicated years to research and private clinical studies demonstrating the effectiveness of his breathing method in overcoming chronic disease. Intrigued with his positive results, the Russian government decided that the Buteyko breathing method warranted approval of a formal medical trial with asthmatic children in a Moscow hospital. Since the Russian design of standard controlled trials varies significantly from the predominant western medical methodology, the outcomes of medical trials and studies are not automatically accepted as valid by conventional American medicine. However, the results of the trial with these children were sufficiently impressive to persuade the Russian State Medical System to approve the method for widespread use. Today, the Buteyko method is a significant part of the routine treatment protocol for chronic illness among conventional practitioners in Russia and Australia, as well as many alternative medical practitioners around the world.
Understanding Asthma and the Failure of Modern Medicine
Although words like “asthma”, “nebulizer” and “inhaler” are common to the American vocabulary, it is important to understand how asthma affects the health of those who are challenged with this disease; how it differs in symptoms and presentation from other common pulmonary illnesses, and how widespread this disease is throughout the country and the world. Asthma is only one of several diseases that affect breathing airways, but it is the most common of all pulmonary diseases. With asthma, the airways are persistently inflamed, and may occasionally spasm, causing wheezing and shortness of breath. Allergies, infections, or pollution can trigger asthma’s symptoms. Among conventional medical practitioners asthma is declared to be an incurable disease. Other common pulmonary conditions include chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), an inability to exhale normally, which causes difficulty breathing; chronic bronchitis, a form of COPD characterized by a chronic productive cough; emphysema, another form of COPD caused by lung damage and resulting in difficulty in exhaling; and cystic fibrosis, a genetic condition causing poor clearance of mucus from the bronchi.
The data concerning the increase in asthma, the resulting medical expense, and its mortality rate is alarming. According to statistics released in 2012 by the National Lung Foundation, 300 million people throughout the world suffer with asthma, and over 24 million of them live in the US. The number of asthma cases reported in the past 10 years has increased by 48 percent. Two hundred seventeen thousand visits are made to the emergency room each year because of asthma. Throughout the world, the number of deaths from asthma annually is 250,000 and, in the US, 3,384 people died from this disease in 2012. Nine point four per cent of children and 8.2% of adults live with this disease. The annual cost of medical expenses due to asthma is $48.6 billion; $6 billion of this figure represents the amount spent on prescription medications. Statistics on asthma and other lung disorders clearly show that the conventional medical community is not winning the battle against this disease. Therefore, alternative strategies should be given serious consideration.
The Buteyko Method Offers Hope
The Buteyko Method has been the basis of several major clinical trials and is the subject of hundreds of peer-reviewed medical journal articles. As an approved treatment taught in Russian medical schools, it is credited with curing asthmatics in Russia for more than five decades. Statistics and research notwithstanding, one need only peruse alternative health periodicals and the internet to review the thousands of testimonies by former sufferers who now claim permanent relief from not only asthma, but at least 150 other chronic illnesses, including diabetes, reproductive disorders and psychological disorders, through learning and reconditioning themselves to a new way of breathing.
The Buteyko method is based on the concept that “hidden” or undiagnosed hyperventilation is the underlying cause of numerous medical conditions, including asthma. It is known that hyperventilation can lead to low carbon dioxide levels in the blood, which can subsequently lead to disturbances of the pH balance in the blood and lower tissue oxygen levels, causing inflammation. Advocates of this method also believe that these effects include widespread spasms of the muscle in the airways (bronchospasm), compromise of cell energy production as well as numerous other vital homeostatic chemical reactions in the body. Through behavior modification and retraining the body’s breathing pattern to nasal breathing, proponents of the Buteyko method purport to cure the body of its problems.
The Buteyko Method Explained
Although there are slight methodological variations among teachers of the Buteyko method, the consistent main objective is to “normalize” breathing through control of three processes: nasal breathing, reduced breathing and relaxation. Nasal breathing protects the airways by humidifying, warming, and cleaning the air entering the lungs. A majority of asthmatics experience intensified problems with their condition at night when they are trying to sleep. Buteyko practitioners believe that asthmatics often trigger nighttime sleeping attacks through poor posture or unconscious mouth-breathing. Applying the techniques of this method, asthma sufferers learn to keep the nose clear and recondition their daytime breathing to nasal breathing. This behavior modification technique results in significant improvement of night-time symptoms. Nasal breathing behavior modification is also applied to physical exercise and is believed to increase stamina and performance.
Reduced breathing exercises involve consciously reducing breathing rate and breathing volume. Initially, reduced breathing, hypoventilation, induces a feeling of “air hunger”, intentional control over the desire to breathe deeply. Once time has been spent practicing, the techniques become instinctive and the exercises are gradually phased out as the condition improves.
Buteyko uses a measurement called the Control Pause (CP), the amount of time that one can comfortably hold breath after a normal exhalation. With regular Buteyko reduced-breathing practice, asthmatics are expected to experience gradual increase of their CP in direct relationship to the decrease and eventual disappearance of their asthma symptoms.
The Buteyko Method is Effective
Relaxation techniques used in the Buteyko method have probably saved countless during asthma episodes that would otherwise have necessitated a visit to the hospital. The first “automatic” response to an asthma attack is rapid breathing, or hyperventilation. Buteyko teaches how to deal with asthma attacks without the fear or anxiety that leads to dangerous levels of hyperventilation. By resisting the urge to respond to chest tightness, coughing and breathing discomfort experienced with the onset of an attack, asthmatics can prevent and control the dangerous rapid breathing that causes an attack to escalate into choking coughing fits, black-outs, inability to breathe and, too often, death.
Public awareness about the Buteyko Method is now on the rise in the US. In 2009 New York Times health writer Jane Brody, who says that she rarely covers “alternative treatments,” wrote “A Breathing Technique Offers Help for People With Asthma”, a very positive article in which she shares how witnessing her friend’s miraculous results with Buteyko method after a 48 year history of worsening asthma made her a believer. YouTube demonstrations, books and official Buteyko training DVDs make this method an accessible tool for healing. Although these materials provide a good introduction to the method, it is recommended that anyone who proposes to adopt the Buteyko method as a life-long approach to wellness receive personal coaching from one of the many certified Buteyko coaches around the country.
After years of illness, Konstnatin Buteyko found wellness through relaxation and shallow, slow breaths of air inhaled through his nose. Predictably, Dr. Buteyko’s discovery was not well-received by his peers or those who sold pharmaceutical remedies in Russia. According to biographical writings, in 2000, at age 77, Buteyko was accosted and beaten with a pipe by an unknown assailant. Although he went on to work and teach for three more years until age 80, those close to him believe he never really recovered from these injuries. However, like so many alternative practitioners who are unafraid to pursue the truth, Buteyko left a gift of potential recovery for those who are motivated to examine the Buteyko method, and decide for themselves if it is effective.
About the author
Gina Tillman-Young is a wife, a mother, and a pastor. She is also the director of Genesis Christian Academy, which is located on a 114 acre raw milk dairy and ranch. This year, the academy will be conducting a study and filming a documentary entitled, Better, Naturally. This project will chronicle the progress of children with juvenile-onset chronic illness who spend a year at the academy’s Texas ranch engaged in a holistic academic program that includes hours of daily sports, organic mostly raw diet, prayer and the use of non-invasive alternative healing techniques, like the Buteyko method. Learn more here. Contact her at www.moojesus.com.
Postscript: A Testimony
About a week after writing this article, I was in the restaurant area of our church guesthouse, entertaining the visitors who come to our church ranch to visit our raw milk dairy on Saturday. One of my colleagues walked up to me with an obvious sense of urgency and whispered that there was a visitor out on the front porch having a severe asthma attack.
As I stepped outside I saw him, an average size man in his thirties, slumped over in a rocking chair gasping and heaving for air. He was “sucking wind” through his mouth and exhaling through his mouth. Each breath was increasingly rapid and deep but somehow ineffective in filling his lungs and satisfying his need for air. With each inhale, he made an alarming sound that reminded me of the distress whistle that blows when our nearby dam is opened to release overflow water after a heavy rain. On exhale, the sound was also very loud, but raspy. Although the striped tee-shirt he was wearing was loose and oversized, I could actually see his whole torso trembling as he struggled to breathe. His knuckles were ghost-white from hanging on for dear life, both hands on one armrest, to the wooden rocking chair, just to keep his body from falling out of it. A friend who was with him told me he had whooping cough.
In all, my observation of this man took no more than 15 seconds, but by the time I leaned down to him to make eye contact, his eyes were rolling in his head. I yelled at him and told him I thought I could help him if he would listen to me. I wanted to know that he was lucid, so I yelled at him again so he could hear me over the noise of his loud whooping and gasping. I asked him if he could follow my directions. He looked at me and nodded, still struggling and trembling.
As a starting point, I told him to hold his breath. He sucked in and held it. (This is not a part of Buteyko, I just had to help him establish an awareness of his inhaling and exhaling). Then I told him to keep his mouth shut, slowly release the breath through his nose take two more slow breaths and hold it again, immediately after he finished exhaling. I instructed him to clasp his nose with the thumb and forefinger of his hand. He followed my directions to the tee.
Just to give him something to do, I borrowed from the Buteyko technique of head nodding to relieve sinus congestion—I told him to nod his head up and down while he continued to hold his breath as long as he possibly could. I was surprised when he nodded for over forty seconds.
As he was nodding, I instructed him to get ready to keep his mouth closed and breathe only through his nose once he stopped holding his breath. Eventually he released his nose, inhaled and began breathing. His breaths were deep, but through his nose. After about two deep breaths I told him to breathe more shallow breath, imagining that the air was only supposed to enter half way up his nostril. I tapped him lightly on his shoulder and told him to relax his shoulder muscles and his lungs, and he did. Lastly, I instructed him to slow his breathing down. This whole process took three minutes at the most. At the end of this time, his breathing was totally relaxed and normal.
The gentleman was a little bit embarrassed, as he had drawn a small crowd during this dramatic episode. He patted my shoulder, thanked me in a low tone and then proceeded to enter the dining area of our little restaurant, where he pulled out a chair and made himself comfortable at one of the mosaic tables. This man then proceeded to effortlessly consume a few raw salads, a large wedge of frittata with sautéed vegetables and melted cheese, a glass of raw milk and a bowl of raw cacao pudding. He had placed an order for three gallons of milk to take home. Each gallon of milk weighs slightly over eight pounds. One of our packaging people had filled his chest cooler with ice to cover the three gallons of milk. He agreed to let us say a quick prayer for his permanent healing, opened his eyes, hefted the 40+ pound cooler and with a smile and a nod was out the door!
I am not certified in the Buteyko method. In fact, I have only watched the 5 hour training video and practiced the breathing techniques. I am always super-conscious of not trying to diagnose or treat anybody for anything, but in that 15 second moment as I stood watching this guy I thought about the fact that we are over 20 minutes from town and that telling someone to breathe through his nose is not practicing a therapy, it’s just…telling someone to breathe through his nose!
God willing, I will be participating in a seven day training seminar to become a Buteyko Method coach later on this fall. Just imagine how I may be able to help people even more, once I really know something!
In this video of a news program in Australia, several people explain how the Buteyko method worked when drugs did not. An asthma doctor is interviewed who explains it is all “coincidence” and due to the “placebo effect.” Faced with the evidence that a simple technique is better than his drugs, he refuses to believe it.