When Less Is More: The Buteyko Method of Reduced Breathing May Be a Cure for Asthma

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. The method has been approved by the Russian State Medical System, and 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.