Dear Friend, this time we would like deal with proper breathing and to introduce you a method called Buteyko breathing technique. Why is it thrilling? Because breathing has elementary role in how your body functions, it helps prevent or cure a lot of health disorders and makes your body function properly and more efficiently.
The Ukrainian Professor Konstantin Buteyko worked out a respiration technique which helps us learn again how to breathe properly. “As researches prove, the more air we inhale and exhale during a given time, the worse can be our health condition. With changing our breathing habits we can prevent or even get rid of numerous modern endemic diseases” – says Professor Buteyko.
To whom it is recommended? To almost everyone!
Buteyko method has several positive and favourable physiological effects: it can increase our performance, the overall immune level, brain functions, etc. Moreover it provides support for avoiding a lot of problems like sleeping-, speaking-, nutrition-disorders, coughing and asthma. (Also allergy, hay fever, snoring, hypertension, eczema, distress, panic disorder, chronic tiredness and a certain kind of headaches can be treated by his respiration method with success.)
Did you know that breathing has such overall influence on your health?
Before presenting you the Buteyko method, let us see how we breathe usually!
Healthy breathing is to breathe through the nose 8-10 times in every minute. By this way a person takes 4-6 litres of air per minute. Our brain senses the carbon dioxide level of our blood. As soon as it reaches a certain level our brain’s breath-centre orders our diaphragm to expand and contract. This is respiration.
Carbon dioxide is the by-product of the moving and the metabolism of our body, and it can be found mainly in our lungs. In case of breathing through the mouth our blood’s carbon dioxide level decreases. Breathing this way for a long time results in that our brain considers this decreased level as normal and adapts to it thus we need more air to breathe. This can lead “hidden” hyperventilation, when someone takes even 10-20 litres of air in every minute. When this happens, the chemical balance of our blood and body turns to be unsteady and that can lead to several chronic diseases.
Why does low carbon dioxide level and hyperventilation cause lack of oxygen in our organs and tissues?
The maleficence of the developed societies (like stress, overfeeding, chemicals in our food) makes us to breathe more often and deeper than needed, because the body tries to get in balance through breathing.
The Buteyko method is based on the concept that "hidden" or undiagnosed hyperventilation is the underlying cause in numerous medical conditions. If we inhale more air then we exhale more, thus there won’t be enough carbon dioxide in our lungs. Oxygen carried by red blood-cells can be delivered to the tissues of our body only if besides oxygen there are also enough carbon dioxide in our blood. Consequently in case of low carbon dioxide level – although our blood can be full of oxygen – the oxygen molecules are linked to haemoglobin molecules of red blood-cells very strongly and they can not separate or can separate very hardly. So, paradoxically our cells don’t get enough oxygen because of no other than undiagnosed hyperventilation. You can get to know how to increase your body’s carbon dioxide level in order to set the right breathing by the brain.
Buteyko breathing technique has three keystones:
1. Decreasing tidal volume. We cause and keep up hampered respiration on purpose to minimize the evolved loss of carbon dioxide.
2. We moderate or hold our breath and intensify muscular activity in order to make our body producing more carbon dioxide.
3. If you think you hyperventilate, try to find its reason. If you have the reason, you just have to eliminate it.
One of the most effective breathing-exercise of Buteyko for decreasing the frequency of respiration is called “stepping”. You can try it virtually anywhere, e.g. walking up to the printer collecting your printouts. Follow the instructions and repeat them a few times with inserting one-minute breaks:
- Try to relax in standing position.
- Take a regular breath: inhale normally, exhale normally.
- After exhaling close your nostrils with your fingers.
- Hold your breath and make as many steps as you can. Count your steps meanwhile.
- Inhale through your nose.
- Relax and calm down your breath.
Buteyko method is even more popular since when the Professor has launched it, however it isn’t approved entirely by the medical community. The British Thoracic Society stated the Buteyko method "may be considered to help patients control the symptoms of asthma" based on the limited studies to date while recognizing the lack of data showing an objective improvement in prior studies. The U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute asthma guideline concluded "there is insufficient evidence to suggest that breathing techniques provide clinical benefit to patients who have asthma."
On the official site of Buteyko you can read wild range of articles, interviews, precedents and testimonies of patients about the positive effects and the incontestable success of Buteyko breathing technique.
For more reference, please check out the following links:
http://www.asthmacare.ie
www.normalbreathing.com
www.righthealth.com
www.buteyko.com
http://www.buteykoclinic.ru/english/
www.ginasthma.com
www.en.wikipedia.org
http://www.sign.ac.uk/pdf/qrg101.pdf
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/asthma/asthgdln.pdf
