Thank you Stanford. Years ago, when asked about Buteyko by a Neurologist in the US, I described it as a technical explanation, as to why Yogic breathing has always worked.

Prof. Buteyko and the Yogis were looking for different things, but they separately found the same answers.
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We all need boffins and while we may ‘know’ things, we therapists need scientists to demonstrate exactly how things work. Knowing, means we are not reliant on belief.

​Read more here.

I was asked by a Personal Trainer after speaking at this year’s CamExpo, whether Buteyko exercises could do the same as HIIT to improve V02 max output.

Q: Will Buteyko exercises improve V02 Max results?
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A: The answer is yes, but not directly.

This is a very cheery story.  We need more of those.

I have protected her identity to focus on her results.

Here is my Buteyko story :

​“I’ve been diagnosed with asthma, which very quickly developed in a severe form. I had to use prescribed medication, the well-known “puffers” that have written, as a warning, on the Patient Information that “it could worsen the medical condition of asthma patients”… scary, isn’t it?

In complementary therapy we get a lot of…”well it’s not scientifically based, so we can’t trust it.”

​This short abstract from the Journal of Psychosomatic Research shows a study which found breathing techniques worked better than the comparison procedure.  Importantly, it also showed that the control register in the brain stem was altered to maintain the benefit.

Oxygen carries no regulatory function in the body. The body simply uses it to oxidise other substances. We are not sensitive to it, as there is 20 times more in the atmosphere than we need at any time.
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Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is an “informative humeral vital constant, which regulates – without exception – all body functions”. We are very sensitive to it and more importantly its loss as there is only 1/200th in the atmosphere of what we need.

For most of us, what we have come to know as breathing is in fact over-breathing.  Taking in and breathing out a higher volume of air than our body needs.  So why should this be a problem you may ask. Isn’t lots of deep breathing healthy? It’s a fair question, based on what we think about oxygen and carbon dioxide.

Up to this year, I was firmly in the, oxygen good/carbon dioxide bad camp with most others.  Only now do I understand how valuable and scarce carbon dioxide is for our bodies.  This is not to be confused with the CO2 emissions in the environmental news.   The way our bodies work, we have to make the CO2 we need and hold on to it for internal uses, but with all this deep breathing and over breathing, we lose what we need and this creates symptoms such as wheezing, coughing, snoring, sleep disruption,  poor digestion and many, many others.
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Declan