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Wonder Cure from Russia is Ahead by a Nose by James Hughes-Onslow, The Daily Express, 6th August 1996

Forcing your lungs to breathe less when you are gasping requires discipline. Professor Buteyko was brutal, taping patients’ mouths shut so they had to breathe through their noses. That’s how they did things in Soviet Russia. At the Hale Clinic near Harley St., Chris Drake, who learned the Buteyko method in Russia and practised it in Australia, tells patients to breathe through their noses whenever possible. and to tape their mouths up at night. He advises a minimum of exercise, to avoid heavy breathing, and moderate eating and drinking – large meals make asthmatics breathless. TV Presenter and mother-of-five Sally Magnusson, who went on the 290 (UK pounds) week’s Buteyko course with her eight-year-old son Siggy, said: “It has been very encouraging so far but time will tell.” You start with some shallow breathing. “It’s not easy or relaxing, it’s difficult, horrible,” says Drake. “If it’s joyful, you’re doing it wrong.” Worse is to follow. It is called the pause. You breathe out gently, then hold your breath. You should be able to do this for a minute or more. In our group of nine. Kevin ,the Rastafarian poet managed 10 seconds, and a three-year-old boy couldn’t manage to do it at all. I did 25 seconds, not good enough for Drake. “You are breathing for four people,” he said. “You don’t need so much oxygen. We breathe 10 times more oxygen than we need, and 200 times too little carbon dioxide.” On the second day pauses were getting longer, pulses slower. Blood vessels had expanded, Drake explained, and appetites had diminished. The routine is 4 maximum pauses and 2 medium ones, separated by 3 minute intervals of shallow breathing, doing this 4 times a day. The purpose is to retrain the respiratory centre, the part of the brain which controls breathing. On the third day the father of the small boy complained that Drake had disrupted his entire family’s sleeping pattern. He took his wife and son away and didn’t come back. “That boy is being condemned to a life on drugs”. Drake protested. Valerie, a psychotherapist fellow sufferer, and I were doing pauses of more than a minute by this time, holding our noses, pacing the room to distract ourselves from the pain and had given up symptomatic medication, Serevent in her case. Ventolin in mine. Kevin managed half a minute and was using 3 puffs of ventolin a day instead of 10. On the 5th day Kevin who was sceptical and still hadn’t taped his mouth shut at night, confessed he felt much better. “It’s been a success. This is usually a bad time of year for me. I often end up in hospital it gets so bad.” Valerie was much better, but rather nervous of going back to see her doctor. “It’s been a big success. I expected to be very wheezy when I gave up all the drugs but I’m not.” Sally Magnusson adds: “As a sceptical journalist I feel there must be a catch but I can’t see it yet. Siggy is feeling much better, using fewer inhalers.”...

Stop This Asthma Disgrace by James Hughes-Onslow, The Daily Express 6th August 1996

The Health Secretary, Stephen Dorrell, has announced a five-year, 5 million (UK pound) research programme to identify the cause of asthma. “There is no cure for asthma,” says a spokesman for the National Asthma Campaign. “One thing is certain: the outlook for asthma research has never looked so good.   Yes, asthma research is doing well – it has a rosy future. But, sadly, asthmatics do not. Once, asthma scarcely existed; now treating it is a lucrative with more and more sufferers dependent on expensive drugs.   God preserve asthmatics from the pharmaceutical industry. When it was announced recently that Third World countries had fewer asthmatics than developed countries, the irony was missed by experts who said that it was modern life was too clean. Other specialists say asthma is caused by pollution. The truth is western doctors haven’t got a clue. In Soviet Russia, which was spared the grip of the pharmaceutical lobby, Professor Konstantin Buteyko devised a system of breathing exercises which combat asthma and hay fever effectively. The basis of Buteyko is that we need carbon dioxide in our lungs to process oxygen into the bloodstream.This is a physiological fact, not mumbo-jumbo. Carbon dioxide is known to be connected with the function of the nervous system. When asthmatics become tight-chested, their bodies are trying to tell them to slow down, to take less oxygen and more CO2. Now they are treated with bronchodilators which have the reverse effect, opening up the airways to allow more oxygen in and expelling CO2. Because these inhalers are addictive, they become ever more insidious.. For the pharmaceutical industry, Buteyko’s method is bad news. It requires no drugs at all. GPs are happy to hear about it but they will not recommend it. And there is little incentive in the pharmaceutical industry to cure the disease. I have had prescriptions for Becotide (2 puffs twice a day), Ventolin (for use in a crisis) and Intal (occasionally) for 17 years, and I’ve had 3 serious asthma attacks. Once I was taken unconscious to hospital, where I was put on a drip and kept in for a week. Now, after a one-week Buteyko course, I’ve given up all drugs. I find I’m able to fight off an asthma or hay fever attack. My 11-year-old son Andrew, who has never had an asthma attack but often has an asthmatic cough, has been prescribed even more powerful drugs. Children are often given even more powerful drugs than adults because they can’t be relied on to use inhalers accurately. Yet the NAC says it cannot recommend Buteyko because “it has not undergone properly controlled clinical trials which have been published in a reputable medical journal”. It is this attitude which causes this epidemic....

Doctors Gasp at Buteyko Success by Tony James Front Page of “Australian Doctor” 7/4/95

BUTEYKO breathing hyperventilation exercises in patients with asthma reduced beta agonist use by 90% and improved symptoms, according to preliminary results of a randomised, controlled trial in Brisbane. However, there were no changes in major physiological parameters such as peak flow rate or FEV1 in people using Buteyko breathing. The study was reported at a meeting of the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand in Hobart last week by Dr Simon Bowler, a respiratory physician at Mater Hospital in Brisbane. Dr Bowler said there were no obvious explanations for the apparent short-term benefits of Buteyko breathing. “We were surprised at the results, as we didn’t expect any significant changes,” he told Australian Doctor. Proponents of the technique claimed that hyperventilation and the subsequent increase in carbon dioxide levels could relieve the symptoms of bronchospasm and favourably affect the long- term course of asthma. The study was prompted by publicity about Buteyko breathing and the number of inquirie to asthma foundations and requests for advice from other health professionals it had generated. The study was funded by the Australian Association of Asthma Foundations. Forty patients with well-documented asthma and significant daily use of bronchodilators were recruited and randomised to a Buteyko or control group – 39 remained in the study. The Buteyko group received classes from a Buteyko practitioner for 90 minutes a day for seven days and the classes included direct encouragement to minimise beta agonist use. The control patients received a similar regimen of physiotherapy classes which included standard asthma education, breathing exercises (excluding any hyperventilation) and relaxation techniques. Both groups were carefully instructed to use bronchodilators only as required and not on a routine basis. “We would expect education to influence the patients’ asthma management, but wouldn’t normally expect the other techniques to have any major effect on medication use or respiratory function,” Dr Bowler said. “After six weeks there was a 90% reduction in beta agonist use in the Buteyko group, compared to only a 5% reduction in the control group.” “There was also a signficant difference in quality of life and improvement in symptom scores in the Buteyko group.” “These changes occurred in the absence of any improvement in airflow” Dr. Bowler said. “In this study, there appears to be some short-term benefit from Buteyko techniques in terms of reduced beta agonist use, without obvious cost in terms of worsening symptom scores.” The trial continued for another six weeks to investigate the effect of reducing inhaled corticosteroid use, but the data are yet to be analysed....

Breathe freely if you have Asthma by Jerome Burne, The Sunday Telegraph, 31 December 1995

Asthma, as we all know, is a disease that prevents people getting enough air into their lungs, because the passageways close up. The trouble is we have got it completely wrong. Actually, asthma is the body’s way of saying: “You are breathing too deeply”. Learn to breathe more shallowly and the asthma will disappear. This apparently ridiculous idea is at the heart of a revolutionary new cure for this often chronic and crippling disease which affects one in 20 adults in this country and kills more than 2,000 a year. Traditional treatment aims to force the constricted air passages open with steroids and “broncho-dilator” drugs. However, Australian Christopher Drake, who runs group sessions in the Buteyko Breathing Reconditioning Technique at the Hale clinic in London, believes this is profoundly mistaken. “Within a week we can get 97 per cent of patients off most of their drugs and able to control attacks. “All we use are specific breathing techniques”. Among his successful cases is Jonathon Aitken MP, who had asthma for 5 years before doing the course. “It’s the only thing that has worked for me,” he says. “I think it is remarkable.” Another supporter is Dr. John Stanley, a medical microbiologist at the Central Public Health Laboratory who, although he wants to wait three months before making a final assessment, says that he has not felt so well in years. “I’d had asthma for nine years, and it was gradually getting worse.” The technique was developed in Russia by Professor Konstantin Buteyko. Drake first encountered it in Australia about five years ago, and now an estimated 8,000 Australians have been treated with it. One clinical trial written up in the Medical Journal of Australia, describes the results as showing “unprecedented broad-spectrum improvement”. What makes Buteyko approach so controversial is that it turns our idea of what happens during breathing on its head. In the authorised version, what we all need is oxygen. The job of the lungs is to transfer oxygen into the blood making it bright red and healthy and to breathe out carbon dioxide -the waste product. In the Buteyko version, it is carbon dioxide that gets the lead role. Drake points out, and physiologists would not disagree, that CO2 is vital for control of the major body systems, such as the immune system, the digestion and the heart.Certainly the transference of oxygen to the blood from the lungs depends on the right amount of CO2 being available. “Now it is text-book stuff, but not widely known that for the exchange to work most efficiently you need in your lungs about 6 per cent CO2 and 2 per cent oxygen,” says Drake. “This means that the focus of everyone’s breathing is not, as we all think, getting enough oxygen – there’s lots of it around, 20 per cent in every breath – the problem is getting enough CO2, as each breath contains only.035 per cent. The key role of the lungs is to act as a CO2 reservoir”. The storage tanks are the alveoli – millions of tiny sacs in the lungs where CO2 is transferred into the blood. “When someone constantly takes in too much air,” says Drake, “these reservoirs get diluted with other gases. The asthmatic spasm is a dramatic message from the body that screams ‘Slow down, CO2 reserves running low.’ Literally, the last thing you need at this point is a drug to force your airways open.” It might have remained yet another eccentric personal theory, were it not for the results. “You have to be pretty well motivated,” says Dr. Stanley. “The exercises aren’t easy. They are the opposite of what you have been doing all those years. But within just a few days you get back a control of something as basic as your breathing. And that’s amazing.”  ...

Asthma Under Attack by Russell Lander, The Bulletin (Australia) 8 October 1996

For 14 years I have been on asthma medication but on February 9 this year I threw out my spray and have remained drug-free and well for some six months.For those who suffer from chronic asthma, this assertion is likely to engender astonishment or extreme scepticism, as this now very common medical condition is generally regarded as intractable, requiring lifelong preventative drug treatment. Doctors won’t promise that you’ll never get off asthma drugs because they don’t know the precise cause of what is now an epidemic. I hope my story will encourage chronic asthmatics to consider an alternative approach to what is now regarded as standard treatment reliever and preventer medication delivered by puffers, turbuhalers and nebulisers, and cortisone and theophylline tablets. Needless to say, each of these treatments comes with its own suite of side effects and asthma sufferers who follow this course are riding a tiger. Technique: My wife heard from her physiotherapist about the Buteyko breathing technique and we decided that, with our daughter Jennie, we would do the course. A Buteyko instructor, one of a number of practitioners in Australia teaching the technique, took us through a series of breathing exercises, explaining the theory as he went along. It is surprising how many people have heard about what has become known as “That Russian breathing technique”, but few, it seems, actually do a course. Our two-week course, conducted at home, comprised five sessions of about one-and-a-half hours each. During this period we had to practise a routine and time our results. The instructor encouraged us to reduce our use of reliever medications within a comfort zone but not to reduce the preventers. I chose to stop all medication at a stroke on day one of the course, even though the instructor had advised against it. Like many great ideas, the Buteyko approach seems deceptively simple, but is actually quite complex to apply. In essence, the method advocates taking in small breaths through the nose, breathing out gently and holding the breath for extended periods. At first it is foreign to the asthma sufferer but with a little practice it soon becomes second nature. So how does it work? Konstantin Pavlovich Buteyko is a 73-year-old Russian doctor whose research over many years revealed that deep breathing far from being a virtue can be harmful, and that shallow breathing is the natural way to inhale. Deep breathing, he claims, depletes the bloodstream of carbon dioxide, causing blood vessel spasms and oxygen starvation. This in turn may bring about asthma, headaches, rapid heart beat and a number of other medical conditions. Gulp: Asthmatics tend to gulp in too much air and their efforts to exhale as much as possible to make way for the next hard-won breath deprives the bloodstream of carbon dioxide, a smooth muscle dilator. The effect is that the more asthmatics strain to take in extra air, the less oxygen is actually being released to the body’s cells. Buteyko’s technique of breathing through the nose is alien to most asthmatics because more air can be inhaled via the mouth than the nose, and in any case the nose may well be blocked. But there are four good reasons why breathing through the nose is beneficial to asthmatics. It regulates the temperature of the air, filters it, humidifies the lungs and limits the volume of air that can be inhaled. The Buteyko method teaches how to unblock the nose and how to maintain nasal breathing all day and all night. Since giving up all asthma drugs, I have noticed a number of positive changes. I am generally calmer, my hands are steadier, I have stopped suddenly feeling breathless, I can sleep peacefully right through the night instead of waking feeling choked, I have stopped bruising badly at the slightest knock or scratch (attributed to cortisone use), pain experienced in my upper back over many years associated with hyperventilation has disappeared and I seem to have more cash. That is not to say that I haven’t had asthmatic symptoms occasionally, but I have been able to overcome these by following the book, as it were lowering the breathing rate, softening exhalation and holding the breath for extended intervals every five minutes or so. The Buteyko method has worked for my daughter, Jennie, too. Now 28, she has been a chronic asthmatic from the age of two. On numerous occasions she has been rushed to casualty in a state of dire breathlessness, sometimes put on a cortisone drip for days. Since doing the course she has come down from a towering 25 or more puffs of Ventolin each day to none at all. She has also been able to reduce her preventer medication from six to two puffs of Pulmicort a day. The Buteyko method of controlled breathing has worked wonders in my family and I urge asthma sufferers to be open-minded about it. Although it is not currently covered by health funds, sufferers should weigh the cost against that of regular asthma medications, doctors’ fees and possible hospitalisation. And, anyway, what price quality of life?  ...

Breathe Easily, and Learn to Live Again by Sally Magnusson, The Herald, Glasgow, 12th August 1996

I have just watched a roomful of people who have suffered terribly from perhaps the most rampant disease of this generation, long thought to be incurable, begin to recover from it. Dramatically. Almost incredibly. Within five days. I am still reeling from the experience, still finding it hard to take in the possibility that my own son, whom I have been pumping full of asthma medication for five of his eight years, could soon be shot of all of his inhalers for good. Some have gone already. He woke this morning without a wheeze, able to breathe freely through his nose for the first time in ages. As I write he is out playing football without ventolin in his pocket. I honestly wouldn’t have believed it when he and I sat down last week in London’s Hale Clinic with 20 fellow asthmatics, including two other young boys. We had come, like everyone else, because I had heard that the Buteyko method of reconditioning your breathing had been producing amazing results in asthmatics, and I was willing to try anything. But we were all pretty sceptical. How, we wondered, as we sat nervously in rows waiting for the first class to begin, could five one-hour lessons in breathing achieve what a lifetime of inhalers and pills and special vacuum cleaners had failed to do? There were people in that class who need nebulizers two or three times just to get through a normal day, people who could no longer climb stairs, people with medecine cabinets like a pharmacy, people of all ages and both sexes whose whole lives were dominated and ruined by the perpetual fight for air. And how ridiculously simple it turned out to be. It wasn’t, we were told, that our bodies were fighting for air at all; they were getting too much of the stuff. The key to this theory is carbon dioxide. For oxygen to pass efficiently into the blood we need a certain amount of carbon dioxide; this is lost when we over-breathe. In other words – and this is standard textbook stuff – by breathing too much we actually get less oxygen. The radical claim made by the Russian physiologist, Professor Konstantin Buteyko, is that asthmatics are three or four times more than they should.They’re not doing it in an acute, obvious way; the crux of Buteyko’s theory is that this over-breathing is often not clearly visible in the patient; it is “hidden hyperventilation”. He suggests that diseases such as asthma, hypertension, stenocardia, strokes, haemorrhoids, eczema, and a good many others are the body’s defence mechanisms against the excessive loss of CO2 through over-breathing. So an asthmatic spasm is not a message to the body to breathe more; it’s a plea to breathe less. And the more we force open the airways with bronchodilators like ventolin and take big, deep gulps of air, the more harm we do in the long run. The body simply strengthens its defences and tries to get the message across again, and again, and again. I’m no scientist; I’m certainly no doctor. I’ll leave it to those who are better qualified to assess whether Christopher Drake, the Buteyko practitioner who ran our course, is right to assert that “you can’t have shallow breathing and asthma – the two simply cannot go together”. All I can say, mustering as much journalistic detachment as I can, is that it seems to work. And, if he’s right, any asthmatic with the not inconsiderable willpower required to sustain the breathing exercises could be off medications in a matter of weeks. A Multi-million pound pharmaceutical industry would feel the pinch, of course, but I dare say the country’s three million asthmatics could live with that. Sharon Cutler, a 39-year-old teacher from Kent, certainly could. Even I, who had watched her struggle with the Buteyko exercises each evening and gradually begin tomaster them, was taken aback by the changes she reported at the end of the week. My shorthand could hardly keep up with the outpouring of emotion when I asked her what she thought. “I feel fantastic,” she said, “and extraordinarily happy. I’ve had no asthma since the second day. I feel so much more energetic. My appetite’s fallen and my weight has just dropped off. I can walk distances. I can manage stairs. “My life until this week has consisted of going to work, coming home collapsing in a chair, and wheezing. Now I feel as if I’ve got my life back. The only time I felt this good before was in the two or three minutes after I came off the nebulizer. I feel as if I’ve had a body transplant. What have I been doing this past forty years?” Angela McAnally, from Glasgow, said she felt wonderful. “I can’t say how tremendouse I feel already.” Gary Phillips, from Wales, said he could breathe through his nose for the first time in years. Similar responses were coming from all sides, with the most dramatic results being reported by the most seriously affected asthmatics. One lady told Drake: “Thank you for giving me my life back.” Of course only time will tell wether the improvrement continues, especially once the long-term steroid inhalers, which we were urged not to discard too hastily, are reduced. But Christopher Drake claims a 97% long-trm success rate, and the tributed of his former pupils certainly back him up. He showed me a letter from Nick Jacobs (34) of London, a chronic asthmatic since the age of six who was on steroids, repeated antibiotics, Serevent twice a day – and felt in a state of permanent decline. “I stopped taking the Ventolin on the third day of your course and have not taken it since”, he wrote, “I am now taking no medication whatsoever and I am in control of my asthma. I am beginning to forget that I have asthma at all. “I am shocked and delighted by the efficacy of the method. ‘Miraculous’ is an emotive an non-scientific word but comes closest to describing how I view the application of this simple and logically founded method. I am grateful beyond my ability of expression.” So, what happens to achieve such dramatic results so quickly? Well, remarkably little, actually. On each of the five evenings we learned to forget everything we ever imbibed at our mother’s knee about the efficacy of breathing and practiced instead how to take infinitesimal, almost suffocation breaths through the nose.And we learned to stop asthma attacks – which we’re told will happen less and less as shallow breathing becomes second nature – by holding our breath for an inordinate time to get carbon dioxide levels up. As many of the class were soon discovering, these exercises at the first hint of a wheeze will diperse it completely. Within a couple of days, the elderly man on the nebulizer had abandoned it for one puff of ventolin, and by the third day he reported that he had got through a 5am asthma attack spasm with the exercise alone. He felt he was on his way. We were told not to come of steroids too fast. We should wait until we had been clear of symptoms and breathing well for a few weeks and then reduce gradually in consultation with a GP. Christopher Drake, who has overseen the recovery of so many blighted lives in this way, is an angry man. Despite the conclusion of the chair of childhood diseases at the First Moscow Institute that “Buteyko’s method proved to be very effecient in the complex treatment of bronchial asthma”, despite authoritative trials in Australia and a success rate of over 90%, Drake can’t get a hearing in Britain. The National Asthma Campaign is dismissive. “There is no medical evidence that a person with stable asthma is consistently over-breathing” it says. Christopher Drake wants to set up British trials to provide the evidence. He wants Buteyko’s reasoning assessed by independent scientists. Above all he wants open minds. Perhaps Scotland’s medical establishment, with it’s proud indendent history, could provide these. “Everyone believes asthma is a complicated, mysterious, disease”, he says, “So we spend millions os pounds researching the dust mite that has been with us forever, we clean carpets, we sell the dog, we buy special bedding and afterwards – more asthma. These are only triggers. The simple fact is that asthmatics breathe three or four times more than the physiology books say they should and the medications make it worse.” Next month Drake is holding Scotland’s first Buteyko course in Glasgow, preceded by an explanatory seminar that is free and open to all. Every GP, every asthma nurse, everybody who has ever looked into the asthma abyss, and despaired, ought to be there.  ...

Breathing Life Into Medical Theories by Sally Magnusson, The Herald, Scotland, Monday January 6 1997

When the BBC programme Frontline Scotland reveals the results of the two months it spent following the progress of asthma sufferers using the Buteyko breathing method, it will be reopening a medical controversy which has been simmering in Scotland for some months. Ever since the practitioners of the method, developed by the Russian professor Konstantin Buteyko, began their breathing classes in Glasgow, heralded by the astounding claim asthma can be corrected by shallow breathing, opinion has been sharply divided. Doctors by and large feel the theory that all asthmatics breathe incorrectly doesn’t hold water. They say only the tiny percentage who hyperventilate acutely are likely to be helped by changing their breathing. Prof Buteyko, however. argues all asthmatics breathe more than they should , the degree of over-breathing determines the severity of the asthma, and that by improving their breathing they will improve their asthma. It’s a theory passionately supported by the growing numbers of asthmatics who have persevered with the method and found their asthma improving, sometimes dramatically. Since every course brings together all types of asthma, whether exercise induced or allergy based, mild or severe, acquired in childhood or later in life, and since the majority of sufferers appear to benefit, a far higher proportion than the 4% or so of acute hyperventilators are seeing an improvement in their asthma. Four months ago, The Herald followed the progress of several people who took part in the first Buteyko workshop in Scotland. At the end of the five evening-course, the diaries they kept chartered, in every case, a reduction in symptoms. The real challenge, however, would be in the weeks ahead, as they sought to persevere with a breathing method that requires considerable effort. With Frontline Scotland set to reveal the results of another such course, it seemed appropriate to chart the progress of that first group. Pam Duncan, from the Isle of Arran, says it has changed her life. She has been able to start a new job, after being unable to cope with the last one because of her asthma. Her family have insisted she change her message on the answer-phone because she sounds so different from the wheezy character who recorded the original one. “I was on so much medication I can barely remember it all. Now I’m off everything except Uniphyllin (which I’ve reduced from 400mg twice a day to 300mg once a day ) and the steroid inhaler Flixotide which will be the last one to go. I’m also off Prozac which I was on for the depression I was getting because I was always so ill with asthma. “I’ve had three chest infections since the course, which I had to be on antibiotics for, but I haven’t needed to increase the asthma medication, which is amazing” Meridith Cooper from Rhu has found the breathing exercises extremely hard work. “If I stick at it, I’m well. If I lapse, the asthma returns. But I am very, very impressed . I haven’t used Ventolin in four months an I’m ready now to half my dosage of steroids”. The huge reserves of willpower required to sustain the Buteyko method seems to be the main reason it doesn’t work for everyone. In a culture hooked on instant remedies, the physical effort and mental stamina it takes to recondition a lifetime’s breathing habit comes as a shock. A hospital physician who enrolled four of his NHS patients on a Buteyko course was extremely disappointed with the results. Two did not even finish the course. Meredith Cooper’s brother Guy Nelson was also on the first course. He had asthma induced solely by exercise, which in a sports lover was a major handicap. He found it difficult at first to play hockey with his mouth tightly closed, but eventually began to experience definite improvement. He now feels in control of his asthma. One of several children on the course, Amy Birchard, 9, has persevered with the exercises and feels much better. Her father, Paul Birchard said “I feel it’s a truthful theory and it works”. Joanne Webster, 16, from Angus, has also been able to reduce her medication, she has more energy and feels warmer. Her consultant was very impressed by the improvement in her condition. Alasdair, 18, Fearghas, 8 and their mother, Fiona Lyon, did the course together as a family. Alasdair reports that they have not used their inhalers at all since then. They can all now go into houses where there are cats and dogs without suffering. “It’s very hard work,” said Alasdair, “but it’s worth it.” Elaine Gillespie, 17, from Greenock, was a severe asthmatic on high doses of drugs, who looked and felt ill all the time. She is amazed at how much better she has been. She was able to come off most of the drugs and has felt hugely better without the shakiness and the fluctuating heart-rate she had been experiencing as side effects. Her one set back has been a bout of pneumonia, but she intends to restart the breathing method once she recovers. “I think everybody should be able to do this” she said. “It should be on the NHS” Whether the Buteyko method ever makes it on to the NHS, which currently spends hundreds of millions of pounds on asthma drugs, depends on clinical trials which may take years to carry out. So far the only controlled study has been staged in Australia, where 40 asthmatic patients were divided into two groups which followed either a Buteyko regime or standard asthma treatment and relaxation techniques. After six weeks there was a 90% reduction in the symptomatic medication in the Buteyko group compared with a 5% reduction in the other. There was also a significant improvement in the quality of life of the Buteyko group. Australian respiratory physicians expressed surprise at the results. The Buteyko practitioners in this country, Alexander Stalmatski and Christopher Drake, operate out of London’s Hale Clinic. Research studies are under way but it may be a long time before the clinical trials that could prove or disprove the Buteyko theory are up and running.  ...

It’s Enough to make you gasp by Sally Magnusson, The Herald, Glasgow, 7 October 1997

The research establishment won’t fund it. The medical establishment won’t countenance it. In GP surgeries up and down the land it’s been dismissed as irrelevant. But among the people, among those patients who – despite the best efforts of the cleverest people in the medical profession – still can’t breathe properly and are frittering away their health on increasingly noxious asthma drugs, the Buteyko method is not so easily patronised. Now at last these people have a champion. Dr Gerald Spence, a 43 year old GP in the East End of Glasgow, has spent the last year considering the claims of the Russian Professor Konstantin Buteyko that Western medicine has got the approach to asthma all wrong. He has become increasingly convinced that. Buteyko is right to see asthma as a breathing disorder which can be corrected by retraining our breathing. When The Herald first brought the claimed successes of the Buteyko method to public attention more than a year ago, Dr Spence – virtually alone among his profession – was concerned enough at his own impotence in treating asthma effectively to attend a Buteyko workshop and see what was going on. At Shettleston Health centre we spend £100,000 a year on asthma treatment – that’s a tenth of the whole budget.” he says “But it’s not working. Constantly we have to increase the potency of the medication, and it’s very distressing to see patient’s intake go up and up, without them getting any better.” What he found at the Buteyko workshops was asthmatics of every shape, size, age and degree of severity, all but a few declaring themselves hugely better and able within days to reduce the sometimes vast amounts of medication previously needed to control their asthma symptoms. He was interested, but profoundly sceptical. Nobody teaches Buteyko’s theories in this country’s medical schools. The Siberian born physician, whom the medical committee of the Russian Parliament is currently considering for nomination for a Nobel Prize in Medicine, argues that all our ideas about deep breathing being good for us are fatally flawed. He argues that the more you breathe, the less oxygen actually gets to the cells of your body. This is because the air around you contains a much smaller proportion of carbon dioxide than your own body.Carbon dioxide is essential for the body’s uptake of oxygen. Breathing too much results in a deficit of carbon dioxide, which reduces the level of oxygen in the blood and tissues. According to this theory, asthmatics are breathing two, three, sometimes even four times as much as they should, and constriction of the airways is the body’s defence. The body is asking to be given less air, not more. Reliever drugs to open the airways will, therefore, give temporary relief, but will soon force the body into stronger defences, which leads to more drugs, and so on, in an increasingly vicious spiral. Barely able to believe that the answer to asthma could be that simple, Dr Spence was nevertheless spurred on by the results he was seeing. He decided to follow the progress of 60 asthmatics who had paid £290 to learn how to retrain their breathing. Of the 41 who responded to his survey over a six month period (27 females and 15 males aged from six to 77 years) 34 had continued with the exercises and reported significant reductions in asthma medication; indeed 12 people no longer used preventer or reliever at all. A further two had stopped the exercises but concentrated on breathing through their nose; both had stopped their reliever inhaler and one the preventer. Five people had abandoned the breathing method and described their asthma as unchanged. “I am amazed at how well people have done” says Dr Spence. “I didn’t expect these results. People were writing huge screeds on the back of the questionnaires, saying they had never felt better in their lives. I don’t need fancy statistical techniques to see their is something very important going on.” In the letter he sent with the latest part of his survey he wrote, “Although this questionnaire does not have the rigour of a clinical trial, I feel that it provides very strong evidence that Buteyko breathing exercises, if continued, can control the symptoms of asthma and that medication can be reduced and in many cases stopped without apparent harm. *Boosted by the results of the survey, Dr Spence has begun teaching his own asthma patients the Buteyko principles. When I joined him on his afternoon off he was sitting in a room in the surgery with a group from his asthma list, discussing how they were progressing after five days of breath-holding exercises and shallow breathing. All were enthusiastic. Mary Lafferty, so disabled by asthma that she can’t take a job and is hooked up permanently to a drip which she carries in a pouch round her waist, was telling him she was amazed at how much better she felt. She spend s her time in and out of hospital. “I’ve been dead about 10 times”- and said this week had seen a great improvement in her condition. “I want to get rid of this bag” she said. “That’s the first step” Dr Spence nodded. “If Buteyko is correct she’ll be off that bag before long”, he said “because what we are trying to do here is make medication redundant.With asthma., you go by symptoms. If a patient is feeling better, you begin carefully to reduce the medication. A doctor doesn’t need double-blind trials to see whether a patient has improved or not.” Therese Donaldson, 23, an administration officer from Barlinnie, said her asthma had become agonisingly bad over the past few months. But this week had been “amazingly helpful”, and in consultation with Dr Spence she had already been able to reduce the high doses of medication. Rita Nimmo, a marketing distribution manager, said “It’s been a definite help in five days. I couldn’t believe it. I had all the girls in my department helping me with the exercises, because it’s hard to hold your breath for long periods. I’ll certainly continue because I feel in control of my asthma for the first time” Leslie Gibbons, a police support officer, talked of shallow breathing being a “tremendous help”. Support worker Kevin Patterson was delighted with the start he had made. Dr Spence himself was surprised at how quickly they had all managed to reduce their breathing. As a group they were well motivated – so scunnered by the increasing amounts of medication needed to control their asthma that they were ready to work hard at self-help. He realises that other patients may not yield such good results, but has seen enough now to be convinced that Buteyko has got it right and his own profession’s indifference is a dangerous misjudgement. “We doctors check patient’s weight, blood pressure, all sorts of things. What we never check is how much they are breathing or how fast they are breathing. The trouble is that hyperventilation, or overbreathing, is taught at medical school as an acute condition. The effects of chronic hyperventilation are never studied, as far as I can recall . “Doctors ignore breathing and concentrate on the amount of stuff they can get into the asthmatic chest. Buteyko says the opposite – that only by reducing the drugs that open the airways, and by reducing the air, will asthma go away. “There’s a staggering amount of research money around. It’s time some of it went into researching this theory. Their reluctance to take it seriously brings into disrepute the whole research establishment. As doctors we tend to be influenced by individual things that happen to our patients, not by fancy medical trials. I have seen this work, therefore I am going to promote it”. At his surgery in a part of Glasgow where there is much deprivation and where asthma is on the rise as it is everywhere – partly, he believes, through over prescription of drugs – Gerald Spence is now preparing for battle. With nobody in the UK apparently prepared to do the rigorous trials that would settle the matter conclusively, he has only one small weapon: he has seen it work. He is depressed by the continuing indifference of his fellow health professionals, although some may respond to an invitation from Buteyko practitioner Christopher Drake to watch the method being taught to asthmatics every evening this week at a workshop in the Health and Stress Clinic in Glasgow’s Clarkston Road. Dr Spence now believes with some passion that doctors who want the best for asthmatic patients should consider the Buteyko insights on shallow breathing. “Any GP surgery could do what I’m doing” he says. “Any asthma nurse. And in the long run this would not be a job for doctors at all, but for nursery nurses and gym teachers, parents and everyone. They should be saying all the time “Mouth shut”. All that ‘Take a deep breath, fill your lungs with air’ – it’s a load of rubbish.” He knows there is a great deal of hostility to Buteyko, especially among hospital doctors. “I feel despondent at the thought of the battle that’s ahead ,” he says, “but I’m ready. The man who came up with the theory that germs caused ulcers was laughed at once.”  ...

Doctors Test Drug-Free Asthma Cure By Alan Forbes, The Scotsman, 07th Jan 1997

A Doctor is testing a controversial treatment for asthma on two of his patients. Dr Gerald Spence, a Glasgow GP, is examining the so-called Buteyko method to see if it can reduce the need for asthma drugs which account for 19 per cent of spending at his practice in the East End. Dr Spence saw the method being demonstrated on sufferers in Glasgow who were charged Pounds 295 each to learn the technique. The Buteyko practitioners, Alexander Stalmatski and Christopher Drake, who are holding courses for sufferers around Britain, claim that asthmatics can control their illness and reduce the amount of medication they take by learning to hold their breath. They say that asthma attacks are brought on by hyperventilation, or too much deep breathing, and symptoms can be reduced by shallow breathing. Both men, who are based at the Hale Clinic in London, gave a five-day course in Glasgow in September. Since then, virtually every member of a group of 25 people studied after the course has reported a major improvement in their condition. Dr Spence, who is based at the Shettleston Health Centre, says that one of his patients, a man, has reported a dramatic improvement. The other patient, a girl, has shown some improvement. The Buteyko method, named after a Russian professor, Konstantin Buteyko, has been criticised by members of the medical profession and the National Asthma Campaign, who say it cannot cure asthma. Doctors are also concerned that sufferers may face serious problems if they stop taking their medication after learning the technique. Dr Michael Smith, who writes the medical column ‘Up Stethoscope’ in The Scotsman, has also criticised Christopher Drake’s course and his ‘lucrative’ course fee. Dr Smith said recently that there was some theoretical support for high levels of carbon dioxide to help to widen the airways, but added ‘the rest is (I speak politely) highly suspect.’ Tonight, however, people who took part in the Glasgow course will speak on television about the benefits they felt they got from the Buteyko method. In BBC Scotland’s Frontline Scotland report at 9:30pm, Donna Esslemont, 13, from Eaglesham, says she can go out with her friends more often after learning the breath-holding technique. ‘I sleep with a tape over my mouth to keep it closed and at school I take 112 steps while holding my breath. Before, I could only go 20 steps, but I feel so much better now,’ Donna said. Anne Kemp, 77, a widow from Milngavie, said she used inhalers frequently and had trouble climbing the hill from the shops to her home until she learned the Buteyko method. ‘I can manage the hill much better now and I feel no need to take the inhaler with me.’ Mrs Kemp said her daughter, who lives in Australia, says the technique is more commonly accepted there. Dr Spence said that although he was guarded about the Buteyko method he was not dismissing it. ‘I don’t think its practitioners (Stalmatski and Drake) are great ambassadors because their courses are pretty chaotic, but I do think they have got something there,’ he said. ‘It could be argued that people who pay Pounds 295 for a course would say they got something from it, but it does seem to give some improvement. There seems to be an inexorable rise in the cost of asthma drugs to the health service and anything that reduces that must be welcomed.’ Dr Spence said he hoped to introduce Buteyko-style treatment on a wider basis at Shettleston, but only after he was convinced that people already using the method were showing long-term benefits. He said the technique should not be tried by asthma sufferers without proper instruction.  ...

A Breath of Fresh Air for Asthmatics By Andrew Denholm, The Daily Mail, Page 21, 07th Jan 1997

Asthma sufferers in Scotland yesterday hailed a controversial Russian breathing technique that is currently confounding established medical opinion. The little-known Buteyko method, currently being used by a group of 40 asthmatics, is showing remarkable results. Two months after a week-long Buteyko course costing pounds 295 per head most of the group had reduced their medication dramatically and were able to control their asthma attacks. ‘It’s been a very interesting experience, hard but very helpful, ‘ said 77-year-old Anne Kemp, from Milngavie, near Glasgow. ‘Before, my breath would catch all the time and I couldn’t even walk back up the hill to the shops without getting out of breath, and I would take Ventolin and steroids to counteract that. ‘Two months is not a long time to make a big statement about it, but I think it has been of benefit to me.’ Thirteen-year-old Donna Esslemont, from Eaglesham, outside Glasgow, has also been helped by the programme. ‘I think it has worked. I do all the breathing exercises every day and I am getting better and better, ‘ she said. ‘I can do a lot more sport and play with my friends without having to worry about an attack, and I am using less drugs.’ Buteyko practitioner Alexander Stalmatski says the technique works because asthmatics breath more than they should do. ‘The degree of over-breathing determines the severity of the asthma and by improving breathing we can improve asthma, ‘ he added. However, despite the seemingly high rates of success, the majority of doctors remain sceptical and both the medical profession and the National Asthma Campaign are concerned that people will stop taking their medication.According to a BBC Scotland Frontline investigation being screened tonight, about 1,500 people die from the disease in the United Kingdom every year, and there are an estimated three million sufferers. The number of children admitted to hospital with asthma has increased fourfold since the 1980s and there is no known cure and no known cause. The only treatment is increasingly higher doses of drugs such as Ventolin and steroids. Last year the health service spent nearly pounds 500 million on these drugs, 70 per cent up in the previous six years. Dr Gerald Spence, a GP at Shettleston in Glasgow, says his practice spends 19 per cent of its budget on asthma drugs and he is now taking a serious look at the alternatives. ‘There does seem to be an inexorable increase in the use of these drugs over the years. It was because we seem to be having to up the ante all the time that I decided to take a look at an alternative, ‘ he said. ‘I must admit I was flabbergasted by it because it is so simple and so easy. I felt uncomfortable because for years I have been prescribing drugs in increasing amounts, and this breathing technique provides a great deal of relief.’ Dr Spence has now decided to conduct tests of the technique at his practice with a view to paving the way for proper clinical trials.  ...

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