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| Mass media about the Buteyko method |
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This interview was published in the Russian national magazine “Beauty and health”, 2003.
On the pages of the previous issue the chief doctor of Clinica Buteyko® Andrey Evgenievich Novozshilov told our reporter about the principles of right breathing, which were discovered in 1960’s by physiologist K.P. Buteyko, and also about diseases that the Buteyko method can defeat. Among them are bronchial asthma, chronic tonsillitis, other respiratory diseases, and also hypertension, varicose of veins, toxicosis of pregnancy, metabolic problems, gastrointestinal diseases, and some skin diseases.
Today is the continuation of the conversation. It will be devoted to application of the Buteyko method for adults and children.
Exercises
Andrey Evgenievich, last time you mentioned the exercises. After learning them the person can get rid of many diseases. What are the exercises about?
All exercises are directed to restrict, in a slightest degree, the volume of inspiration, or decrease the volume of the incoming air. Within 10-15 seconds of these exercises, the gas composition of the blood is changed. That causes reactions in other organs and systems – for example, the mucosal surface of the nose. It follows that the problem with the blocked nose, swelling of the mucosal surface, can be solved literally in 10 seconds – one just needs to listen own breathing.
How is it possible to listen?
For example, you, how do you feel your breathing? What do you hear about inhalation and exhalation?
Nothing.
And that is right, because you do not have any problems. However, an unhealthy person can perfectly hear own breathing. That is the first exercise: I ask the patient to listen how he breathes through the nose, which movements of the chest, stomach, and air jet in the nose appear. I ask him to inform me about his observations.
By the way, I am telling you all these things, while I also practice one of the exercises of the Buteyko method. Did you notice anything?
Nothing!
Absolutely right, because this exercise is borrowed from the arsenal of preparation of samurais: breathing should be done in such a way that, if one has feather under his nose, its displacements are not noticed! One can also keep a finger near the nose: if air the air jet is felt, that means the breathing should be readjusted so that not to feel it. Breathing of the healthy person at rest must be invisible and inaudible. If not, that is hyperventilation, which triggers the mechanism of many diseases.
But that is an intentional technique. There is no way here without control and discipline!
Yes, the Buteyko method is the method of treatment, which demand efforts of the patient. One should realize how he breathes, complete the course with a practitioner, and later regularly exercise. The man should realize the necessity of this step.
There are two things that help here. First, the Buteyko method allows the patient to see an immediate effect of the treatment. That is very inspiring. And second, during the treatment the necessity to use drugs disappears. We do not abolish them. The patient himself feels that he can leave without them. All our patients remain satisfied. No improvement at all is never a case. Even if the person stops at the level when he can prevent the symptoms and only exchange tablets and inhalers for breathing exercises; that is already good! During the following year we monitor each patient, consult him, and support for free…
Children
What do you do with children? Do you also press on conscience?
Believe me, any child wants to eliminate discomfort from his life. When the toddler coughs till vomiting during the first session, but arrives for the second session without cough, what do you think, would he practice? Which other stimulus do you need? Who else would refuse to live freely and without diseases? Many previous restrictions could be removed: to go swimming, to have a dog pet, to exercise without suffocation.
Consider dieting. Asthmatics cannot eat many tasty things. Only low-calorie ascetic meals, often remaining half-hungry. If such a person ate, for example, sausage (protein), large amounts of energy, for digestion, is required. Hyperventilation intensifies and the attack is unavoidable! Is this life?
Meanwhile, a 2-year old toddler cannot understand all that…
Of course, with children up to 5 years old we work only through their parents. The parent learns the method and, as a game, teaches the exercises to the toddler. Even with a child below 12 years one of the parents should complete the whole course – this is our condition. Until the performance of exercises reached automatism, constant self-control is required, but due to their age, children lack it.
The parents are taught the elements of the theory, which are necessary to understand the sense of exercises. How else can we explain to the mother why the child should at some moment stop breathing, pinch the nose and make 20 steps, and, after all that, not to breathe deeply? Besides, only after assimilation of the method can the parent definitely decide, if it is good or bad, and later make sure if the child is exercising or not.
Which other methods of influence on children, in particular, do you practice?
Yes, we issued a special booklet. Something like the Buteyko method in pictures. Imagine a picture: there is a child asthmatic with an open mouth, there is the disease creeping towards him from behind…
You are not afraid that after such a book children can have nightmares?
Their life is not happy now anyway, so they do not need to get used to. However, that is comprehensible. It becomes clear why to breathe through the nose.
So that “nasty asthma” would not go in the mouth…
Exactly. She chooses whom to eat according to breathing. Children, who breathe through the mouth, have noisy breathing. Asthma recognizes them immediately. Children, who breathe right (through the nose), cannot be noticed by the disease. She cannot hear them. To penetrate in the body is possible for the disease only through the open mouth.
That is like a movie with nightmares …
Not so, children like it! Every asthmatic knows what is emphysema – that is replacement of the lungs’ tissue with scars, or physical destruction of the lungs due to development of the disease. Scary… Hence, we do not exaggerate in these pictures. The child should timely recall the breathing of the mouse – shallow and only through the nose. I say to the parents of asthmatics, if you manage to keep the mouth of your child shut and to breathe through the nose – that is already 50% of success in treatment of asthma.
What can be done, if the nose does not breathe at all?
There are exercises that allow decreasing the volume of lungs’ ventilation through the mouth. The effect takes place within 1 minute – the swelling of the mucosal surfaces decreases and the nasal breathing begins.
How many exercises are required for a 5-year old child with, for example, adenoids?
They are always accompanied with swelling of the inner nasal surface, which can be eliminated after 1-2 sessions. In order to decrease adenoids, longer time is required. The basic course should have at least 5 sessions, so that the child completely absorbs the exercises, and his parents learn to control him. Every session in the Clinic takes about 1 hour.
But the main goal of home exercises is to learn how to eliminate any symptom using the breathing exercises. This is very convenient: if you noticed that the child is watching TV cartoons with his mouth open, it is time to practice, to prevent the incoming problems with blocked nose in their beginning and to resume nasal breathing. That takes from one to three minutes, several times during the day. And no nasal drops! Just concentration and some persistence.
Such self-service…Armed with your teaching, the man, likely, would not allow to get sick, himself or his family!
Yes, because the health of the child is not in the hands of the doctors, but in the hands of his parents! And here we see just such parents – self-sacrificial and wise. Many of them, visited many doctors’ offices, and finally decided to take responsibility themselves. For them it is the main delight to see how their toddler, previously suffocated from breathlessness and being sick, starts to run around and jump.
Do the local children’ doctors know about your Clinic?
Yes, not all, but from 40 to 60% people come here due to advice or recommendations of family physicians. However, there are other 10-15% patients who was told by their family physicians,” If you learn the Buteyko method – you die!” People, while literally having fear of death, decide to try the last chance, nothing else helped! Here we bring relief. Why to gossip?
And once more about asthma
Which other methods for prevention or treatment of asthma you accept?
For example, I know one medical centre, where bronchial asthma is effectively treated using singing.
What about swimming?
Excellent, universal physical exercise, especially for city dwellers. People are constructed by Nature in such a way that, without exercise, they decay, loose their form, and get diseases. For example, one of the main causes of hyperventilation, that is CO2 deficiency in the lungs and blood, is lack of physical exercise. This lack of exercise is now considered by doctors as the cause of hypertension in teenagers. Exercise is necessary!
Is it right, that in Sweden there is a medical centre, where asthma is treated using vegetarian diets?
Yes, that is true since vegetarian diets reduce ventilation of the lungs automatically. We observe the same process from the opposite direction – after the second-third session the person starts to eat less, many have tendency to vegetarian diets.
Why?
Physiology starts to work. The man breathes right; the metabolism normalizes. He eats as much as required, no binge eating as before. Almost everybody says, “I have different attitude to foods”. Many loose weight. Meanwhile, there is no self-restraining. A natural process…
But are changes in attitudes required?
Attitudes change automatically too. Professor Buteyko told, “If the cause of hyperventilation is in the wrong lifestyle, that means you are bound to change your lifestyle or to fight with the symptoms all the time”.
The interview was conducted by Tatiana Punans |
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