Aug 23, 2009

Change your breathing, change your asthma, sleep apnea, stress

We all know that a couple of good, slow breaths are calming.

There’s more. Learning simple changes in breathing patterns can significantly help people suffering asthma, sleep apnea, snoring and other breathing disorders.

In the late 1940s, Russian medical student Konstantin Pavlovich Buteyko made an observation that has changed the management and lifestyle of thousands of people with breathing disorders. He noticed that the condition of patients in the acute respiratory ward deteriorated when their breathing rate increased. He also noticed that those who reduced or normalized their breathing rate began to recover. This fact had been noted before, but Buteyko's research and application of these observations allowed him to develop the breathing techniques that bear his name today.

His work lives today with the Buteyko Institute, which has demonstrated this method throughout the world. Additional applications have been documented to calm children in school settings. In Glasgow, Scotland, where the Buteyko program was utilized in whole schools, the cycle of stress was nearly completely eliminated and students’ progress and social skills and attendance improved.

You can find more info at Sleeping All Night, which is designed to provide concise information on Buteyko with particular attention given to addressing asthma, sleep apnea, snoring, insomnia, nasal problems, anxiety and general health improvements.

For more, see this YouTube video – one of many online – for a very simple piece of advice for everyone to improve their health that will cost you nothing.