Are you an asthma sufferer or your close ones suffers from asthma? I believe it is agonizingly difficult for you to go on with your everyday lives without the fear of an attack looming overhead especially if your asthma is serious. Even more frustrating is the fact that since asthma is a chronic disease, there is no cure available. What you have are treatments and therapies that will help alleviate the condition but not totally cure it. Despite so, the various methods of treatment have varying degree of effectiveness and today I’m going to talk about one method which has shown to be effective in reducing asthma symptoms and the need for rescue medication.
Before that, lets’ briefly review the general concept of asthma relief techniques. These techniques generally take two sides, the approved medical techniques and the alternative medical techniques. Approved medical techniques or treatments are those that are generally prescribed by doctors to take care of the condition such as the common Ventolin tablet or inhaler. Whereas the alternative relief techniques are those that have been developed by scientist and individuals but have not yet gained medical acceptance.
Now, the technique that I’m going to talk about today is the Buteyko method, a natural method originated from the late Ukranian Dr Konstantin Buteyko who formulates its principles. When you discover the causes of asthma you can take appropriate action to heal it effectively. And Dr Buteyko discovered the cause.
In a nutshell, he discovered that life started on this planet, in an atmosphere of much higher levels of carbon dioxide than there are currently. He reasoned that all life still have that core of needing more carbon dioxide than is currently recognized. So an asthma attack is simply your body shutting down it’s supply of oxygen for a short period, so the carbon dioxide levels come up. Your neck muscles may constrict, making breathing difficult. Your chest may feel heavy, making inspiring difficult. Your airways may temporarily fill up with fluid, to prevent the oxygen getting into your blood.
Your body is highly intelligent and does what it takes to avoid disasters.
So what is the Buteyko method all about and how can you use it to relieve your asthma? Buteyko method is basically a series of breathing exercises that focus on nasal breathing, breath holding and relaxation. Its theory was that asthmatics chronically over breathe and the exercises are designed to teach asthmatics to breathe less. The goal is for you to retrain breathing to a normal pattern, akin to certain forms of Yoga.
Basically what you need to do is to learn to hold your breath. This may be difficult for people who regularly have an asthma attack. So you need to practice every day. Stop when it becomes uncomfortable. But increase your time every day, until you can comfortably hold your breathe for a few minutes.
Then when you feel an attack coming on, simply hold your breath. You’re likely to avoid the attack altogether. And, over time, the attacks are likely to be less severe, less often, until they disappear altogether. This mean you can avert asthma attacks simply breathing less over time.
Buteyko method works well and has no side effects and recently has been adopted by medical professionals internationally. The British Guideline on the Management of Asthma 2008 grants permission for health professionals in the United Kingdom to recommend Buteyko, stating that the method may be considered to help patients control the symptoms of asthma . The guideline also grades clinical research on Buteyko with a B classification indicating that high quality supporting clinical trials are available.
So if you have been suffering from asthma especially frequent serious attacks all these while, you might want to give Buteyko method a try especially as its’ a natural method without the use of any drugs and thus no side effects. Start practice the method today and you will be on your way to improving your quality of life with the threat of asthma gone. Live healthy :)
Author Resource:
Alex Marco is the publisher of Wellness Diary™, a free weekly newsletter full of useful tips and practical advice to help improve your health, including relieving asthma. Grab a free copy of your newsletter at http://www.HealthEqualsMoney.com today.