Buteyko Breathing Method

Buteyko manages asthma, anxiety, allergies and promotes weight loss

Host Sel Gaston introduces the Buteyko breathing technique as a therapeutic method using breath retention to control breathing speed and volume, helping manage asthma, anxiety, panic, allergies, and even promoting weight loss without strenuous exercise.

"The Buteyko breathing technique is a therapeutic breathing method that uses breath retention exercises to control the speed and volume of your breath. This helps you to learn to breathe more slowly, calmly, and effectively."

Air hunger opens blood vessels and improves oxygen delivery

Dr. Florendo explains that the air hunger sensation during reduced breathing signals that blood vessels are opening and oxygen is being delivered more thoroughly to body cells, while instructing listeners to keep their chest still and breathe only with the abdomen.

"You may start to feel a sense of air hunger. Resist the temptation to take in a deep breath. Do not catch your breath. Instead, focus on relaxing. The sense of air hunger is a sign that your blood vessels are opening up and your oxygen is being delivered to your body cells more thoroughly."

Reduced breathing improves CO2 levels and blood flow

After completing the guided exercise, Dr. Florendo explains that the activity improves carbon dioxide levels in the blood leading to improved blood flow and oxygenation, and warns that dizziness or palpitations may indicate incorrect technique.

"You have just successfully reduced your breathing through relaxation. You should feel more relaxed and your airways more open. This activity improves the carbon dioxide levels in your blood leading to improved blood flow and oxygenation."

Breath connects sleep, anxiety and brain oxygenation

McKeown explains that good functional breathing and slow breathing calms the mind, improves oxygen delivery to the brain to reduce neural excitability, and enables deeper sleep -- while noting that many anxiety patients had tried every modality except addressing their dysfunctional breathing.

"as opposed to mouth breathing and fast, shallow breathing, which causes more shallow sleep. Lighter sleep, you're waking up more tired. So the breath, like, you know, people come in to me with anxiety and they come in to me with depression and panic disorder and they've been to cognitive behavioral therapy and they've been to many, many different modalities and the one thing that was often missing was the breath. And what they were often told was take this deep breath, which is entirely the wrong thing to be doing."

Mindfulness alone cannot fix dysfunctional breathing patterns

McKeown argues that while mindfulness and Vipassana are valuable, simply following the breath without changing it is insufficient for modern stressed populations who have developed breathing pattern disorders and need deliberate retraining to breathe through the nose, slowly, and lightly.

"if we're looking at Vipassana and the whole emphasis of mindfulness is follow your breathing, but don't change it. That's not enough. And the reason that it's not enough is because if you have breathing pattern disorders, you"

Carbon dioxide is the primary regulator of blood pH and oxygen release

McKeown explains that CO2 has been unfairly vilified as a waste gas when it is actually the primary regulator of blood pH and the catalyst for oxygen release from red blood cells, noting that the lungs hold far more CO2 than exists in the atmosphere -- and that even oxygen is toxic at high concentrations.

"Yes. Absolutely. Can we talk a little bit about it? Yeah, it's kind of strange, isn't it, that the one gas that's responsible for red blood cells releasing oxygen to the cells is considered as a waste gas. Got to get it out of there. Get it out. Take in as much oxygen as possible and get rid of as much carbon dioxide as possible. It's a waste gas. It's toxic."

McKeown's asthma medication dropped from 14 puffs to zero

Patrick McKeown describes how switching from mouth to nasal breathing after learning the Buteyko nose-unblocking exercise reduced his Ventolin usage from 14 puffs a day to 2-3, and within months his asthma medication was completely eliminated after 20 years of mouth breathing.

"because I learned the exercise how to unblock my nose. Before that, I was mouth breathing for the previous 20 plus years. My ventral usage when I switched from mouth to nasal breathing decreased from 14 puffs a day to about 2 to 3 puffs a day."

Hidden hyperventilation drives snoring and sleep apnea

McKeown explains the concept of hidden hyperventilation -- breathing a volume of air far greater than metabolic requirements without noticing -- and how this excessive breathing volume directly contributes to snoring and sleep apnea, linking nasal congestion to mouth breathing and sleep disorders.

"So he primarily had sleep apnea. And this is what we're looking at. We're recognizing the effects of what's called hidden hyperventilation. In other words, an individual who is breathing well in excess of what they should be breathing, but generally it goes unnoticed."

Buteyko discovered that deep breathing causes disease, not results from it

McKeown shares Dr. Buteyko's 1952 discovery that excessive breathing was the cause rather than the consequence of conditions like asthma, and that hidden chronic hyperventilation becomes habitual as the brain adjusts to maintaining heavy breathing volume.

"And that's his quotation, and it's really the crux of what he talks about. Noisy and deep breathing of an asthmatic had always been considered an outcome of the disease. Nobody could even suspect that deep breathing was the cause of bronchial asthma. An increased depth of breathing could provoke the appearance of the symptoms of the disease. In other words, we all know asthmatics breed in excess of..."

Controlled hyperventilation practices carry serious health risks

Lucas Rockwood warns that popular controlled hyperventilation techniques are problematic for modern nervous systems, and introduces Buteyko breathing as a simple method developed by a Soviet doctor that has been used extensively as a natural asthma treatment teachable even to children.

"a lot of the more popular breathing techniques out there right now, controlled hyperventilation, rapid breathing, really not a great idea for most of our modern nervous system. We're going to be talking about Buteko breathing. This was a breathing system developed by a medical doctor, a Soviet medical doctor by the same name, Buteko."

Blood oxygen saturation does not equal cellular oxygenation

Rockwood uses the dehydration analogy -- filling your mouth with water doesn't hydrate cells -- to explain that breathing more oxygen into the blood doesn't mean cells receive it, and that CO2 regulates the actual delivery of oxygen from hemoglobin to tissues.

"Less we breathe, more oxygen we receive. The way that I always like to explain it to people, because again, it's very counterintuitive, is if you think about dehydration, right? So, if somebody is dehydrated and they fill their mouth with water, they're not hydrated. They just have a mouthful of water. Their cells are still dehydrated. And the same thing happens with CO2 and O2 balance. So just because you've done a lot of breathing doesn't mean your cells have actually received that oxygen."

Control pause measures health -- 30 seconds indicates optimal state

Sasha Yakovlev explains the control pause measurement -- holding breath after exhalation until the slightest discomfort -- as a biometric indicating CO2 levels and overall health, with Dr. Buteyko determining that 30 seconds represents optimal health, comparable to heart rate variability testing.

"Dr. Buteka determined that the level of optimal health is characterized by control pose being at least thirty seconds, which means that if a person is completely healthy, it should be very easy for him or her to stop breathing for a half of a minute after exhalation."