Podcasts about buteyko exercises

**Episode # 13 Stopping Buteyko Exercises & Taping ** Hi, welcome to episode thirteen of Better Breathing Means Better Health. I hope by now you are really making progress and feeling the benefits of better breathing. One of the great attractions of the Buteyko Method breath training is that people don’t need to carry on doing exercises indefinitely, but once their carbon dioxide receptors have been re-set and they are achieving good control pauses of 35 to 45 seconds all the time, then they can begin to reduce their exercises and eventually stop them altogether. So at some time in the future you will have established a new habit of breathing normally, you will have a morning control pause of over thirty-five and will often achieve control pauses of over forty. You will have achieved ideal breathing when your control pause is between forty-five and sixty seconds. How quickly you get to these levels depends on many factors: how bad your breathing was, how many exercises you have been doing each day (the more, the faster you change your breathing pattern), whether you are going through a stressful time, whether you are getting enough physical exercise (walking is perhaps the safest), whether your diet is helping with your breathing (listen to episode seven again), whether you are only nose breathing, even when talking and sleeping, and a few more points need to be considered. Every one is different and this is why face to face training by a Buteyko Educator is by far the best and fasted way of getting good results. You will get a check-list in episode 14 that you can refer to if your progress isn’t as great as you’d like. Assuming you have reached the thirty-five plus control pause, you can start reducing the number of exercises you do each day, progressively, until you are only doing an exercise if and when your control pause drops off. Remember to keep measuring your morning control pause regardless because this is your early warning system should your condition begin to deteriorate at any time. It takes under a minute so there is no reason to drop this essential safety measure. If you have been using tape to stop you mouth breathing in your sleep you may by now have broken the bad habit of mouth breathing when asleep. You can test yourself very simply; take your control pause just before going to sleep, do not tape your mouth and check your control pause when you wake up in the morning. If your control pause has not fallen during the night it means you have not been mouth breathing in your sleep. If however your control pause has fallen by ten or more seconds you need to carry on taping at night for a little longer. The other indicator is you will probably have a dry mouth if you have been mouth breathing. Some people I have trained prefer to maintain the taping as it gives then better sleep and they don’t have to worry about mouth breathing or snoring in their sleep. Remember you have been on a major health promoting journey by improving your breathing. In the East breathing is central to all health care systems. Here in the West over-breathing or chronic hidden hyperventilation is almost an epidemic, with over 75% of people breathing badly and suffering from, according to Professor Buteyko, over a hundred modern diseases because of this bad habit. If you want to learn more about the profound effect on our health generally of over-breathing you could watch my video on YouTube entitled “Chronic Hidden Hyperventilation 21st Century Epidemic” HERE The next episode will cover a revision of the most important points and advice on when to see your doctor if your symptoms begin to return.

Episode # 6 Checking Your Progress & The Mini Pause Hi, Welcome to podcast episode six of Better Breathing Means Better Health. We shall be checking your progress and introducing the Mini Pause. By now you will have probably done a few Buteyko Exercises and recorded them on a worksheet or in the Buteyko Guide to Better Breathing & Better Health. In the last lesson I suggested you plot the average of each start Control Pause and end Control Pause. You will find your control pause will vary from day to day and also during the day depending on many things, so don’t be surprised if some days your exercises are not as good as you expected, what we are looking for is a slow steady improvement. This will always come if you persevere. You may improve your control pause by just a few seconds each time you do an exercise, perhaps increasing it by 3 to 5 seconds from start to finish but usually you will find by the time you do your next exercise your control pause will have dropped a little, this is normal. There are many ways of reducing this effect. The first thing to try to remember is to keep your mouth closed as you go about your daily routine, breathing only through your nose. Don’t forget to do the nose clearing exercises if your nose gets stuffy. Just being aware more of how you are breathing will help, if you catch yourself breathing heavily, just take a moment to think “reduced breathing”. This is something you can do throughout the day, anywhere you get delayed, in a supermarket queue, at traffic lights or waiting on the phone, rather than get stressed you can use these moments to do some more reduced breathing. The good news about breath training is that exercises are only needed until your breathing returns to normal, then you can stop doing any exercises and your breathing will continue to be good. This is because what we are doing is re-setting special receptors in the brain that control our rate of breathing. Every person that is over-breathing is doing so because their receptors are telling them to. Once you have changed the receptors they will keep you breathing normally. Curiously our breathing rate is not governed by the oxygen in our body but rather the level of carbon dioxide. Ideally this should be kept at around 5-6% when breathing normally but every person over-breathing will have too low a level of carbon dioxide probably nearer 3-4 % and this is one of the major causes of all their symptoms. So if your progress is not as fast as you would like you can try an additional simple trick when doing your reduced breathing; just try taking slightly smaller breaths in and breathing out more slowly so that you feel a little “air hunger”. You would like to breathe a little more but it is not stressful or anxiety provoking. What you are doing is pushing against your carbon dioxide receptors, getting them used to accepting a slightly higher carbon dioxide level than they have been used to. If this is in anyway unpleasant then revert back to just relaxation as the way to do your reduced breathing. Something else you can do to help keep your breathing better between exercises is the Mini Pause. The Mini Pause is exactly what it suggests, a breath hold after exhaling of just 3 to 5 seconds, then return to normal breathing. You can dot Mini Pauses in at any time during the day whenever you think about your breathing and this will help maintain a higher control pause. Some people may do up to a hundred during the day. Later on in the course we will talk about an exercise you can do when out walking. The next episode will be about food and your breathing Did you know that what you eat affects the way you breathe and the way you breathe affects how you eat? If you haven't yet purchased the recommended book for recording your exercises and more background information "Better Breathing Means Better Health" you can check it out or purchase it: HERE

**Escape from Asthma Episode # 14 Stopping Buteyko Exercises & Taping ** Hi, welcome to the penultimate episode of Escape from Asthma. I hope by now you are really making progress and feeling the benefits of better breathing. One of the great attractions of the Buteyko Method breath training is that people don’t need to carry on doing exercises indefinitely but once their carbon dioxide receptors have been re-set and they are achieving good control pauses of 35 to 45 seconds all the time, then they can begin to reduce their exercises and eventually stop them altogether. So at some time in the future you will have established a new habit of breathing normally, you will have a morning control pause of over thirty-five and will often achieve control pauses of over forty. You will have achieved ideal breathing when your control pause is between 45 and 60 seconds. How quickly you get to these levels depends on many factors: how bad your asthma was, how many exercises you have been doing each day (the more, the faster you change your breathing pattern), whether you are going through a stressful time, whether you are getting enough physical exercise (walking is perhaps the safest), whether your diet is helping with your breathing ( listen to episode seven again), whether you are only nose breathing, even when talking and sleeping, and a few more points need to be considered. Every one is different and this is why face to face training by a Buteyko Educator is by far the best and fasted way of getting good results. You will get a check list in episode 15 that you can refer to if your progress isn’t as great as you’d like. Assuming you have reached the 35 plus control pause and you are not needing any reliever medication you can start reducing the number of exercises you do each day progressively until you are only doing an exercise if and when your control pause drops off. Remember to keep measuring your morning control pause regardless because this is your early warning system should your condition begin to deteriorate at any time. It takes under a minute so there is no reason to drop this essential safety measure. If you have been using tape to stop you mouth breathing in your sleep you may by now have broken the bad habit of mouth breathing when asleep. You can test yourself very simply; take your control pause just before going to sleep, do not tape your mouth and check your control pause when you wake up in the morning. If your control pause has not fallen during the night it means you have not been mouth breathing in your sleep. If however your control pause has fallen by ten or more seconds you need to carry on taping at night for a little longer. The other indicator is you will probably have a dry mouth if you have been mouth breathing. Some people I have trained prefer to maintain the taping as it gives then better sleep and they don’t have to worry about mouth breathing or snoring in their sleep. It would be unwise to stop taping while you are reducing your preventer medication, wait until you are off all medication before attempting to stop taping. Remember you have on a major health promoting journey by improving your breathing. In the East breathing is central to all health care systems. Here in the West over-breathing or chronic hidden hyperventilation is almost an epidemic with over 75% of people breathing badly and suffering not only asthma but according to Professor Buteyko over a hundred modern diseases because of this bad habit. If you want to learn more about the profound effect on our health generally of over-breathing you could watch my video on YouTube entitled “Chronic Hidden Hyperventilation 21st Century Epidemic” HERE The next and last episode will cover a revision of the most important points and advice on when to see your doctor if your symptoms begin to return.

**Escape from Asthma Episode #13 Reducing Asthma Medications Safely ** Hi, welcome to episode thirteen of Escape from Asthma that is about reducing your asthma medication safely. Since we know every medication carries some adverse side effects that vary from minor to potentially very serious, so it makes sense to try to manage with as little medication as possible while maintaining good control of your asthma. Side Effects of Reliever medications: reliever medications can cause tremors or nervousness in children with a 20% risk and over 10% risk of insomnia in young children, all users may experience nausea, fever, bronchospasm, vomiting, headaches and increased heart rate. A smaller percentage may suffer dizziness, coughs, allergic reactions, earache, nose bleeds, and a range of other symptoms. Warnings are given for any who have severe hypersensitivity to milk proteins. Patients are advised to use with caution if they suffer from cardiovascular disease, asthma, glaucoma, diabetes, hyperthyroidism, or seizures. Excessive use may be fatal; do not exceed recommended dose; serious adverse effects occur when administered dose exceeds recommended dose. They may exacerbate heart failure in patients with reduced ejection fraction and may produce significant hypokalemia, possibly through intracellular shunting, which potentially produces adverse cardiovascular effects. Preventer medications (Steroid): although life-saving and an essential part of many asthma patient’s treatment do have far more serious adverse side effects when used long-term or in excess. Corticosteroids carry a risk of side effects, some of which can cause serious health problems. When you know what side effects are possible, you can take steps to control their impact. Side effects of oral corticosteroids Because oral corticosteroids affect your entire body instead of just a particular area, this route of administration is the most likely to cause significant side effects. Side effects depend on the dose of medication you receive and may include: • Elevated pressure in the eyes (glaucoma) • Fluid retention, causing swelling in your lower legs • High blood pressure • Problems with mood swings, memory and behavior and other psychological effects, such as confusion or delirium • Weight gain, with fat deposits in your abdomen, face and the back of your neck When taking oral corticosteroids longer term, you may experience: • Clouding of the lens in one or both eyes (cataracts) • High blood sugar, which can trigger or worsen diabetes • Increased risk of infections, especially with common bacterial, viral and fungal microorganisms • Thinning bones (osteoporosis) and fractures • Suppressed adrenal gland hormone production, which may result in a variety of signs and symptoms, including severe fatigue, loss of appetite, nausea and muscle weakness • Thin skin, bruising and slower wound healing Side effects of inhaled corticosteroids When using inhaled corticosteroids, some of the drug may deposit in your mouth and throat instead of making it to your lungs. This can cause: • Fungal infection in the mouth (oral thrush) • Hoarseness If you gargle and rinse your mouth with water — don't swallow — after each puff on your corticosteroid inhaler, you may be able to avoid mouth and throat irritation. Some researchers have speculated that inhaled corticosteroid drugs may slow growth rates in children who use them for asthma. So with these potential adverse side effects you will probably agree it makes sense to limit their use as much as safely possible, this is where your breath training provides a way forward. By this stage of the course I would hope you have increased your Control Pause to over thirty seconds and that you have found you hardly ever feel the need to use your reliever puffer. If you are still in the twenty to thirty second control pause range you will be feeling the benefits but not yet able to manage without your reliever medication from time to time. Don’t worry with more practice you will get there, it can take a little time to change a lifetime’s bad breathing habits. Remember how you can use an extended breath pause plus a few minutes of reduced breathing instead of your reliever when you have improved your everyday breathing enough. Usually this is when you are achieving a morning control pause of over thirty. Remember you must continue using your preventer medication, your corticosteroid puffer regularly as prescribed by your doctor. DO NOT DISCONTINUE ITS USE SUDDENLY BUT ONLY WITH GUIDANCE FROM YOUR DOCTOR. When you have been symptom free and have not used any reliever medication for six weeks you may then approach your doctor to agree on a safe protocol for reducing the preventer medication. The Buteyko Method suggests that you start by reducing your morning dose first as this is when your natural supply of corticosteroids is highest. If you were on two puffs in the morning and two puffs at night, you will now start a week of one puff in the morning and two at night. Keep a regular check on your control pause during this period and ensure it stays over thirty five seconds. If your control pause goes down then return to your two puffs in the morning again. Assuming your control pause stays high and you have no symptoms the second week eliminate one puff at night, so now you are taking one puff in the morning and one at night. Once again keep a close check on your control pause to ensure it stays above thirty-five seconds and if it falls go back to two puffs at night. The third week you can reduce your preventer to just one puff at night and as before maintain a close check on your control pause. If you have no symptoms and your control pause stays high, continue routinely checking your control pause every day especially in the morning. It is generally advisable to keep a check of the morning control pause for a year or more, it literally only takes less than a minute and it is your protection against the return of your asthma. Don’t try to reduce your preventer medication at a bad time of the year or during a period of stress. Remember it can take some people up to two years to come off all steroids as your adrenal glands need time to rehabilitate to normal functioning. **IF IN DOUBT ALWAYS CHECK WITH YOUR DOCTOR ** The next episode will discuss stopping taping and Buteyko Exercises and offer more helpful advice on restoring you to full health.

Asthma Episode # 6 Checking Your Progress & The Mini Pause Hi, Welcome to podcast episode six of Escape from Asthma. We shall be checking your progress and introducing the Mini Pause. By now you will have probably done a few Buteyko Exercises and recorded them on a worksheet or in the Buteyko Guide to Better Breathing & Better Asthma Management. In the last lesson I suggested you plot the average of each start Control Pause and end Control Pause. You will find your control pause will vary from day to day and also during the day depending on many things, so don’t be surprised if some days your exercises are not as good as you expected, what we are looking for is a slow steady improvement . This will always come if you persevere. You may improve your control pause by just a few seconds each time you do an exercise, perhaps increasing it by 3 to 5 seconds from start to finish but usually you will find by the time you do your next exercise your control pause will have dropped a little, this is normal. There are many ways of reducing this effect. The first thing to try to remember is to keep your mouth closed as you go about your daily routine, breathing only through your nose. Don’t forget to do the nose clearing exercises if your nose gets stuffy. Just being aware more of how you are breathing will help, if you catch yourself breathing heavily, just take a moment to think “reduced breathing”. This is something you can do throughout the day , anywhere you get delayed , in a supermarket queue, at traffic lights or waiting on the phone, rather than get stressed you can use these moments to do some more reduced breathing. The good news about breath training is that exercises are only needed until your breathing returns to normal, then you can stop doing any exercises and your breathing will continue to be good. This is because what we are doing is re-setting special receptors in the brain that control our rate of breathing. Every person that is over-breathing is doing so because their receptors are telling them to. Once you have changed the receptors they will keep you breathing normally. Curiously our breathing rate is not governed by the oxygen in our body but rather the level of carbon dioxide. Ideally this should be kept at around 5-6% when breathing normally but every asthmatic will have too low a level of carbon dioxide probably nearer 3-4 % and this is one of the major causes of all their symptoms. So if your progress is not as fast as you would like you can try an additional simple trick when doing your reduced breathing; just try taking slightly smaller breaths in and breathing out more slowly so that you feel a little “air hunger”. You would like to breathe a little more but it is not stressful or anxiety provoking. What you are doing is pushing against your carbon dioxide receptors, getting them used to accepting a slightly higher carbon dioxide level than they have been used to. If this is in anyway unpleasant then revert back to just relaxation as the way to do your reduced breathing. Something else you can do to help keep your breathing better between exercises is the Mini Pause. The Mini Pause is exactly what it suggests, a breath hold after exhaling of just 3 to 5 seconds, then return to normal breathing. You can dot Mini Pauses in at any time during the day whenever you think about your breathing and this will help maintain a higher control pause. Some people may do up to a hundred during the day. Later on in the course we will talk about an exercise you can do when out walking. The next episode will be about food and your breathing. Did you know that what you eat affects the way you breathe and the way you breathe affects how you eat? If you haven't yet purchased the eBook "The Buteyko Guide to Better Health & Better Asthma Management" click HERE to access it. For recording your exercises and more background information purchase "Better Breathing Means Better Health" HERE