Dr. Buteyko: Breathing is like nuclear energy
Do you remember the full-figured women models of the Renaissance paintings? At that time people were convinced that eating excessively was the best approach to health and beauty. Their logic is easy to understand: a human body needs nutrition, the more you give, the healthier it becomes. Right? It took several centuries for doctors to prove that obesity is a major risk factor for heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and many other health issues. Today people are concerned with reducing their food consumption to ensure health and longevity.
Food and water are essential for human life and yet it is not our first necessity. Without food, we can survive for weeks, without water – for days, without air – for a few minutes. Have you ever determined how much air you consume? Too much? Too little? Or just enough? Air is invisible, weightless, and free and perhaps because of this, it hardly ever attracts anyone’s attention. This situation would probably continue indefinitely; however, a discovery made by a Russian doctor and scientist has created a totally new paradigm.
In 1952, Konstantin Buteyko found out that people often consume five to ten times more air than their bodies require. An extensive amount of air creates an insufficiency of carbon dioxide in the lungs and bloodstream, which badly impacts metabolism and the immune system gradually rendering them dysfunctional. Carbon dioxide deficit also affects respiratory gas exchange and diminishes the amount of oxygen carried by the blood to the brain, heart, and kidneys. This situation can cause asthma, allergies, high blood pressure, anxiety, depression, cardiological problems, growth of tumors, etc. – after life-long research, Dr. Buteyko came to the conclusion that about 150 out of all known diseases are the result of hyperventilation. Ironically, those diseases are the most widespread.
In order to overcome those diseases and develop health, Dr. Buteyko recommended reducing air consumption. It sounds like an easy solution; however, in actuality, this task was too difficult for most of his patients because they did not apply awareness towards their breathing. Then Dr. Buteyko developed a series of breathing exercises, which, if performed with diligence, have a miraculous power: they eliminate symptoms and restore well-being to the body, mind, and spirit. From one healed person to another, the Buteyko Method spread all over the world, often saving the lives of those who were sentenced to death by their health conditions.
Lucky for us, today, the Buteyko Method is available for anyone – young and old – interested in a holistic, drug-free, and safe method of health development. And yet today, several decades after Buteyko’s discovery, we often hear this advice: Breathe deep!’ Well, as we know from history, beliefs are stubborn, and it can sometimes take centuries to change them…