Asthma-Free Naturally: Everything you need to know about taking control of your asthma. Patrick McKeown

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СКАЧАТЬ indication that the amount of drugs I needed would ever decline. It seemed to me that I was going steadily downhill, and I became gradually more concerned about the effect that the increasing levels of medication might be having on my general health and well-being.

      Many people with asthma can relate to this summary of the steady progression of the condition. What starts off as an occasional wheeze soon develops into continuous symptoms; while one puff of medication deals with symptoms in the early stages, dependency on medication increases remorselessly.

      Over time, my asthma developed into a seriously debilitating condition that prevented me from taking part in sport and outdoor activities. I always avoided opportunities to play a match or work out in the gym. The physical limitations were one thing, but the stigma attached to me because of my asthma was another. I had ‘weak lungs’, and I was not as physically strong as lads of my age. Initially, when I was very young, I thought it was cool to carry an inhaler – it was a neat gadget that made me different – but as I got older it labelled me in a way I didn’t like. When I realised this, in the succeeding years I always tried to take my inhaler when there was no-one else around, for all the world like a secret drinker.

      While I grappled with the daily realities of having asthma, there were two unanswered questions at the back of my mind. When is this ever going to stop? Why am I so inadequate that I have to take daily doses of drugs merely to function normally? I was turning myself into a victim, but these are common questions that will be familiar to many asthma sufferers. The questions may not be voiced openly because complaining will do little to change what may seem like an unalterable reality, but they are still very real concerns.

      The first indication I had that there was a viable alternative to taking a Ventolin inhaler in secret arrived in my early twenties, when I happened upon an article in the Irish Independent newspaper about a breathing therapy developed by a Russian professor which seemed to be effective in helping people with asthma. Over the years, I had already tried acupuncture, Chinese herbs, deep-breathing exercises and indeed any other therapy that I felt might help. When Buteyko Breathing was featured in a magazine article shortly afterwards, I decided to find out more.

      I started my search for knowledge by contacting Buteyko practitioners from around the world via the Internet. I learned as much as possible about the application of the therapy and I purchased the limited publications and videos available at the time. I taught myself the technique, used it intensively, and I was pleasantly surprised at the rapid effect it had on my asthma. Intuitively, I felt that I understood the significance of Professor Buteyko’s work…even before I began applying it.

      In a matter of months, my asthma improved so dramatically that I could reduce my medication intake significantly. As my condition continued to improve and my medication intake continued to decrease, I felt that for the first time in my life my asthma was under control. The bonus for me was that I had achieved this myself. My days of secretly puffing Ventolin were behind me.

      Elixir of life

      Take a breath now, and think about it carefully. Breathing is the elixir of life. More than that, breathing is life. We humans can live without water for days and without food for weeks, but we cannot live without air for more than a few minutes. Think about how we Westerners view food and water: we know that the quantity and quality of food and water we consume determines our state of health. We know that having too little means starvation or dehydration, and that too much leads to obesity and other health problems.

      Why then does the quantity and quality of our breathing receive so little attention? Surely breathing, which is so immediately essential to life, must meet certain conditions? Why have other cultures, particularly in the Eastern world, recognised the importance of correct breathing to health for thousands of years, when we clearly don’t?

      What is asthma?

      There is no universally accepted definition of asthma. The Concise Oxford Dictionary describes it as ‘a disease of respiration characterised by difficult breathing, cough etc.’. Any good medical book will describe it in more technical terms but ‘difficult breathing’ is the part with which any asthma sufferer is familiar, even if it varies from mildly uncomfortable to life-threatening. Asthma is news now. There was a dramatic increase in the condition in the late twentieth century to the extent that an estimated 100 to 150 million people in the world are now affected by it, but it is not a recent phenomenon.¹

      The term ‘asthma’ is a Greek translation of gasping or panting, and the problem was treated as far back as 2000 BC by Chinese doctors with the herb Ma Huang. The first known recording of the symptoms was about 3,500 years ago in an ancient Egyptian manuscript called Ebers Papyrus. Throughout the ages, asthma has received varying degrees of attention; the symptoms and their accompanying anxiety have been described by many prominent historical figures, including the famous Greek physician, Hippocrates.

      Over the centuries, there has been an assortment of different theories about the causes of asthma, and so an eclectic range of remedies has been advised, including horse riding, strong coffee, tobacco, faith healing, chloroform and even drinking the blood of owls in wine, as practised by the ancient Romans. Van Helmont who lived in the early part of the seventeenth century claimed that asthma was epilepsy of the lungs due to the sudden and unpredictable nature of an attack. Based on his own experience of asthma, English physician Thomas Willis said that ‘the blood boils’, and that ‘there is scarce anything more sharp or terrible than the fits thereof ’.

      It was not until the eighteenth century that Lavoisier provided the first real account of the functioning of the lungs, thereby providing the basis of modern-day understanding of the respiratory system. Prior to this, it was commonly believed that air was drawn into the lungs to cool the body. Lavoisier’s contribution was that air is drawn in to be converted to energy by the metabolism, and that carbon dioxide and heat are produced as end products of the process. Lavoisier’s work recognised that oxygen is essential to sustaining life.

      Asthma now affects more people throughout the world, particularly in more developed countries, than at any other time in evolution. It inflicts greater economic and social damage in Western Europe than either TB or HIV, according to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) April 2002 report on the links between ill health in children and the deteriorating environment.

      The position in selected developed countries may be summed up as follows (all figures are approximate):

      According to the 1998 International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC), the countries with the highest twelve-month incidence of asthma were the UK, Australia, New Zealand and the Republic of Ireland followed by North, Central and South America. The same report found that the lowest rates were in centres in several Eastern European countries, followed by Indonesia, Greece, China, Taiwan, Uzbekistan, India and Ethiopia. Other studies show that the rate of asthma among rural Africans who migrate to cities and adopt a more ‘western’ urbanised lifestyle increases dramatically. According to the UCB Institute of Allergy in Belgium, the incidence of asthma in Western Europe has doubled in the last ten years.¹

      In the Western world, asthma crosses all class, race, geography and gender boundaries. Although it causes persistent symptoms among seventy per cent of all people diagnosed with it, asthma causes only minor discomfort to the majority. In fact, some of the most influential people of our time in all walks of life were asthmatic, including Russian Tzar Peter the Great, actors Liza Minnelli, Jason Alexander and Elizabeth Taylor, revolutionary Che Guevara, and former US presidents John F Kennedy, Calvin СКАЧАТЬ