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Hyperventilation contributes to many conditions, but because it receives very little attention in the diagnoses of illnesses, many patients suffering from various physical symptoms sometimes spend years going from doctor to doctor looking for the cause. This group of patients are often labelled as ‘psychosomatic’ and there is a belief that the condition is ‘all in the head’.

Physician Claude Lum noted that hyperventilation “presents a collection of bizarre and often apparently unrelated symptoms, which may affect any part of the body, any organ and any system”.

Some of the symptoms of hyperventilation affect:

• The respiratory system in the form of wheezing, breathlessness, coughing, chest tightness, frequent yawning and snoring.
• The nervous system in the form of a light-headed feeling, poor concentration, numbness, sweating, dizziness, vertigo, tingling of hands and feet, faintness, trembling and headache
• The heart, typically a racing heartbeat, pain in the chest region, and a skipping or irregular heartbeat.
• The mind, including some degrees of anxiety, tension, depression, apprehension and stress.
• Other general symptoms include mouth dryness, fatigue, bad dreams, nightmares, dry itchy skin, sweaty palms, increased urination such as bed wetting or regular visits to the bathroom during the night, diarrhoea, constipation, general weakness and chronic exhaustion.

Why do we overbreathe?

Earlier on I explained that when we overbreathe on a permanent basis, the respiratory centre in our brain is trained to accept a lower level of carbon dioxide. This level is determined to be correct even though it is less than the body requires for good health. The respiratory centre is like a loyal servant who adapts to changing circumstances and situations for its master.

There are many reasons why we overbreathe but not all of them may apply to each individual. The following eight factors are more prevalent in countries of increasing modernisation and affluence, and this helps explain why asthma and other diseases of civilisation are so prevalent in the same countries. asthma books

1. Breathing exercises during pregnancy

Women during pregnancy are taught deep breathing exercises throughout countries in the Western world. This excessive breathing reduces the woman’s level of carbon dioxide. As the embryo receives all its nutrients from the mother, her embryo will also obtain less carbon dioxide. Professor Buteyko claimed that the reason many babies suffer from various conditions such as asthma and eczema is because of their mothers’ hyperventilation during pregnancy. After birth, the baby may be over-clothed and raised on formula foods. These factors also contribute to sustaining the loss of carbon dioxide that began during pregnancy.

2. Diet

Over-eating increases breathing because the body requires more energy to digest and process food. Instead of listening to the body and eating when hungry, as we have done for thousands of years, society now dictates at what time we should eat. In addition, we condition ourselves to eat more food than is necessary. How many times have you continued to eat all the food on your plate, or all the courses on offer, even though you didn’t feel hungry?

We have lost the art of listening to the body about what it needs. People in ancient times only ate when they were hungry. The primary reason for this was that hunting and gathering food required effort, and that more energy had to be spent to gather a larger quantity of food. Our ancestors didn’t have the luxury of accessible modern-day convenience stores, supermarkets and fast-food outlets to obtain something to eat whenever they desired, so they ate less and better food.

Often, we eat too quickly due to a hectic lifestyle. As a result, we do not recognise when we have over-eaten because it takes time for the body to send us the signals to stop.

Protein, especially animal protein, and processed foods contribute to overbreathing. Professor Buteyko believes that food is the single biggest contributor to overbreathing. A supplementary factor is the use of chemicals and pesticides in growing all foodstuffs. The body has to work harder to remove the increased amount of toxins in food. This increases breathing.

3. Misconception of deep breathing

The traditional view in the Western world is that deep breathing is conducive to fitness and maintaining good health. A ‘deep breath’ is misinterpreted as a ‘big breath’. This fixed belief prevails among sports coaches, schools, hospitals, asthma clinics, radio, TV, magazines and even Western yoga. The most common instruction to those taking exercise or experiencing stress is to “take a deep breath”. By exercising in the gym or taking a walk along the beach, you can see how many people believe in the benefits of big breathing. At my clinic, I ask each person if he feels that deep breathing is good for him. About seventy per cent of people feel it is and the remainder don’t know because they are unconscious of their breathing.

In the Eastern world, reduced breathing and breath control is very much enshrined in culture and philosophy. Its therapeutic value has been recognised for centuries.

4. Stress

Interpreting outside events, often those over which we can have no control, results in stress. Stress can be positive in the form of laughter, for example, or negative in the form of anxiety. Stress activates the sympathetic nervous response known as ‘fight or flight’. Throughout evolution, people were often faced with life-threatening situations so human physiology changed in response to these situations in order to ensure survival of the species. During stress, blood is diverted from internal organs to skeletal muscles and respiration increases to prepare the body for increased physical activity. Evolutionary people were therefore ready to fight or take flight, depending on the dangers facing them.

However, our evolution has not kept pace with changes in modern life and our bodies often perform poorly to stress arising from marital problems, financial pressure or everyday situations such as traffic jams or late buses. Breathing is increased by stress, and in turn breathing leads to excitability of many brain areas, resulting in states of anxiety, panic and many psychological problems. At this point, one factor will feed off the other thus maintaining a constant state of arousal.

5. Temperature

Living in a hot and stuffy environment causes overbreathing. While body temperature is primarily controlled by skin pores and sweat glands, wearing too much clothing causes us to revert to primitive mouth panting as a way of regulating temperature.

A child’s metabolism is two to three times faster than an adult’s and therefore generates more energy. Children have a natural instinct to wear less clothing than adults, and this results in greater freedom and liveliness. We adults, however, dress children according to the temperature we feel ourselves and fail to take into account how warm the children feel, so an individual child who is wearing too many clothes will overbreathe.

Thanks to central heating and PVC windows and doors, our homes are better insulated and are becoming progressively warmer. Years ago houses were less well insulated and cooler, and a draught often brought fresh air through gaps under doors or between window frames. Research has demonstrated that mild or cool environments assist reduced breathing.

6. Lack of physical exercise

Exercise enables the body to accumulate large amounts of carbon dioxide produced by metabolic activity; lack of physical motion means less activity and less carbon dioxide.

For most people now, work means more mental effort and less physical activity. Even most of our forms of entertainment take place indoors, such as cinemas, theatres, computer games and satellite television. Out of an average twenty-four hour day, eight are spent sleeping, fourteen sitting and just two hours standing or walking. Compare this to the average day of our ancestors who spent all their waking hours completing tasks that demanded physical activity.

7. Over-sleeping

Professor Buteyko's research shows that lying down horizontally for a long period of time causes severe overbreathing. Most asthma attacks occur between the hours of 3.00 and 5.00 a.m. when the body’s level of carbon dioxide passes below its lower threshold due to excessive breathing during sleep. Professor Buteyko emphasised that the position which causes the most overbreathing is sleeping while lying on one’s back. Incidentally, this can be observed among many people who stop snoring when they are turned over onto their side.

8. Pollution

When air is either insufficient or polluted, our bodies sense we are not getting enough air so we breathe more to compensate. Many people with asthma can testify to increased symptoms following time spent in a stuffy or smoky atmosphere.

Pollution itself is not to blame for the rising tide of asthma in developed countries, despite numerous studies and claims to that effect. If this was so, then why would the rate of asthma continue to be so much less in heavily polluted Asian cities such as Bangkok? Another example is the former East Germany where pollution levels were higher but the asthma rate lower than in West Germany. An additional pointer is that some countries have very low pollution levels but high asthma rates; the relatively unpolluted New Zealand has the third highest incidence of asthma in the world.

9. Bronchodilators

Professor Buteyko’s belief is that using bronchodilator drugs to relieve asthma symptoms causes hyperventilation. Bronchodilators relax smooth muscle and force open the airways, increasing the volume of air that can be inhaled with each breath. Steroids are preferable as a treatment because Professor Buteyko discovered that they reduce breathing. It is worth noting that increasing use of bronchodilating drugs during the 1980s corresponded with a significant increase in the asthma death rate. Books on asthma

10. Asthma Symptoms

The breathing rate and volume during an asthma attack is invariably greater than under normal conditions when no symptoms are present. When an attack occurs over a prolonged period (24 hours), the respiratory centre adjusts to a greater breathing volume and this is manitained even when the attack has passed. A viscious circle ensues as asthma symptoms encourage a greater breathing volume, and this greater breathing volume results in more asthma symptoms.

Professor Buteyko encapsulates his beliefs as follows: “One needs to eat less, breathe less, sleep less and physically work harder to the sweat of one’s brow because this is good. This is a fundamental change, this is true restructuring. This is what we need to do these days.”

Future treatment of asthma?

It is quite obvious that our current management of asthma is not working. More and more children are developing asthma and no-one in the medical community seems to know why. More than ever in our history, children are dependent on powerful drugs which they may have to take for the rest of their lives. Professor Buteyko’s hyperventilation theory explains exactly what is happening and why the incidence of asthma is greater in developed countries. Scientific research weighs in behind the effects of hyperventilation.

Our genes have not changed in one hundred years. Our lifestyle unfortunately has, and this has increased our breathing to the detriment of our general health.

A step in the right direction would be government funding of research into non-drug methods of treating asthma, such as the Buteyko Breathing Method. Only then will people with asthma be offered a suitable and sustainable non-medication lifeline. To date, most research has been funded by multinational drug empires who have a vested interest, resulting in the neglect of safe, natural non-drug methods. This is a sad state of affairs for all people with asthma. Asthma books