Strengths , Weaknesses , and Possibilities of the Buteyko Breathing Method

The Buteyko Breathing Method is a unique breathing therapy that uses breath control and breath-holding exercises to treat a wide range of health conditions believed to be connected to hyperventilation and low carbon dioxide. A number of clinical trials indicate that it is a successful treatment for asthma; however, there is little support for the carbon dioxide theory that underpins the Buteyko Method. There are, however, many other possible reasons that the breathing techniques used by the Buteyko Method work. These reasons include change in symptom perception and improved sense of control, improved biomechanics of breathing, beneficial effects of low-volume breathing, altered nitric oxide levels, and resetting of respiratory rhythm generation by breath-holding techniques. The Buteyko Method, one of many health-promoting breathing techniques to originate from Russia, made its way to Australia, Europe, and the United States in the 1990s. The attention given by the media to stories of apparent cures of seriously ill individuals popularized this treatment for asthma and eventually a range of other conditions from anxiety The method is named after its originator, Dr. Konstantin Pavlovich Buteyko, who claimed that his program of breathing retraining could cure a large number of the chronic ailments affecting modern society. His early work in the 1960s centered on the use of breathing retraining for diseases of the circulatory system and the respiratory system. Over time, doctors working in Buteyko's clinics in Moscow, Siberia, and the Ukraine also claimed success in treating diabetes, psychological disorders, immune and metabolic disorders, and reproductive disorders (Buteyko, 1990; www. buteyko.ru/eng/bolenz.shtml). According to the Buteyko Method teachings, low carbon dioxide or hypocapnia and its consequences aggravated many medical conditions and produced as many as 150 symptoms and conditions. Buteyko's method rests very much on his carbon dioxide theory of disease, and the primary aim of the breathing techniques is to raise carbon dioxide levels. Buteyko claimed chronic hidden hyperventilation to be a widespread, important, and generally unrecognized destabilizer of physiological systems and psychological states. It is known that low carbon dioxide affects many systems of the body either directly or through subsequent depletion of bicarbonate, pH disturbance, and reduced tissue Buteyko and his Russian colleagues elaborated on the conventionally accepted effects of hypocapnia and argued that depletion of carbon dioxide affected the core processes of energy production in the cell known as the Krebs cycle, vital chemical reactions requiring carbon compounds and other key homeostatic processes. …