Who can benefit from the Buteyko breathing method?

Anybody who has poor body oxygenation (or abnormal breathing) will benefit from it. In order to define the personal oxygen content, Dr. Konstantin Buteyko (Honours, 1-st Moscow Medical Institute) suggested a simple test: after your usual exhalation, pinch the nose and count your breath holding time, using a clock or watch. Hold your breath only until first signs of stress. When stress starts to grow, but you continue the test and try to push yourself to get better numbers, the result will not reflect your body oxygenation and health. 

This simple test is the main measuring tool of the Buteyko self-oxygenation breathing method. Based on dozens of western medical publications and millions of measurements done by Russian Buteyko MDs, it is proven that this test is the best known test for health in humans. Western textbooks on physiology claim that healthy people should have 40 s of oxygen. Dr. Buteyko suggested that a healthy person should have over 60 s at any time of the day or, especially, night. Then about 200 chronic diseases are not possible, since sick people always have much smaller oxygenation numbers. 

Severely sick and hospitalized people have less than 10 s of O2. Patients with mild forms of asthma, heart diseases, non-metastasized cancer, diabetes, etc, usually have between 10 and 20 s. Oxygenation index for modern healthy people is about 20-25 seconds, while 100 years ago it was about 40-50 s. 

The main reason of low body oxygenation, as practice revealed, is breathing too much (or chronic hyperventilation). The medical norm for breathing is 6 l/min at rest (established 100 years ago on volunteers). However, modern healthy people breathe more than that. Sick people breathe even more, or at least 2-3 times more than the norm. 

Overbreathing cannot improve blood oxygenation since red blood cells are about 98% saturated with O2, even when breathing less than the norm. However, when body CO2 content is reduced, due to hyperventilation, blood vessels get constricted (vasoconstriction) and oxygen release in tissues is suppressed (the suppressed Bohr effect). 

This explains why one can easily faint (pass out) due to heavy voluntary hyperventilation. Oxygen availability in the brain is reduced almost 2 times.  

Body oxygenation is not the same throughout the day: meals, stress, posture, thermoregulation, exercise, and many other factors influence breathing and O2 delivery. For most people, the body oxygenation is lowest during early morning hours (the time when chronically sick people most often die from heart attack, stroke, asthma attacks, complications of cancer, diabetes, etc.) This is also the time when breathing is heaviest. 

Among the tools of the Buteyko method are: special breathing exercises; breathing only through the nose, especially during exercise and sleep; 2-3 hours of daily physical activity with strictly nasal breathing; eating only when hungry; correct posture (or straight spine 24/7); prevention of sleeping on one’s back; etc.
 
Symptoms of most diseases are tightly correlated with body oxygenation and, when breathing is slowed down, symptoms disappear and medication can gradually be eliminated. 

You can find more information about body oxygenation and breathing retraining at www.NormalBreathing.com