Understanding Buteyko

The basics of the Buteyko Method are quite simple, yet they are not new. Early research  into the power of chronic hyperventilation was first began in the American Civil War by Dr. Da Costa, and the breathing paradox was also discovered more than one hundred years ago.

The breathing paradox

Have you ever noticed that you can get light-headed or breathless blowing up balloons?  Even though lots of oxygen is inhaled when blowing up balloons, shortness of breath still occurs. 

Eating rapidly satisfies hunger for food, so why doesn’t inhaling air just as quickly satisfy hunger for air?  A Danish scientist called Christian Bohr discovered why this happens more than 100 years ago.

Each red blood cell, or molecule of haemoglobin, can only carry four molecules of oxygen, and breathing rapdily or with extra oxygen does not change this capacity.  Under normal circumstances, haemoglobin collects as much oxygen as it can carry in a single heartbeat and moves off towards the tissue cells. And normally there is still so much oxygen left in the lungs after haemoglobin has collected its fill that it is possible to exhale enough oxygen for someone else to use, as occurs during Expired Air Resuscitation.

This means that a lack of oxygen is not normally the problem with breathlessness, instead surprisingly, it is the lack of carbon dioxide.

When the breathing pattern is exaggerated carbon dioxide in the lungs and the blood stream is washed out into the atmosphere, creating a condition called Respiratory Alkalosis.  When this happens oxygen that is already in the blood stream is less likely to be released from the oxygen-carrying red blood cells into tissue cells where it is needed.  Bohr was credited with the discovery by calling this phenomenon the ‘Bohr effect’.

Buteyko used this information, along with all of the other data he collected and assessed to create the Buteyko method.

Buteyko in a Nutshell

• Stress of any sort activates the ‘fight or flight’ response, which increases the automatic breathing pattern, heartbeat, blood pressure etc.   
• Hyperventilation occurs if the stress cannot be fought or ran away from.
• Normal pressure of oxygen is maintained, but a loss of carbon dioxide occurs.
• A sustained loss of carbon dioxide causes the breathing centre in the brain to change the breathing pattern so that the volume of air breathed each minute is greater than normal.
• The loss of carbon dioxide causes less oxygen is be delivered from the blood into the tissue cells, such as those found in the brain or muscles (Bohr effect).
• Malfunction of organs or tiredness occurs. There is extra wear and tear on the body, and an increase in lactic acid production.
• Symptoms such as pain, fatigue, airway narrowing, increased mucus production, & swelling result because of this bad breathing pattern, perpetuating stress on the body.

This whole scenario becomes a vicious cycle because hyperventilation begets hyperventilation once the new and incorrect breathing pattern is adapted to. The results of hyperventilation are also stressful, and so the cycle continues relentlessly. 

Realising this, Konstantin Buteyko started to look at the problem from another angle. He reasoned that if a normal breathing pattern could become abnormal without physical damage to the breathing centre in the brain, there is no reason why it could not be re-set to its former precision. After all, when a person moves from sea level to live on top of a mountain, his breathing acclimatises after a time, but he does not have to stay on the mountain forever, but instead can come back down to sea level. And when he does return to sea level, his breathing will gradually change once more to a more suitable pattern.

Buteyko calculated that if it were possible to teach people to be more aware of their breathing, and to use special breathing exercises that raised carbon dioxide pressure marginally, then the breathing pattern could be gradually restored to normal.

This theory is still today noticed in all Buteyko classes: as the breathing becomes more normal the symptoms of hyperventilation start to vanish.