In this video, Betsy Schroeder talks with leading health educator and Buteyko practitioner Dr. Artour Rakhimov about brain optimization and the powerful effects Buteyko breathing retraining can have on the health and function of our brains. We will learn how breathing affects the brain, and how we can fortify our brains using the Buteyko method of breathing normalization. More about the effects of breathing on diseases of the CNS - https://www.normalbreathing.com/diseases-brain/ .
Dr. Artour’s journey with Buteyko began 20 years ago. Suffering from chronic fatigue, blood sugar fluctuations, and seemingly endless infections which brought with them very high temperatures, fevers, sore throats, and debilitation for 4 or 5 days at a time, Dr. Artour found no respite with traditional and conventional techniques to improve health. Attempting to find a solution, Dr. Artour embarked on a journey to restore his health. He experimented with water fasting, even going for up to 15 days on just water, and became a voracious reader of alternative health books. Unable to find the breakthrough he needed, Dr. Artour continued to study, learn, and experiment, and eventually stumbled upon a book about a breathing technique from Russia. He got to work immediately.
His results were almost miraculous.
Within a few days, Dr. Artour experienced improvements in health unlike any he had previously gained through years of effort. A fascination with the breath overtook him, and he leaped into the world of Buteyko where he learned of incredible stories of healing and health restoration using the Buteyko method. He learned of a cancer treatment trial using the Buteyko method which remarkably boasted the greatest results on treating early-stage cancer ever recorded, producing a six-fold reduction in mortality, far more successful than treatments like chemotherapy. This fascinated Dr. Artour, and much to his amazement, he further learned of exceptional therapeutic results obtained for the treatment of HIV, AIDS, liver cirrhosis, and hepatitis using the Buteyko method. It became very clear to Dr. Artour that the Buteyko method was far more than the asthma treatment protocol many seem to believe it to be: Dr. Buteyko discovered that the category of diseases we call lifestyle diseases (200 of them), or diseases of civilization, were intimately connected with how we breathe.
So how does the way we breathe impact the function and performance of our brains?
The brain needs oxygen, efficient blood supply, and nutrients. What a large body of research has taught us is that the brain needs carbon dioxide for nerve cells to function normally. When we hyperventilate, which is what most modern people do, a range of abnormalities emerges within the brain. To illustrate the intimate connection between the brain and breath, Dr. Artour gives us an example of the flu. When we get the flu, our breathing is typically twice as heavy as it normally would be. Asides from the miserable experience of suffering from the flu, consider what happened to our sleep in this state. It’s incredibly poor quality, and it often takes a great deal of time to fall asleep at all. The brain is working incredibly hard and firing on all cylinders. In contrast, Dr. Artour states that breathing retraining students who have normalized their breathing can fall asleep in as little as 60 seconds. They rise feeling totally refreshed. Normal breathing is necessary to achieve proper, restful, regenerative sleep.
Brain problems like panic attacks or generalized anxiety are problems of the low oxygen brain. Referring to the Buteyko table of health, Dr. Artour tells us panic attacks and generalized anxiety sufferers tend to have control pause of around 10 seconds. Decreasing their control pause brings greater suffering and intensification of symptoms. However, when the same people achieve a control pause of 20, their symptoms dramatically improve, and at a control pause of 30, anxiety and panic attacks are eliminated. Seizures can occur multiple times per day in sufferers with low control pauses, and completely disappear when a CP of 30 is established. Glioblastomas and brain cancers are eliminated through the re-establishment of normal breathing as the immune system shreds them apart. For robust health and performance of our brains, we need normalized, slow breathing.
The URL of this video is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxq92ReduP0 /.
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