Two Buteyko Breathing Methods Developed By Dr. Buteyko

In this video, I will explain the history and development of the Buteyko Method and suggest that we can probably even claim that are 2 or more Buteyko versions that grew out of the original method that was developed by Dr. Buteyko.

Before going into this, I would like to first point out some important facts related to the Buteyko Breathing Technique. First of all, the Buteyko Breathing Retraining Method has a 100% success rate, provided that students are able to retrain their breath. So with slower breathing, the student will improve body oxygenation and, according to the Buteyko Table of Health Zones, increase their level of health. When normal level (7) of health is achieved, there will be no symptoms of disease and medication will not be useful at all.

Now to understand what versions of the Buteyko method we currently find today, we have to look back at history. More about the history of Dr. Buteyko https://www.normalbreathing.org/buteyko-history/ Dr. Buteyko developed his original method in the 1960s and worked only with severely sick people. These people were hospitalized and had a lot of time (no work etc.) to work on their health. Moreover, as their conditions were very serious (with a life expectancy of months or years), they were extremely motivated to work on their breathing. As such, they would achieve much more dramatic improvements in health compared to the average sick person that practices the method today. Dr. Buteyko worked with a team of 200 practitioners and improved the health of 1000s of patients.

Later, in the 80s and 90s, the method was also approved for the treatment of asthma by the minister of health and Dr. Buteyko started to teach the method to people that were not medical professionals.

The method was adjusted for people with asthma and other respiratory problems, as the treatment of asthma alone does not require such drastic changes in the level of health. If a morning CP of 20 is reached, medication for asthma would not be needed anymore and when level 5 or 6 is reached there would be normal lung function and symptoms would be mostly gone.

Therefore, the adjusted and simplified version did not include the drastic and time-consuming protocols necessary to achieve health levels 7 and up. As such, there is a huge difference between the two versions of the Buteyko Method.

For practitioners that wanted to apply the original method, Buteyko required a health level of at least 7. As such many practitioners had levels 10 or 11. However, for treating asthma patients only, such requirements for practitioners are not necessary. As such, most practitioners in the west, do not focus on levels of health above level 5.

The second or simplified version of the Buteyko the method, therefore, does not include for example the necessity to exercise prolonged hours (2 or 3 per day), the necessity to practice breathing exercises 2 hours (or more) per day, to take cold showers and sleep on hard beds, etc.

Now there was an unfortunate event that left many students confused about the effectiveness of the Buteyko Method. A well-known practitioner (Peter Kolb) that was trained by Dr. Buteyko, died of cancer. This should of course not happen to a person that advocates a health method that is supposed to cure cancer.

Although this practitioner was well-known for teaching the Buteyko method, he was only teaching and spreading the second version of the method. The word ‘physical exercise’ was not even included in his writings. Cancer can only be cured with higher levels of health (which requires physical exercise) and this practitioner obviously did not live by the standards of the original Buteyko Method.

Dr. Buteyko himself claimed that for good health, physical exercise is actually more important than breathing exercises. It is only for sick people, that the Buteyko Method would emphasize breathing exercises over physical activity. However, as one’s health improves, physical exercise should increase and the amount of work on breathing exercises should be reduced.

As a final note, I would like to mention something about the way that many practitioners present the Buteyko Method to their students. There are many western practitioners of the Buteyko The method that have learned about the method but who have not reached level 7 (or higher) themselves. As such, I have found that many of them do not speak about the whole spectrum of health (including all the health zones) to their students. As such, students are not informed about the necessary steps to reach true normal health. Furthermore, super health levels (levels 7 to 12) are very frequently neglected by teachers. This is really sad because such levels bring with the many benefits such as extra-sensory perception, the ability to digest many types of foods and dramatically reduced needs for sleep (between 4 and 2 hours).

It should be up to the patient themselves what level of health is ultimately desired and they should not be put in a box by the practitioner by withholding a complete overview of the possibilities.

The YouTube URL of this video is: https://youtu.be/3L6-LVm6Ct4 The video features Dr. Artour Rakhimov

Does Overbreathing Cause Respiratory Alkalosis or High Blood pH (Buteyko Method)?

Hyperventilation causes deviations in blood PH. Hyperventilation reduces carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide is needed to keep blood PH acid. When carbon dioxide levels in the blood are reduced, the blood becomes more alkaline. More about hyperventilation and blood ph

If we are talking about health zones, ordinary people would be situated around health zone 3 (20Cp). As such, normal people breath too much, which causes carbon dioxide to be reduced in the blood. This makes the blood more alkaline (called respiratory alkalosis).  

However, when we measure blood PH in people, we would not be able to see that the blood is actually alkaline. This is because our blood PH is tightly managed within a very narrow range from 7.35 to 7.45. So when the breath changes, the blood is still kept within this very narrow range. 

So why did Dr. Buteyko talk about alkaline blood PH as a result of overbreathing? 

Dr. Buteyko worked mainly with very sick patients. And when people are severely sick (hospitalized or even in emergency rooms with acute attacks etc.), they actually commonly would have respiratory alkalosis (no medical professional is going to argue with that). 

But when we talk about ordinary people who chronically hyperventilate (asthma or COPD patients even), this is actually not true. When we would ask a general practitioner who deals with normal (sick) people, they would tell you that blood PH is always in the normal range (even though these patients chronically hyperventilate). More about the causes of hyperventilation. 

So when people have these relatively mild forms of hyperventilation, they would have normal blood PH. The statement then that hyperventilation causes respiratory alkalosis, is not exactly correct. This only relates to severe hyperventilation.  

So when do people actually have respiratory alkalosis? The barrier would be around 10 CP and below. So when people go to an emergency room, they commonly would breathe around 25-30 Liters per minute. This correlates to around 5 CP. This is a huge difference as ordinary people breath around 12 Liters per minute and healthy people (according to Buteyko standards) breath only 6 Liters.

The URL of this video is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh7yH... This video features Dr. Artour Rakhimov.

What is the Buteyko breathing Method?

The Buteyko Breathing Method has to do with chronic hyperventilation which is affecting 95% or more of our society. Most people, however, do not realize that there are 2 basic versions. More about the Buteyko method: https://www.normalbreathing.org/buteyko-method/ .

The original version (as thought by Dr. Buteyko himself) includes the Buteyko Table of Health Zones. He used it to define a person’s health and included many methods in order to heal his patients.

One can measure the amount of air we breathe in liters per minute and compare results between those that are healthy and those that are sick. The medical norm would be between 5-6 liters per minute (+-12 breaths per minute), which corresponds to around 40 seconds for the breath holding time test.

Buteyko himself, however, concluded that the health norm should be around 60CP. This would be 4 liters of ventilation (8 breaths per minute). He concluded that this would be normal health but if we look at society today, only 1% of the population would reach his standard.

The second version (most popular in the west) is simply only the Buteyko Breathing exercise that, of course, is also included in the original version. So when most people talk about the Buteyko Method, they usually refer to his breathing exercise only. It is common to see that practitioners and coaches only apply the second version and do not include complete lifestyle changes and know or talk about the Buteyko Table of Health zones.

As such, the second version will not allow one to reach Buteyko’s true norm of health. It is simply used to treat asthma and other respiratory diseases and reduce/eliminate medication.

Furthermore, many practitioners, myself included, combine the original method with other alternative healing methods in order to make the protocol more effective. Misha Sakharoff, for example, specializes in healing cancer by combining a variety of methods (including Buteyko).

As you can see, there is a big difference between the practitioner’s application of the method. The debate continues between practitioners about whether the method should be considered dynamic and changing over time or be considered static and only include the tools given by Dr. Buteyko himself.

You can find the overview of the Buteyko method here: Buteyko Method 

From my experience, I can conclude that, even when following the complete original version of the Buteyko method, certain conditions cannot be cured. Mainly in the field of nutrition, there has been much development. Certain (strict) dietary protocols have proven very successful in combination with the Buteyko Method. For example, eliminating plant foods can be necessary for treating auto-immune diseases. In future videos, I will discuss the benefits of the carnivore or PKD (Paleomedicina) diet in combination with breathing retraining.

Also, Buteyko himself had a negative attitude towards breathing devices. However, as time has progressed, many practitioners have found that certain devices proof very beneficial for breathing retraining (especially for the lower health zone students).

Furthermore, a static approach (as opposed to dynamic) of the Buteyko method, does not take into account lifestyle changes over long periods of time. One can assume that after 50 years or even more, people have different lifestyles and different factors need to be included in order to maintain health. Therefore, a dynamic application of the Buteyko Methods, from my perspective, seems to be the only way to go into the future. The same can be seen in the application of yoga for health and mind. The efficacy of the yoga protocols in the ancient transcripts (some more than 3000 years old) in today’s society is much lower compared to ancient times. Things change and we must adapt our protocols along the way. Even in the last 100 years, things have changed dramatically. Many seemingly insignificant changes, such as the introduction of soft chairs and couches, have a negative effect on our health. Other examples of relatively recent developments that have affected our health negatively are amalgam mercury fillings (in the tooth) or the fact that we started wearing rubber shoes and walk on artificial floors (which keep us electrically insulated from the earth).

Moreover, numeral studies have concluded that the development of agriculture (the introduction of rice, wheat, and grains in the diet ) is a huge cause for many of our current health problems. Later on, the use of table sugar coupled with the overall increase of carbohydrates in the diet, as well as the rise of processed foods and even later the increase of vegetable oils has damaged our health even more. It is apparent that as humankind evolves, we should also keep changing the way we treat health. Therefore, at normalbreathing we keep developing the Buteyko Method to ensure our patients and students progress with their level of health most effectively according to the Buteyko Table of Health Zones.

The URL of this video is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXDbxMzgUIY

This video features Dr. Artour Rakhimov.