Published: 14-Mar-2013
Patrick McKeown can’t be entirely sure, but he thinks he had his mouth taped on his wedding night.
It might sound weird, but for him it was routine. Patrick, who suffered from chronic asthma since he was a four-year-old child, discovered the Buteyko method of breathing in his 20s when he was a Masters student at Trinity College – and it changed his life.
Developed by Russian doctor, Konstantin Buteyko this is a simple practice used all over the world to help those who suffer from asthma and allergies, including sinus and hay fever.
It basically involves breathing only through the nose and decreasing the amount of air entering the body – treatment is based on the idea that people with asthma breathe too much, rather than too little.
Asthma is on the increase in the Western World and Ireland has an extremely high rate of the condition. Around 470,000 people here have asthma, including one in every five children. Generally once diagnosed, people are put on inhalers and remain on some form of medication for life, with steroids and antiobiotics being required at regular intervals when attacks and chest infections occur.
But while some people are genetically disposed to having asthma the condition can be controlled by changing how you breathe, says Patrick.
Over-breathing disturbs the body, which affects the immune system. While people can’t avoid allergens they can address their breathing – and that helps them cope with allergies.
He first began to practise the Buteyko method as a student when his nose was blocked and he hasn’t looked back since. After college he worked in the corporate sector for two or three years before eventually deciding he should bring someone to Ireland to teach other asthmatics about it. The problem was, he knew nobody in Russia.
Undaunted, he rang the Russian embassy in Dublin and a woman there put him in contact with the relevant people.
He started learning through a translator and eventually was taught by Dr Buteyko. Eleven years ago this week Patrick began teaching the Buteyko method, and now teaches it in Ireland and over the Western world – two days after we spoke he was flying to Amsterdam for a conference.
If you watch somebody with asthma while they breathe, they will always breathe more heavily than somebody who hasn’t got the condition, he explains. That’s because asthmatics and people with allergies breathe too much. Because they take in large gulps of air, often through their mouths and using their upper chest rather than their diaphragm, it creates an imbalance in the body between oxygen and carbon dioxide.
We are all taught at school that oxygen is vital for life – but often what we aren’t told is that you need a balance between oxygen and CO2 in order for the body to work efficiently. That’s what Buteyko teaches.
Carbon dioxide is not just a waste gas, explains Patrick. It is vital for transporting oxygen to tissues and organs. It also relaxes and dilates blood vessels and airwaves, which means that the more calmly you breathe, through your nose, the more efficiently they work.
But because so many people with sinus or asthma problems suffer from nasal congestion, mouth breathing becomes the norm. So the first technique Patrick teaches is how to decongest the nose, so that people can make a permanent switch to nasal breathing, therefore reducing the amount of air they take in.
People with sinus and allergies frequently suffer from related symptoms including disrupted sleep, fatigue, stress, anxiety and depression, all of which have a negative impact on their lives.
“Problems with sinus affect sleep patterns,” he says simply – and that is something that anybody with the condition knows too well. However retraining the respiratory centre not to take in so much air can help. Patrick teaches exercises to do that; the problem is that while people are asleep, they revert to breathing through their mouths. That immediately creates an imbalance of oxygen and carbon dioxide.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
