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I might not get many takers on this, but I am experimenting with Buteyko breathing and I want to know if other 180D-ers have found a way to integrate this with Eat for Heat, etc.
For me, it has an amazing rescue effect – it stops a lot of chronic fatigue symptoms (headaches and such). Buteyko people also make recommendations to tape your mouth shut so you won’t mouth breathe at night, and that seems to help me too.
On the other hand, it seems to have an appetite-suppressant effect, so when I do the recommended 4 sets a day, I don’t eat very much and that doesn’t work for me long term. I seem to get into a state where I’m running on adrenaline.
Hey Sophie,
I’m interested in Buteyko, but I don’t know all the specifics. Is there a particular resource (website, book, whatever) that you would recommend for a good explanation? A quick glance at the Buteyko website seems to indicate you have to purchase their info to get an understanding.I gave it a bit of a try. Breathing through my nose instead of my mouth was very good, and I’ve continued that. And sitting up straight, which is also good for alignment, is good. I think Matt mentioned once that the slower breathing goes towards slowing metabolism, though. I didn’t do very well at making that a regular practice anyway.
So, it helped me a bit, but didn’t heal my asthma. Following Matt over a few years now has done a lot more for my asthma. :o)
I also gave this method a try, mainly due to the fact that after I put a lot (yes, 50lbs, thanks Matt!!) of weight on I started to snore, much to the disgust of my boyfriend! I purchased the book ‘Close your mouth’ which was very easy to read/understand. The exercises to clear a blocked up nose do indeed work, which made me very excited about their claims to stop snoring! However, similar to Sophie, I found that my appetite (which struggles to show it’s face anyway) was suppressed further and my anxiety levels (uber high after my 3 years on a low carb diet) went up everytime I practised the breathing exercises. There are special exercises given in the book for people with anxiety but I felt it was suppressing my metabolism so gave up on it. I live in the hope that once my metabolism is on fire the snoring will stop! Not as much as my boyfriend hopes, I suspect!! Any thoughts on the snoring Matt?
I use it to clear my sinuses if I get congestion. It works! The hard part is maintaining it. I get light asthma in the spring (along with allergies) but haven’t used it specifically for that. A good Lobelia tincture is easier and works well for me for that.
I took a 3 day course in Buteyko breathing. It’s not as easy as you might think. But now I can stop an asthma attack without any medication. It’s really an amazing practice!
“You should breathe through your mouth as often as you eat through your nose!” is the mantra.
But remember, the one time that we always “leak” air through our mouth is when we are talking fast. But if you slow down, and refill your lungs by breathing through your nose, you find yourself having more breath.
I even heard a fascinating story that a man who used to, but stopped stuttering when his wife slowed down the pace of her speaking via Buteyko.
I haven’t had any effect on my appetite, but I find it to be a wonderful stress relief technique that I use with my clients.
I noticed it calmed my anxiety markedly to breathe that way. That’s short-term, though. The trick is keeping it up.
Re the metabolism slowing down, it makes me think of reaching a state of transcendental consciousness, pure consciousness, through meditation. In that state, breathing slows way down and can even be suspended, and I think other metabolic processes are also slowed or suspended–digestion being one of them. Perhaps slowing breathing way down can decrease anxiety by putting one in some degree of such a state, which then also slows the metabolism.
I’ve never tried this method. But there’s a great book by Dr John Douilliard, a chiropractor & Ayurvedic physician, on developing nose breathing for sports & exercise. His idea of exercise is stress reducing not producing and gives great advice on developing nasal breathing – even for running
I thought of inviting Douillard to be a Site Author. But it’s pretty unlikely. Nasal breathing while exercising is a great idea though. Garrett Smith talks about this a lot in the book we’re coming out with in September.
Sounds great, Matt. Dr John seems to have gone ‘underground’. Not sure what he’s up to these days. What’s the book/topic you and Garrett are doing?
Before trying eat 4 heat I tried buteyko breathing and bought and used the frolov device. Didn’t ever see much improvement after a couple months and gave up on it. I still have the device in storage and I want to get it out someday because I like how it raises CO2 levels
AnnaB says: Is there a particular resource (website, book, whatever) that you would recommend for a good explanation?
http://www.normalbreathing.com
The books that seems popular are Close Your Mouth by Patrick McKeown, which Kaza mentioned, and Breathing Free by Teresa Hale.
I didn’t get either of those books – my understanding of it comes from Artour Rahkimov (www.normalbreathing.com) and from the practitioners at http://www.learnbuteyko.co.uk because I paid to consult with them.
The biggest differences I see are that Artour recommends a practice of Reduced Breathing, and then you take your Control Pause as a diagnostic tool. Whereas the learnbuteyko.co.uk people (who claim direct descendence from Buteyko) use the pauses as the practice itself. They have you hold your breath longer and longer.
Kaza says: My anxiety levels (uber high after my 3 years on a low carb diet) went up everytime I practised the breathing exercises.
I experienced the anxiety too, and I have a theory. At first, I was doing it just from what I learned online, and for about a week I was totally amazed at how I could stop a terrible CFS/ME brain-fry headache in its tracks.
But doing Reduced Breathing was making me tense up all my core muscles and maybe some muscles in my throat, too. Because you have to resist that message coming from your brain saying, “CO2 is too high, time to breathe now!”
I got so tensed up that I had a limited symptom panic attack! I was pretty desperate between this awful insomnia, headaches, and anxiety, that I plunked down a lot of money to the consultants, but then I was really super happy with the immediate results I got with them. (I mean, maybe I’m also doing that human thing where I justify what I did because I did it, but I was on the verge of losing my mind from sleep deprivation.)
They were able to stabilize me and get me sleeping pretty well immediately, and everything was going swimmingly for like 3 weeks until they tried to ramp up my practice and I started really losing my appetite, so that’s where I am right now, trying to balance the two.
@Sophie Thanks for sharing. I also got weird pains in my throat when I tried the breathing exercises. I wondered what on earth it was but as you say, I was probably tensing up too much. So did you just do longer control pauses then as an exercise rather than just trying to do a lot of smaller breaths? It seems like a good thing to do, raising your CO2 levels but I was wondering if that sorts itself out when you have a really high metabolism? I have never snored before in my life! I noticed when I started to follow Matt’s advice for RRARFing I started to breathe much heavier, almost like panting at first! When I went to bed I would struggle to catch my breath, so I’m guessing this is when I started to ‘breathe more’ and so followed the snoring. I’m wondering if I should give this method another go now but a bit more gently. I think I went into it all guns blazing, doing all the exercises, determined to stop the snoring, but it was just too much for me. Perhaps if I tried the small pause method it wouldn’t cause the same anxiety? Although I don’t want it to impact on my metabolism after spending 4 months trying to get it higher. In the ‘Close your mouth’ book he says that ‘your appetite will be reduced, your metabolism will change (doesn’t comment how) and you will lose weight easily’. That was pretty much a red flag to me! It seems to go against everything Matt talks about. Am so confused now!
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