djf

@j-lo, I was hoping you would post as you seemed to have experience of eating this way combined with Buteyko, I appreciate the long post and the wealth of info you have afforded me.

I must admit the ONLY thing that has improved my health has been following Matt’s advice and although I recognise that Buteyko and increasing CO2 certainly works, it felt like I had to sacrifice eating more to work on the reduced breathing.

I must admit I wasn’t up on the biology namely that CO2 was generated more with a higher metabolism so I will certainly be focusing more on food, sleep, exercise (which I am glad to say I have actually started to have the energy for) and doing Buteyko to supplement those rather than the main focus.

I look forward to a time when “My chest, neck, shoulders, and abdominal muscles are entirely relaxed.” as my breathing seems to be all over the place at times. I find that most of the tension in this area is caused/exacerbated by eating and getting trapped wind/burps. Although when my temps are up, or I have been doing Buteyko, I find food goes down easier. Will this sort of thing improve with better metabolism?

Thanks again.

Hi

I wonder if anybody can help me with the seemingly conflicting approaches of Eat the Food and the Buteyko Method?

My situation is that for the last couple of years I have been feeling progressively more tired, anxious, down on life, cold hands and all the other usual symptoms described on this forum. Of course I have been searching all this time for a fix and have tried all sorts of ideas and techniques including Buteyko (which I learned from the internet, books etc rather than a practictioner).

I found that doing the reduced breathing exercises worked to a certain extent and the carbon dioxide gains showed on my Control Pause improving but also feeling that it was not sustainable because to get these results I needed to not eat anything for hours on end, so soon after finishing the exercises my symptoms (especially the coldness) quickly returned. I struggle a lot with burping and trapped wind (especially if I’ve not eaten for a while) which seem to cause large fluctuations with the CP.

So I kept searching and came across Matt and this website. I must say that his Eat The Food approach has been working well for me and I have noticed my temps, energy and happiness improving over the last few weeks of doing it.

So why am I posting here today?

Well I have still been monitoring my CP although only practicing like once a day and have noticed that my Control Pause (especially the Morning CP) has dropped dramatically since doing ETF and wonder if I should be concerned? As per the normalbreathing.com website if your morning CP is low you are having serious health problems and I wondered if eating loads more food is somehow masking the underlying low CO2 issue in my body? Most of the time I have food in my tummy so can’t really practice Buteyko but on the rare occasions I have not eaten for a while (i.e. like first thing in the morning) my symptoms seem to come back with a vengeance. Could the burping thing be causing the low CP? My normal breathing rate is a bit fast but quite low in volume.

Thanks for any advice.

Dave

• This reply was modified 9 years, 6 months ago by djf.