It would be good to get your feedback about this training course so that we can improve it in any way and offer you more personalized help. If you could email me your starting Control Pause  and  your most recent Control Pause you achieved after completing the course. It would also be useful to know what made you decide to take this course, perhaps you had a health problem you thought might be helped with improved breathing, or you had heard of the Buteyko Method but not been able to find a trainer near you, or you may have just decided this would be a good way of improving your health and immune system. If you have any suggestions as to how the course might be improved or developed , that would be welcomed as well.I am passionate that as many people in the world should have access to this remarkable work of Professor Konstantin Buteyko, most of us need it. 

Better Breathing Means Better Health

Your Progress & Feedback - Can I Help?

Better Breathing Means better Health - Episode #16  What you eat affects how you breathe and how you breathe affects what you eat.This idea comes as a surprise to many people who have never believed there was a connection between our eating and our breathing habits. However over the past forty years inn the health profession I have come to the conclusion that our health is connected to everything, and a few years ago I published a book entitled “Connection - Towards a Broader Understanding of Health in Medicine” that expands on this concept. After three years of research, gathering data from over 250 patients it seems quite clear that there is a strong relationship between our breathing and are eating habits. There are good physiological reasons why our diet impacts on our breathing and Professor Buteyko incorporated this in his training programme, but our Western diet today is very different from the diet of ordinary people in Russia back in the 1950’s. The link between our breathing and the food we choose to eat and how we eat it is more subtle with psychological influences.Basically the better our breathing, the more selective and better is our eating and likewise the better our eating habits, the better is our breathing.In the current situation of the COVID-19 (2020) this may have a profound impact on people's capacity to deal with infections and in particular all viral infections. Our immune system can be improved by lifestyle changes and there are three key factors that can influence the immune system in this way. They are: our nutritional status or what we eat, the way we breathe and our management of stress. Just as what we eat affects how we breathe, there is another correlation, and that is how we react to stressors is linked closely to how we normally breathe. If we usually breathe very gently and quietly we invariably are calm, if we are habitually hyperventilating or over-breathing we are usually stressed. We all have been told to breathe slowly and gently when we have been stressed. So in fact we have these three activities very closely linked; if we improve one, the others will improve. If we learn to improve all three, our health, wellbeing and immune system will all improve, and we shall be better able to respond to any infection. This podcast of Better Breathing Means Better Health will have given you an insight into how you may teach yourself to breathe better and in doing so you will be taking better control of your stress and you will find the way you eat will improve. To deal with the nutritional side of this question you may want to listen to my podcast entitled the World's Finest Diet, which guides you how to improve your diet, thereby improving your health and boosting your immune system this way. Alternatively you may take on my Skype training course entitled the Skype Lifestyle Training Course that incorporates these major factors. Details of this may be obtained on my website: www.totalhealthmatters.co.uk Observed relationship between Dietary Status & Breathing StatusDietary status was based on the 4LeafSurvey that estimates the %age of calories derived from Whole Plant Foods and the Breathing status is based on the Buteyko Control Pause that estimates the %age of carbon dioxide in the lungs or degree of oxygenation of the body.The 4LeafSurvey scores range from -44 to +44, the Control Pause ranges from 5 to 60 seconds  for most of the population. 4LeafSurvey Score (X)Control Pause Score (Y)70% CP Range-44125 to 19-40136 to 20-35158 to 22-30169 to 23-251811 to 25-201912 to 26-152114 to 28-102215 to 29-52417 to 3102518 to 3252720 to 34102821 to 35153023 to 37203124 to 38253326 to 40303427 to 41353629 to 43403730 to 44443831 to 45Michael Lingard BSc. DO.WPNutCert. 28/3/2020

What you eat affects how you breathe & how you breathe affects what you eat!

Hi, this is Michael Lingard, your Buteyko Educator, welcoming you to the final episode of Better Breathing Means Better Health and offering you my congratulations on completing this course. You now have the understanding and tools to continue improving your breathing and health in the future. Just to remind you of the powerful impact on your health that improved breathing will have, you can download leaflets on the subjects covered below: If you don’t have access while listening to this podcast, go to my website at , where you will be able to download them there.

General Health Questions

Hi, this is Michael Lingard, your Buteyko Educator, welcoming you to episode 14 and offering you my congratulations on completing this course. You now have the understanding and tools to continue improving your breathing and health in the future. Chronic Hidden Hyperventilation is a serious condition and as such safety is paramount with the management of this condition. This final episode will highlight areas that you should take particular care over and remember that this course is a general presentation and each individual is unique. No responsibility can be taken for any adverse reactions to the training or your failure to follow the safety recommendations given; always, if in doubt, consult your doctor, or your own Buteyko Educator for advice. You are recommended to check all the following important points now and from time to time in the future to ensure you are following the best practice of the Buteyko Method.

Some Important Points

Hi, welcome to episode thirteen of Better Breathing Means Better Health. I hope by now you are really making progress and feeling the benefits of better breathing. One of the great attractions of the Buteyko Method breath training is that people don’t need to carry on doing exercises indefinitely, but once their carbon dioxide receptors have been re-set and they are achieving good control pauses of 35 to 45 seconds all the time, then they can begin to reduce their exercises and eventually stop them altogether. So at some time in the future, you will have established a new habit of breathing normally, you will have a morning control pause of over thirty-five and will often achieve control pauses of over forty. You will have achieved ideal breathing when your control pause is between forty-five and sixty seconds.

Stopping Buteyko Exercises & Taping

Episode # 10 Sealing the Leaks & Talking Like The Queen Hi, welcome to episode ten of Better Breathing Means Better Health entitled Sealing the leaks and Talking Like The Queen. As you will now know, our breathing is controlled automatically by the level of carbon dioxide in our body. It is a good image to hold in one's mind that our lungs are not just the means to get oxygen for our body but act as reservoirs or tanks of carbon dioxide that need to be kept at just the right level. Maintaining this image of the lungs as reservoirs or tanks of Carbon Dioxide that help maintain the normal 6% CO2 in our body, we can think of activities that may lead to “leaks” from the tanks.

Sealing the Leaks & Talking Like The Queen

With the best will in the world and despite your greatest care, it is still possible that you might fall ill at some stage, with a bad dose of a cold, some random infection or just be run down. When you are ill you are more liable to over-breathe and your Control Pause may fall & your pulse rate may rise. All infections are stressors, whether flu, a common cold or viral infection. So how can you combat the adverse effect on your breathing and how can you recover more quickly? There are many ways you can help yourself, some may be common sense but others may be new to you.

When You Are Ill

So how does posture affect our breathing? The raised shoulders, expanded chest, and tense upper muscles are to be seen on most patients who normally over-breathe. With habitual heavy breathing, these ancillary respiratory muscles need to be used repeatedly and they become chronically tense with over-use. We should breathe primarily with just our diaphragm, the large dome-shaped muscle under our lower ribs, and we should not normally use the upper chest for normal activity breathing. During Buteyko training, the effects of different postures on our breathing, when awake and asleep are discussed, based on Professor Buteyko’s research.

Posture, Sleep & Taping

Episode # 9 Anti-Hyperventilation Exercises Hi, this is Michael Lingard welcoming you to episode nine of Better Breathing Means Better Health. With the best will in the world, every now and again you may find your breathing is getting out of control. This may happen at times of severe stress, when ill or after some trauma. Wouldn’t it be useful to have a simple exercise that you could rely on to bring your breathing back to normal? This is the job of the three anti-hyperventilation exercises I shall tell you about now.

Anti-Hyperventilation Exercises

Episode # 8 Step Exercises & The Extended Pause Hi, this is episode eight of Better Breathing Means Better Health, entitled “Step Exercises and The Extended Pause”. As part of your breath retraining wouldn't it be good if you could speed up your breath training while out for a walk or while walking to work each day? Well, this is exactly what the step exercise allows you to do. Remember what we are trying to achieve is a change in your breathing through a re-setting of your carbon dioxide receptors in your body that control your rate of breathing. For everyone who is over-breathing habitually, their receptors are trying to maintain a lower level of carbon dioxide than is normal and healthy. The Buteyko exercises you have been doing have been gradually accustoming these receptors to accept a higher level of carbon dioxide through relaxation and perhaps reduced breathing with the accompanying slight “air hunger”. If we could apply more pressure on your receptors to get used to a higher level of carbon dioxide, that would speed up your recovery of normal breathing and reduce all your symptoms. Step Exercises do just that.

Step Exercises & The Extended Pause

Episode # 7. Food and Your Breathing Hi, welcome to episode seven that is all about food and your breathing. Professor Buteyko included advice on diet for people learning to improve their breathing. He found that a number of common foods tended to increase the patient’s breathing rate; they included dairy food such as cottage cheese, yogurt, ice cream, and milk; stimulants such as strong tea, coke, coffee, alcohol, and cocoa; other foods such as chocolate, honey, raspberries, strawberries, fish, chicken, nuts and beef, chicken or fish stock. However, when this research was conducted in Russia, the diet of most people was much simpler than today’s Western diet. In the West today our consumption of meat, dairy, and processed foods is far greater and the link between our food and our breathing has become much more important.

Food and Your Breathing

Hi, Welcome to podcast episode six of Better Breathing Means Better Health. We shall be checking your progress and introducing the Mini Pause. By now you will have probably done a few Buteyko Exercises and recorded them on a worksheet or in the Buteyko Guide to Better Breathing & Better Health. In the last lesson, I suggested you plot the average of each start Control Pause and end Control Pause. You will find your control pause will vary from day to day and also during the day depending on many things, so don’t be surprised if some days your exercises are not as good as you expected, what we are looking for is slow steady improvement. This will always come if you persevere. You may improve your control pause by just a few seconds each time you do an exercise, perhaps increasing it by 3 to 5 seconds from start to finish but usually, you will find by the time you do your next exercise your control pause will have dropped a little, this is normal.

Checking Your Progress and The Mini Pause

Perhaps the simplest advice is to try to always breathe through the nose. Why? Because the nose functions to deliver air to the lungs in as perfect condition as possible. It makes over-breathing physically more difficult simply because of the smaller size of the nostrils compared with our large open mouth. It filters out most of the dust and particulates found in the atmosphere. It moisturizes the air when it's dry, as in centrally heated rooms, delivering air that doesn't irritate and dry out the delicate membranes of the lungs. It conserves water and helps reduce the risk of dehydration. It contains active organisms that trap and destroy many potential infective agents in the air we breathe, protecting the lungs from infection. It is also found to be responsible for the production of up to 50% of nitric oxide in our body when we breathe normally through our nose. Nitric oxide has many vital functions in the body that are still being discovered, we know nitric oxide can dilate blood vessels and improve circulation hence its use for treatment in angina. When people have not been habitually nose breathing for many years it may take a little time and perseverance to retrain the nose to do the work of breathing it was designed for. A Buteyko Conference I attended in Brisbane a marathon runner told, how with Buteyko Training she had learned to nose breathe throughout the entire marathon and this had improved her performance by doing so. Many Olympic athletes in Australia and New Zealand have undergone Buteyko Training to improve their sports performance, endurance, and recovery, so breath training is not just for anyone who is not well but also for those who want super fitness and endurance.

Nose Clearing & Your First Buteyko Exercise

Now you know your control pause, what does it mean and how can you improve on it? If your control pause was under 10 seconds you are breathing almost 3 to 4 times more than normal and need to try to change this urgently because the medicine will not change your breathing, but will simply control symptoms. If you achieved 20 to 25 seconds with your comfortable breath hold, your breathing is about 2 to 3 times more than normal. A control pause of 25 to 35 seconds still means you are over-breathing, almost twice much as you need but you will only have problems when under stress or hit by any of the triggers that make your condition worse. If your control pauses 35 to 45 seconds it is good for most people, but you will still benefit from improved breathing in many other ways. It is very unlikely that your control pause was over 45 seconds as this would mean your breathing would be normal, a rare situation for anyone today. A control pause of 45 to 60 seconds is what we should all try to achieve and this will be the target for this full training course.

What's Your Control Pause & How's Your Breathing

Now have completed one Buteyko exercise you can begin to do more on a daily basis using the booklet “The Buteyko Guide to Better Breathing & Better Health” you should have purchased from Lulu.com by now. If you don’t have the booklet you can download a worksheet to print off copies from http://www.totalhealthmatters.co.uk/worksheet.pdf Try to do at least one exercise in the morning and perhaps two in the evening, you can choose how long you spend doing the reduced breathing depending on how much time you can spare. If you want a short exercise that will take less than 10 minutes make the reduced breathing just three minutes long each time but if you have time you will get better results with reduced breathing of five minutes each time giving you an exercise that will take about 15 minutes.

Getting Started

Most of us in the West breathe badly and this has an adverse effect on our health. Almost every disease is associated with poor breathing, and by simply improving our breathing with a little training, whatever health problem we may have will also be improved and even, in some cases, eliminated.

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Better Breathing Means Better Health

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