A man breathes by chest while both - vascular and respiratory systems - are functional ones designated to keep a certain gaseous content in a cell, supporting a cell breathing. Indications to DVBM could be received not only from the list of some nosologic forms of illnesses but also from a presence of symptoms of hyperventilation and CO2 deficiency in the organism. Such symptoms as a pathologic need of sweets, meat and caffeine containing products do not have any link with a particular disease but they are a consequence of hyperventilation and irregularities connected to C02 deficiency. Hence, they can be successfully normalised by DVBM. Those symptoms are always confirmed by the lower control pause which, in turn, is directly correlated with the CO2 level in alveoli and blood.
The main objective of DVBM is to give a patient his health back by teaching him to use a self-control and self-regulation, or, in other words, to teach him how to normalise his breathing as a basic function of the organism.
K. P. Buteyko was the first one who has offered a concept of the ideally healthy man. Such a person breathes quietly: no sound or movement are noticeable. His control pause is 1 minute which means that the CO2 level in his blood is 6.5%.
Through normalisation of breathing we can achieve perfect health, and it also gives us quantity and quality criteria to estimate a state of health in stages.
In spite of the seeming simplicity of the method, in practice doctors, practitioners and patients often make a variety of mistakes.
We consider a serious mistake when a doctor or practitioner start to treat patients by DVBM if they did not first treat themselves. The point is that practitioners can usually lead their patients only up to the level which has been reached by them personally. One must experience on oneself an effect of the method and go through sanogenesis reactions in order to be able to treat others properly. As a rule, a practitioner recommends only those factors of reducing the breath which he successfully tried on himself.
At a first appointment a doctor must demonstrate to a patient how his illness is linked to the depth of his breathing. The way to do that is to conduct the hyperventilation test, sometimes doing it repeatedly. A misunderstanding of the matter can hinder the recovery.
I believe an individual teaching is a mistake. Because of the peculiarity of the method, it is much better understood at the group sessions where we can visually demonstrate, with a help of group members, how it works. However, some individual sessions with patients are also necessary as additional means.
Before learning how to decrease the depth of breathing, a patient must learn how to sense his breath and relax his skeletal and respiratory muscles especially a diaphragm. A free volitional exhalation means a diaphragm is relaxed and that should not be restricted. A gasping exhalation indicates a diaphragm is stressed which does not belong to DVBM. A patient has no chance to change the depth of breathing when his diaphragm is under stress. The decrease of the depth of breathing can be achieved at the expense of the decrease of each inhalation while an exhalation is not counting. In volume both - inhalation and exhalation - are equal, and one breathes out and in exactly the same amount of air.
A typical for beginners mistake is their attempts to restrict the depth of breathing not by relaxation but tension which as a rule aggravates their condition. And if some improvement occasionally happens that is only due to normalisation of nasal breathing. Any skeletal muscles tension leads to the breath deepening. When asthmatics have got an acute shortness of breath condition against the general improvement and the frequency of asthma attacks falls, that is a specific symptom of forceful restriction of the depth of breathing. Such kind of attacks can be stopped only by using bronchlithics.
There is a recommendation in the DVBM brochure explaining how one can achieve a correct posture by drawing a Stomach in and then relaxing it.' Very often the second part of that is neglected by patients. A practitioner should keep his eye on that point and, in order to check it up, he can ask some provocative questions such as "At the expense of what muscles are you straining your breath, limiting your inhalation and exhalation?" That helps in finding out whether a patient understands the procedure properly.
During their half an hour breathing training sessions patients allow themselves to overdo pauses which leads to the deepening of breath and also they do not stick to 3-5 minutes intervals between pauses. Often sessions are conducted for 40 minutes without a break. But you shall not forget that longer than 30 minutes sessions make patients tired and their parameters go down.
Factors preventing a control pause growing to it's first stage, which is 10-15 seconds, are: lack of skills to relax their skeletal and respiratory muscles, absence of a proper breathing control days and nights, lack of skills to decrease the depth of breathing, a serious protracted condition of a patient, a combination of massive focal intoxication with parasitosis. Lack of proper control and activity during the night time is also holding parameters from growing: to break a sleep is a must. Giving examples at the group sessions can help to eliminate a fright of sealing up a mouth. At the first stage some physical factors can be sensibly used to support the method.
Factors preventing achieving a stable control pause, which is 20-30 seconds, are to less extend those mentioned above, but mainly they are: a focal infectious intoxication (teeth, tonsils), parasitosis, mycosis on feet, lack of physical load, stress at home or at work, inability to behave under stress, absence of tempering procedures.
The lessening of the depth of breathing, leading to the decrease of shortness of breath, allows - from the first week of training - to increase physical activities especially walking.
For pushing a control pause above 30 seconds it would not be enough only to practice breathing sessions and to control a breath. At this period such decreasing a breath factors as jogging, sauna, cold water dousing, relieved days (diet), etc. should be actively used. That stabilises the parameters reached and creates some perspectives for future normalisation of CO2 level in the organism. Those factors can be added only with respect to individual state of patients' health, their age, gender, occupation. And, more importantly, the organism itself should be prepared physiologically to start above mentioned physical activities.
To be successful in working with the method means to be it's skillful and attentive conductor. A DVBM practitioner does not treat a patient but teaches him an art of controlling his body, he provides him with a knowledge of basic organism's functions, physiological norms and deviations from them. A practitioner corrects patient's mistake in the process of learning and helps him to overcome sanogenesis reactions. All attention must be concentrated on a main point which is the normalisation of breathing that defines and regulates the workings of other body functions. The normalisation of breathing leads rapidly to various symptoms' disappearing, even against a control pause of 10-15 seconds. This is a satisfactory result from the point of view of health officials. However, a DVBM practitioner aims to encourage a patient to strive for higher parameters of health.
A lessening of the depth of breathing reduces a loss of warmth, and a rise of the CO2 level in the organism stimulates it's strength and relieves vascular spasms. Instead of feeling cold, patients begin to sense warmth, even heat in the body. When it starts a practitioner should recommend to take off some excessive clothing, otherwise overheating can become a breath deepening factor.
In first weeks of training patients are losing an appetite. It should be discovered and explained. If we do not do that, patients begin to force themselves to eat which can lead to deterioration of their general well-being and to a breath deepening. Sometimes that kind of aggravation can be falsely mixed up with a sanogenesis reaction.
In our opinion, a necessity of strictly regular meals promoted by the official medicine has no sufficient ground. In our practice we touch a theme of nutrition only when a patient gets well acquainted DVBM and is able to achieve a significant improvement of his health. K. P. Buteyko believes that we have to eat only when we are really hungry and eat in moderation.
The lessening of lung ventilation decreases a loss of warmth, and a rise of CO2 with every 0.5% (10 seconds of the control pause) influences significantly on metabolism and, consequently, it forms new body requirements in food. Our experience shows that a choice of diet is a very individual one and it depends on the CO2 level in the organism or on the control pause. I begin to talk about food and diet in my group sessions only when the majority of patients have already changed their attitude to food. A type of nutrition can tell us approximately what is a patient's control pause at the moment and vice versa. To correct patients' nutritional habits from the day one is a big mistake.
Many of our patients were more or less familiar with the issue of diet and nutrition long before they started DVBM. However, breathing is a fresh and difficult novelty for them requiring a lot of efforts. Therefore, too much attention to food can put back the main goal of our work. That is a volitional remake of patient's respiratory pattern with a view to help him out of his critical condition as soon as possible. At the same time, we can't completely avoid a question of nutrition as our patients usually do not have enough knowledge on that.
Let's analyse a patient's need in sugar as an example of the reorganisation of nutrition.
Refined sugar affects the body the same way as food narcotics. When consumed frequently, it creates dependency in the organism. If such a dependency is already formed, to restrict a person from sugar becomes almost impossible. A carbonic acid deficiency in the body breaks a process of glucose assimilation in cell, destroys a membrane permeability, suppresses oxidizing processes which leads to a sugar level growth in blood as a compensatory action. Not sorting out real causes of the increase of sugar level in blood, we hurry to decrease that with insulin. The fall of sugar leads to further glucose deficiency in cell, creates some general tension, aggravates a patient's state, doesn't allow the body to get relaxed and to decrease the depth of breathing. All of that is eventually forcing a patient to drop out of the treatment.
By using DVBM with a purpose to eliminate CO2 deficiency, we are getting rid of above mentioned pathogenic mechanisms. As a result sugar craving reduces and it's content in blood goes down. As DVBM treatment includes some theoretical education of our patients, we explain to them, in simple words, all what was said.
When our patients approach a control pause's measurement of 20-30 seconds, they already have not got any complaints,and feel well and active. At that stage we recommend them to start physical activities such as sport, exercises and physical work. They have to do more walking, avoiding using a transport wherever possible, to start jogging by Buteyko, to enjoy more physical work like gardening.
When our patients have achieved 20-25 second stable control pause, many of them haven't got their clinical symptoms anymore, their efficiency restores and grows. At that period we begin to work with patients on psychological level trying to help them to become new personalities, persuading them that they need to be healthy not for the sake of health itself but because better health can help them to achieve new goals in their private and social life.
Starting from 15-20 second control pause, many patients can work out what factors assist in lessening or'deepening of the breath. In other words, the restoration of metabolic and physiological processes helps a patient to start "listening" to his organism and they learn how to fulfil natural body needs. It turned out to be true for the social life as well. Patient's interests come to change; same with his circle of friends. We recommend our patients to join people, close to them spiritually. Therefore, the whole life of a person is changing. His old stereotypes collapse and new ones emerge - those that help him to secure and support his higher standard of health achieved through our training.
A control pause of the ideally healthy person is 40-60 seconds which corresponds with 6.5% of CO2 in alveoli. A control pause magnitude indicates a state of patient's health and reveals factors which assist in lessening of breathing at that particular stage. For instance, a sauna is contraindicated with a control pause equal 5-10 seconds, but useful when it comes to 20-30. The same can be said about jogging, cold water dousing, etc. All of that is to confirm a leading role of breathing in the recovery process once again.
A patient achieved 40-60 second control pause becomes his own antipode, a person, healthy physically and spiritually. However, to reach such a higher level is far from easy for a person who was "yesterday" seriously ill. Only a practitioner, who has cured himself by DVBM and gained a sufficient professional experience in that, is really capable to help another person to achieve this similar effect.
A significant influence, spoiling the efficiency of the method, is produced upon the treatment and it's remote results by members of the patient's family not willing to, accept the novelty. When someone begins to change due to practicing DVBM, his loved ones often react in negative way. That is why a good idea is to attract the whole family to learn DVBM. An experienced doctor-practitioner can work with a group of people of any age - from a new born baby to a very old person, i.e. with all members of families. Thus, he can be named a family doctor indeed!
A number of doctor's and patient's mistakes occur during sanogenesis reactions. However, we should begin to analyse them only when a group has already assimilated the method and it's members show a tendency to double their initial control pause. Otherwise, a thought about possible complications can push patients away from the method. But when a patient gains some positive effect from the treatment, we can start talking openly about sanogenesis reactions. Don't concentrate patients' attention at first on heaviest ones. On the contrary, try to emphasize some positive results and general' improvement of patient's health. Some practitioners believe that it is better not to talk to patients about sanogenesis reactions at all. However, the experience shows that there is a particular category of patients who react negatively and, due to their psychologically preconceived opinion, are unable to comprehend causes and meaning of complications. They tend to refuse to continue the treatment and go back to their habitual medications and doctors.
In accordance with an established practice, it is better to start DVBM treatment at the acute stage of illness. If a patient begins the treatment in remission he is likely to estimate developing sanogenesis reactions as an aggravation caused by the method and he drops the treatment.
When an initial control pause is doubled or tripled, the first sanogenesis reaction occurs. It has a number of distinctions from patient's familiar acute conditions and from the acute respiratory viral infection (ARVI). People, chronically sick, continue to be sick with ARVI during first two-three months because DVBM assist's not in the short term but in a gradual increase and normalisation of immunodeficiency. That is why patients can still have frequent ARVI but each time it goes easier, shorter and not so often until it stops completely.
Such acute conditions or ARVI sometimes can be taken mistakenly for a sanogenesis reaction, especially in children. However, the whole range of symptoms exist which reveal a difference between sanogenesis reaction and aggravation of the disease. We have to clearly see that while working with DVBM.
Quite often a salt deficiency is not compensated during a sanogenesis reaction. In this case, if a patient is unable to relieve the symptom by DVBM, some medications can be used.
In seriously ill people with a protracted history of illness some steroid deficiency can be also expected during a sanogenesis reaction. And this symptom is usually quite an acute one. The steroid deficiency has clear clinical signs and it should be compensated regardless of whether a patient received hormones in his past or not. I used to work with 40 hormone deficient asthmatics. To eight of them steroids were prescribed during DVBM as those symptoms of hormone deficiency did not let us to normalise their breath at the beginning of treatment and at the period of sanogenesis reactions.
Sanogenesis reactions appear with each rise of CO2 at 0.5%, which corresponds with a 10 second control pause. Such rises can last several months and they can manifest themselves by aggravation of old diseases, even against an improving general well-being. Some not fully informed people can perceive this as a return of his illness. At these times a patient considers himself incurable and jumps to a wrong conclusion about the non-effectiveness of DVBM. Falling back again into conventional medicine arms such a patient becomes a "living example" of the method's failure. That is the reason why we have to ask our patients to keep a diary and have control check-ups. Local people should come for an examination once every one or two years. Monitoring of patients should be conducted until their full recovery and not less than 3-5 years.
The most important period of DVBM treatment is it's first month. That is the time when patients are required to be under control and get plenty of advice from our doctors. During that period some sanogenesis reactions in patients happen once or twice and the most serious mistakes of the treatment are revealed. This needs to be taken into account as in recent times crash courses, consisting of 5 sessions, have became popular. However, a practice has shown it is not possible to assimilate the method and to get through sanogenesis reactions for such a short period of time. That is only enough for patients to acquire some skills of self-control and to learn how to deal with some symptoms without taking medications.
The main contingent of our patients are people arriving from other towns with a long history of their illnesses. After having a crash course they go home where sanogenesis reactions begin taking place very soon. Without any control from a DVBM practitioner, many of those people get confused. Not being able to cope they are admitted themselves to hospitals where they are given again lots of medications. Traditional therapy, especially overdoses of spasmo- and broncholithics as well as antibiotics is aggravating a patient's state of health during a period of sanogenesis reactions. All together that can lead to an unfavourable outcome. Such patients usually do not repeat DVBM treatment and discredit it in the doctor's eyes. We saw that once again at the All-Union Conference (Moscow, 1987) dedicated to nonmedication methods of treatments for asthmatics.
Short cycles are not appropriate for those seriously ill. The course duration must be not less than a month!
When a patient has reached 15-30 second control pause, some negative consequences of focal infection's intoxication (teeth and tonsils) begin to emerge. At this time the health parameters' growth stops and a general well-being of a patient becomes aggravate greatly. Patients often take such exacerbation for a sanogenesis reaction. During initial examination it is not always possible to notice the focal pathology which exists very often in a latent concealed form, especially in teeth.
When a patient has not got practically any symptoms of his major disease and his control pause has reached 20-30 seconds those latent foci begin to clearly show themselves. The overwhelming majority of failure, frustration and exacerbation happening in a remote period are caused not by the fact that patients stop doing DVBM but by focal infection's aggravation. A doctor practicing DVBM can hardly expect to get reliable stable results with his patients if he is not taking the most serious measures towards focal infections elimination.
Primary teaching of not very seriously ill patients can be conducted by a practitioner under doctor's supervision. But further work with a patient and prescription of hormones is exclusively the doctor's duty.
In our co-operative "Sanitation" we run DVBM sessions 2-3 times a week, the course duration is one month. Then our patients have repeated sessions once a month and in case of emergency they can attend any class with any of our doctors.
At the repeated sessions we analyse our patients' self-training results, discuss and correct some mistakes, examine infectious foci, sort out more profoundly such issues as nutrition, tempering, physical loads, etc.
It is very important not to let escape our attention the accordance between figure and parameters of health When looking into a patient's state of health the very important and complex' thing is the compliance between parameters of health and factual symptoms. Don't let them escape your attention.
To learn DVBM does not take long. However, to turn a patient into a healthy person by the method is a protracted and elaborate job. I truly believe this can be achieved by the elevation of professionalism of doctor-practitioners and by further comprehensive study and broad introduction of DVBM into medical practice.
To run DVBM sessions with children is a kind of professional exam on how well one knows the method as doctor-practitioner and also it is a serious test for parents. This is creative and interesting work, promising even with very sick children. They have a great capacity to acquire new information, their bodies contain less toxins, their compensatory function is not completely destroyed, metabolism is flexible and a ability to regenerate is high.
Working with children means to care about future generations as they will become parents themselves in the future.
Unlike adults children are not very familiar with traditional medical views. They are more intuitive, their inborn reflexes are correct, and that explains why alternative medicine notions are more in tune with children's needs and wishes. Children do not want to cough phlegm out but they are forced to do that. Many of them do not want to drink after meals,and they do not like sandwiches. They prefer natural vegetables to salads but gradually get trained to eat them. I have never met children who dont cry at doctor's rooms or while some tests are taken. But they are very happy with non-medication treatment especially when some physical or water activities are included.
A doctor working with Children has to be able to give them a clear and easy to understand explanation on the theory and practice of DVBM, or that which is causing the disease and how they can become free of it. Don't convert your teaching method into cliche and stereotypes. Make it different for each individual!
It's very important to help parents to understand that the process of sanitation and keeping children healthy will last their whole lifetime. Remind them children are individuals requiring respect and having their own desires.