breath

I've been meaning to do this post for some time. I start it then stop because I don't much like talking about my health and despite people's very best intentions, I don't like getting comments about it. I know, it's just one of my many weirdnesses.

But my blog is my record, so post it I will.

I also know that sometimes suggestions about health problems can feel really insulting and if you've been grappling with something for a while someone else's bright idea may be inappropriate to your situation/already tried and failed/false hope/philosophically repugnant/impractical/unaffordable...there's a lot of ways you can go wrong posting AND commenting.

When people are unwell they are often sensitised in all kinds of ways, and if they have been sick for a while, they may react to stuff in ways that seem wildly out of whack. A sympathetic or chipper comment can send them over the edge because really they were so hanging over that edge already.

But I want to post because sometimes something makes it in through the fog and gives you a different path to follow in relation to something you're finding it hard to live with. When Amy was so chronically sick as a baby I really wish I had found another path to follow. Hindsight is a wonderful thing I know, but it never really occurred to me that there might have been other things to try, or other ways of enduring the sickness until she grew out of it.

Maybe by telling you about my story it might help someone who has been enduring something to think about it differently, try something new, feel less unable to cope. Because of my own personal feelings about this I'm not turning on comments for this post. You can email me with any questions, but I'm just telling a story with this one, not starting a discussion (you can find my email address by clicking on view my complete profile over there in the sidebar).

If you read this blog regularly you may know I suffer from Asthma. This is a condition I gained as an adult, though I probably had exercise induced asthma as a kid that was never diagnosed - I self selected out of exercise instead. Asthma started appearing gradually for me, at the tail end of colds, generally in the spring. I'd take drugs and I would get better. It took a few years to notice the pattern and even more years to get a really definitive diagnosis - like so many health related problems, things are usually more complex than they may at first seem.

But despite careful monitoring and treatment with a range of drugs - bronchial dilators (such as ventolin puffers), preventative inhaled steroids and oral systemic steroids when things were really acute - things got worse over time. I had a fairly constant sense of being short of breath and a mortal fear of getting any kind of cold or illness. I was also very wary of poor air quality, chemical smells or any other potential irritant.

Not surprisingly all this was also accompanied by a lot of fear, anxiety and depression. I felt exhausted a lot and like an invalid, but without any external sign of suffering. I felt very isolated and caught between asking for sympathy and help I didn't want, but needed anyway. The future just seemed like a downhill slope leading to gradual and complete suffocation. I felt hopeless, and at times quite suicidal.

When we moved to Queensland last year I had great hopes of finding relief. The time we had spent in Thailand in 2005 had been completely asthma free, and I had remained asthma free for 2 years after we returned. I expected the warm humidity of Queensland to do the same. But when we arrived I was devastated to find things just got much worse. I was taking huge amounts of drugs, consulting my doctor by email and phone and spending at least a day in bed a week. I was miserable and desperate.

Out of the far reaches of my memory I dredged up this thing called Buteyko breathing. It had come up a few times in the past, but I confess to feeling that as someone who had done lots of yogic breathing it couldn't have much to teach me. Plus the courses were expensive and the free introductory class before you sign up structure seemed really fadish. I really felt my situation was too serious for something so, well, basic.

But as I say, I felt desperate. I couldn't find a course being run near me so I bought a book instead. There are loads of books out there on the topic and I have no idea whether the one I bought was any better or worse than others, but it was Asthma Free Naturally by Patrick McKeown.

I won't attempt to paraphrase the book because this stuff is complicated and I am not an expert and if you want to understand it you really should learn more but I was immediately drawn in by the basic premise. Buteyko was a Russian respiritologist who observed that increased respiration accompanied many health problems, not just asthma. People who have allergies, asthma, sleep disorders and all manner of nose, throat and lung problems get stuck in a cycle of over breathing to cope with stresses on their systems. This creates a whole range of other problems that reinforce the cycle. In a nutshell that seemed like me.

Now improving your breathing doesn't take away your basic problem (you still have asthma), but it does stop the downward spiral that the asthma triggers. In essence it stabilises things at the first point, it reduces attacks and their severity and the use of drugs, particularly the bronchial dilators. These effects have been well documented in several substantial, scientifically based trials in several countries, including Australia and the UK.

So I started to try the breathing exercises, using the book as a guide. While I got the basic idea, I found doing the exercise hard, they just didn't gel with my head and I wasn't seeing much improvement. I managed to find a Buteyko practitioner I could see for a private consultation while I was transiting Brisbane to try and get the technique really right. The money no longer seemed important (I think it was $80 or $100) because I felt pretty sure this was going to have an impact.

And after a few weeks of practice the difference was definitely noticeable. Making the time and space to practice was a challenge and pretty quickly I noticed that the better I felt the less practice I did, and the more my symptoms bothered me. The feedback loop between my efforts and the effect got shorter and clearer, and I got better at doing the exercises. Soon I gave up the notepad, then the stopwatch, then the quiet upright chair. Noticing and correcting my breathing became an instinctive activity I did throughout the day.

I still have asthma, and right now in the middle of yet another cold I am all too aware of it. I hate it. But it's now been almost a year since I used a bronchial dilator, I never even carry one with me. I haven't had any oral steroids and my inhaler steroid use has halved since I started buteyko. I have long stretches of time where I have no symptoms at all for the first time in years. I don't feel scared all the time, it's now just something I have to manage. And I guess it's this last thing that to me is so priceless. I understand what's going on and what I can do about it.

So I don't want to be pusher or peddler of cures and magic tonics but I wonder how different my life might have been if I had learned buteyko when I was a kid. Not even as a 'cure', but just as a better way to breathe, to think about and understand breath. And now that I'm tuned into it I see people everywhere using their mouths instead of their noses, breathing too fast and shallow and I wish they knew too.