2008
Our son had to go again for the only treatment that we knew helped so far. He went for TBM treatment every two weeks but this time it did not seem to help as much as it did in the past. Our time was consumed by checking which things he was sensitive to and talking with the Chiropractor. We discussed different ideas, which books to read and what types of diets to follow. Our discussions helped us to understand the impacts of daily activities on us. The team of chiropractors helped us in many ways not just with our son. There was an open minded approach to what could solve the issues we had in front of us at different moments in time.
We changed our diets completely. We stopped processed food and we followed the alkaline diet, stopped dairy, meat, eggs. We thought we were going to miss important elements in our diet and it turns out that we have discovered a new world of food most of which is alive. The food is alive not dead! The only thing we were not sure about was fruit because it was not considered a very major element in the “Ph Miracle”. We got rid of it anyway. The “Ph Miracle” is very much a vegetable based live-food diet that was a radicle change in what we ate and we reacted more to changing our diet than we ever did to moving country. Our body and food are so close to our identity and source of certainty and enjoyment that a change of this nature is difficult. We all cried a little bit saying “goodbye to ‘our’ food!”. We were strict about implementing the diet for the whole family but it was hard. We read at least 5 books on the subject, the main concept was the same but the foods that they suggested were different in different books and it left us confused and stressed. To check to if either foods were alkaline or not, we had to choose one book as a reference which was the reference book “Ph Miracle” and work with that and to check if “we” were alkaline we had to check our urine with litmus test ph strips. It was hard, we had a tough atmosphere around the house and our son was sicker all the time so the diet was being implemented in a crash way. For three weeks, our son was good, he was much better. Then he got sick again, various spasms and his recovery period was slowing again and we were becoming desperate. How can we try so hard and the results are not coming? So every spare minute was searching the Internet searching for answers, possibilities, solutions – anything that could lead us to an relief and with hope an end to all these sufferings.
In all of years, we were denying the word, the possible consequences and ideas of “asthma” but it seems like he was getting worse no matter what we tried – we were back to the admission that this could be asthma (we didn’t really know what that meant). So there was acceptance and now a search for the solutions to asthma. The results of the searches in the Internet were scary, the medicines, the side-effects, the damage to the lungs. Where do we start? The traditional medicine and their drugs did not help so where, where, where? The idea that he could be under strong medicine and treatment everyday for the rest of his life was like a knife in the heart.
During the time of caring for our son, my wife when lying with him, as many of the spasms would be an night, would often close his mouth and this had been happening for a couple of years. She had been doing this because it seemed to help during these situations. Then watching the kids, in her own head she had the idea of “breathing” come into her mind. The search began for breathing. She searched for any word related to breathing, breathing correctly, asthma and a few pages came up of which one page talked about the Buteyko Method. This time she decided to open it, she had actually seen it in the previous days but not opened it because she didn’t know how to relate to the word. The page made a relationship between breathing and asthma. From one of the pages of Asthma Care there was a download for a manual to go through the breathing correctly for kids talking about big breaths and small breaths and how good and bad they are for us. She felt it was right and went through the manual with the kids and gave her contact details to Asthma Care to have more information. That was a Thursday and the day after she received a mail saying that there was a course in Dublin on the Saturday and there were a few places left, two days later. It had to be done.
Saturday, she and our son went into Dublin City Center @ 14.00 for the Buteyko Course with our son who was very bad, wheesing, hyperventilating and he wasn’t able to run. The teacher asked to talk about our son and the situation, after the explanation, the teacher looked at him and said, ” Yes, he is a chronic hyperventilator!”. The teacher, Patrick, started with what asthma actually is. Asthma is a defence mechanism that the body puts in place when we over-breathe. Once we get rid of the cause of over-breathing, we get rid of the asthma symptoms. Once we learn how to breathe the normal amount of air, the body no longer has a need to defend itself – therefore the symptoms no longer appear. There is a new concept of the role of Carbon Dioxide in the body. We normally see CO2 as a waste gas but according to Buteyko we need a certain amount of C02 in our body approximately 6%. The carbon dioxide is a tranport mechanism for the oxygen in our bloodstream. We need the C02 to bring the oxygen to the different places in our body.
There is a simple test to check if we are breathing correctly on an everyday basis.
“The percentage of Co2 in our lungs can correlate with the number of seconds that we can hold our breath”. 60 seconds is ideal amount of time to be able to our breathe and we are in good health from Buteyko’s metric.
Our son took the test and the first time he took it, he was able to hold his breath for 8 seconds. We now knew how far our son was from health in that moment. A bad result but a starting point.
The course showed several ways to breathe the correct amount and that we always breathe through our nose for several beneficial reasons. At the end of the course, my wife was convinced that this was the solution and she started working with him 3 times a day to see where this could bring us.
Straight after the course, our son was already better. The first night was the first time that he did not snore. Very quickly, there were great improvements.
They strictly implemented the exercises everyday for the rest of the year. Every time that he did have an asthma attack, it was brought under control very quickly. He reduced the number of attacks. The more the control pause increased, the less attacks he had.
By September, he was good enough to go back to swimming and begin participating in life again. Attacks became milder and milder. The exercises were done for the rest of the year. He went back to school. They worked 3 times a day, he got very well in comparison to before.
We had also discovered that the night time was the worst. What could we do about it? The answer was simple and effective. Surgical tape with both ends folded over on the month so that breathing only happens through the nose. It prevented a lot of the 5 in the morning episodes triggered by over-breathing with the mouth open. The situation was now manageable!
Breathe Correctly 