31 Comments
User's avatar
John Mankey's avatar

My wife and I taught the Buteyko techniques in this clinical trial, which was funded by a UK charity, National Asthma Campaign (in turn, NAC are mostly funded by Pharma): "Effect of two breathing exercises (Buteyko and pranayama) in asthma: a randomised controlled trial". Patients in Buteyko group significantly reduced their medication and their symptoms, but the trial conclusion was watered down to nothing. It was outrageous. An MP was to raise the issue in Parliament, but two days beforehand she resigned in protest at Tony Blair taking UK into war with Iraq. So it became a fringe alternative method. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12885982/

Expand full comment
John Mankey's avatar

This is our statement made at the time:

So far as scientific research goes, I taught the Buteyko method for the first UK clinical trial run by the Division of Respiratory Medicine at the Nottingham University City Hospital, which was funded by the National Asthma Campaign (now Asthma UK). Unfortunately for asthmatics, the very positive results for Buteyko are very difficult to interpret. The researchers reported that the Buteyko group's reduction in bronchodilators was an average of two puffs per day. However, you have to look very carefully through the whole article before you eventually find that the patients started with an average of two puffs per day; a 100% reduction in bronchodilators! There was no reduction in bronchodilators in the pranayamic or placebo groups.

The scientific paper, published in Thorax, did include the Buteyko group's great improvement in asthma symptom scores and the reduction in inhaled corticosteroid use. Out of twenty Buteyko participants involved in the steroid reduction phase of the study, eight patients reduced their inhaled steroid dose by 75-100% and three by 25-50%. Whilst this is almost double the improvement of the other two groups, the paper asserts that this is "non-significant.”

What we didn’t understand is why the other two groups were allowed to attempt the steroid reduction phase at all. Given that neither the placebo nor the pranayamic groups had reduced their intake of reliever medication during the first six months of the study; wouldn’t the act of then encouraging these same patients to stop taking preventative medication be tantamount to medical negligence?

Expand full comment
Andy's avatar

“… the Buteyko group's reduction in bronchodilators was an average of two puffs per day…” Gotta love Big Pharma’s math!

Expand full comment
Bill Rice, Jr.'s avatar

Off topic, but a question for Celia: Are you going to break down and read Fauci's new book? I'd love to see your book review.

I just read Alex Berenson's review. Amazingly, Alex praises Fauci for his leadership during the AIDS/HIV crisis. Alex also disses RFK, Jr. for his take on Fauci in "The Real Anthony Fauci."

I made a post and said that wasn't just RFK's assessment or view. Kennedy cited numerous scientists and journalists - like Celia Farber! - who had Fauci pegged decades ago.

Expand full comment
Celia Farber's avatar

Break down Fauci's new book? Bill, are you trying to kill me?

In all seriousness—thank you for your support. I don't engage in things like this anymore. I lost hope in Berenson a long time ago, though he is occasionally correct.

Nothing I can think of interests me less than what Anthony Fauci and Alex Berenson are saying about…the HIV/AIDS crisis, or anything else.

I lost enough of my life already.

Expand full comment
Celia Farber's avatar

Bill, I hope you understand that I APPRECIATED your comment and did not mean to be dismissive. I just have to manage all the ptsd symptoms of all the violence over all the years and it comes back when I expose myself to this stuff. But we did live to see the Fauci cult exposed and slowly decaying. I never imagined this could happen.

Expand full comment
Rob (c137)'s avatar

Yes, you and Liam Scheff visited hell and came back.

I'm glad buteyko is helping you. I too use slowed breathing to reduce anxiety and trauma from the past.

Trust yourself when you avoid things. Fauchi's book would probably piss me off. Why bother reading the lies when you already know the truth?

Expand full comment
Bill Rice, Jr.'s avatar

I understand. I want some knowledgeable people like yourself to debunk parts of Alex's review. But if you read the Reader Comments at his site, half his readers are making the same points I tried to make in my response.

Expand full comment
mo's avatar

Alex, Mr. I'll-have-what-you're-not-having.

Expand full comment
alan chapman's avatar

Yes Celia, breathing is so very significant, and in very many ways 'less is more' - for example when we slow our heart rate as if hibernating. I think you'll enjoy this:

Joe Dispenza's new film about meditation and its power to alter realities, cure cancers, and other healing beyond magic. For example so that organs can be regrown. "Coherence healing" and lots else impossible to put into words. Gill Edwards alluded to these possibilities in 1991 and in her other books. Anthony Peake and Rupert Sheldrake also offer evidence of the power of thought/consciousness to alter realities. https://sourcethefilm.org/ is free to view this weekend from Friday 21st-23rd June.

Expand full comment
Celia Farber's avatar

Very interesting. I'm going to TRY to stick to this breathing technique. It already helped me, a few hours ago. I was able to break out of an anxious/sad state.

Expand full comment
CynthiaS's avatar

That was a very interesting film. The trouble with Dispenza’s work is that - as is stated near the end - it is a threat; the power of the individual.

Expand full comment
Petra Liverani's avatar

Thanks for the reminder, I was planning to watch.

Expand full comment
Frances's avatar

Thanks. I just watched the whole film. Now I have to research Dispenza's meditation technique.

Expand full comment
alan chapman's avatar

Wonderful. Me too. I'm also working on Akashic record and crystals. There is so much to love, light and healing to explore :)

Expand full comment
Sean S.'s avatar

I have done Wim Hof and ice baths and really enjoyed the sense of euphoria and calm, but after a while the Wim Hof stuff just becomes too time consuming. When you are doing 30 seconds to 1 minute of breathing plus 3 to 4 minute breath holds for 3 or 4 rounds it just eats up too much time for me. Wim believes that hyper-oxigenation of that blood causes the PH to drop, although he readily admits that his ability to withstand the cold, etc. all comes down to mindset and belief and the cold and breathing aren't really necessary.

I have also done Buteyko breathing, and still practice it occasionally. There is a great book by Patrick McKeon called The Breathing Cure, which delves into the regulatory nature of carbon dioxide in our system. Patrick believes that most people over-breathe.

Expand full comment
CynthiaS's avatar

That’s why I stopped; too time consuming

Expand full comment
Marten's avatar

I do Wim Hof breathing protocol , 2 years now, and I can stay underwater for at least 4 minutes, and by the way I am 75 old !!!!

Expand full comment
Petra Liverani's avatar

Congratulations! Do you feel better for it?

I tried Wim Hof breathing for a few weeks but I didn't notice any difference and got bored of it. Obviously many people do feel better doing it - they'd have to otherwise they wouldn't do it.

I've been having cold showers though since October and I do find them invigorating - not sure if there's any other benefit beyond that. I'm not sure if he recommends them so much as ice baths - I might work up to them.

Expand full comment
iterating Roger W.'s avatar

Overbreathing? I think people are undersmoking!

About an hour ago I was coming back home. I've seen a woman in her 20s with a stroller and a baby in the stroller. She and the baby had a face mask on, probably because she felt that she needed protection from imaginary imaginations. She was looking at her smartphone and vaping, not paying much attention to the stroller. She would insert the electronic vaping device on the side of the face mask, because that makes sense.

I think that baby will become a great comedian in about 20 years.

I have a business idea: well fitted face masks with some plastic tubing inside connected to a vaping device in the pocket or in the hat. That way they have the other hand free to keep up with the hyper-realisitic world of social media.

The target audience for this new type of mask would be those rebellious zoomers who don't trust the government when it said the pandemic was over, and they know covid is everywhere, waiting to catch them. If only there was a vaccine!

But more importantly, the nicotine in real tobacco and the nicotine in vaping devices, is it really the same chemical?

Maybe the odd behavior of these epoch can be explained by chemicals that are not the chemicals that the "authorities" declare them they are.

Expand full comment
Chris's avatar

I got one:

“COVID is everywhere

COVID is everything

COVID is everybody

COVID is still the king”

Courtesy of the great Mojo Nixon, kinda.

Expand full comment
Petra Liverani's avatar

Oh my goodness. Who can this person be? What is going on for her?

Expand full comment
Matt Cook's avatar

I am a coach and a health researcher and Buteyko breathing saved my life. I would be dead now if not for that. I practice reduced breathing 24X7 automatically. Thanks for mentioning this incredible tool.

Expand full comment
Petra Liverani's avatar

Thanks so much for this, Celia. I've seen Buteyko referred to many times but didn't bother trying to find out what it was. Didn't realise until these videos that in essence it's pretty simple. I watched an interview with James Nestor who wrote Breath (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyLwVyJ9uXw) and I'm like, I've turned into a mouth-breather - need to do something about it. I've been mouth-taping at night off and on, however, I'd imagine that consciously practising Buteyko is probably a better approach.

Expand full comment
Andy's avatar

Wim Hoff is not an expert, he’s a celebrity. “His” “breathing method” is simply hyperventilating for a few minutes. The problem here is that CO2 (that evil gas!) is required for oxygen transfer in the blood. It’s great for short-term breath-holding. (I remember as a kid when we tried to swim underwater, we’d hyperventilate and be able to swim further.) But if you read “Breath” by James Nestor, you’ll find that—through a lot of research, unlike Hoff—raising CO2 levels, not O2, is ideal. There’s a reason “mouth-breather” is a derogatory term.

Expand full comment
Gecko1's avatar

Wait until the air tax arrives... gotta save the planet, you know:).

Expand full comment
Brent Bielema's avatar

Buteyko makes a lot of sense to me. I've had asthma since 2000 and I think I could write a book on it and COPD! I also use that pursed-lip breathing and try to develop a comfortable cadence that way while doing my daily series of interval walks. I'm really rigorous with what I eat too and take a lot of supplements. There is one called lomatium which has miraculous results, but it's not always easy to find. Used to get some from a place out west called Woodland Wildcraft or Wildcrafters. Thanks for another great exploration!

Expand full comment
mo's avatar

Wim Hof take the day off. Since Mercola's conversations with Georgi Dinkoff about the merits of CO2 I've stopped taking ice baths and swimming with Polar Bears :- )

Expand full comment
Celia Farber's avatar

Ice baths and the breathing are different, aren't they? I still do ice baths. Everybody is turning against Wim Hof. I think the truth is quantum, somehow.

Expand full comment
mo's avatar

This may be obtuse but this CO2 vs O2 thing is kinda like the position/momentum conundrum of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

Expand full comment
Celia Farber's avatar

I still don't quite get what Dinkoff is about but I listened to an interview today. He believes in Ray Peet. What else? Is he saying we need carbs?

Expand full comment