Lucie Wood|Metro13 April 2012

Breathing lessons? What a laughable idea. Surely we've been breathing all our lives. However, inhaling and exhaling in the right way may be the key to helping the 150million asthma sufferers worldwide and it may help relieve anxiety in the rest of us.


'Bad breathing' is common in asthmatics, says Dinah Bradley, a respiratory therapist who runs a clinic in New Zealand. 'They use their chest muscles in the wrong way, they breathe through their mouths and they breathe too fast.'

Using the wrong combination of chest muscles can lead to chronic over-breathing or hyperventilation which is often lumped together under the asthma umbrella.

'We've found many breathing problems aren't actually asthma at all,' Bradley says.

In her new book Breathing Works for Asthma, she and her partner Tania Clifton-Smith outline exercises to re-train old habitual breathing patterns in the hope that symptoms like chest pain and wheezing will be reduced and controlled.

Awareness

The exercises aim to bring back a conscious awareness and are simple enough to learn; paying attention to posture and opening up the chest, relaxing muscles in the upper body to make breathing easier and strengthening the diaphragm.

At first it may seem unnatural and slightly weird to think about your breathing and to try to control it, but Bradley says four minutes a day for six to eight weeks is enough to reduce reliance on drugs and inhalers.

It's not that they are against their use. In fact Bradley says: 'The world would be a miserable place without inhalers.' But asthma education, in her opinion, has focused more on the 'wonder drugs' and not enough on alternative methods.

Asthma comes from the ancient Greek word meaning 'difficult breathing' or 'panting'. It's caused by over sensitive bronchial tubes in the lungs which become inflamed and produce mucus causing the muscle in the airway to tighten.

This makes breathing difficult - you might feel tight in the chest, have a cough and your breath might whistle in and out.

Living in a polluted city, exercise, tobacco and allergies can all provoke an attack or 'episode'. Breathing in the wrong way only increases your sensitivity to these triggers.

Reducing asthma

Yoga breathing exercises have been shown to reduce asthma, but Bradley and Clifton-Smith recommend themonly once you have learned to breathe 'properly' first.

They are critical of the 'gym culture' that encourages people to hold their stomach in to increase pelvic floor and lower back strength.

'What we are seeing is people literally using their stomach muscles as corsets,' says Bradley.

'How can normal breathing take place if the diaphragm is prevented from working in its normal way by clenching in the stomach? The gentle and efficient rise and fall of the diaphragm is blocked.'

Bradley's advice is to stretch after a work-out by lying on your back for two or three minutes and bringing the knees up to the chest to allow the abdominal muscles to loosen into a natural pattern.

Try everything that works, she says, but let the first step be 'dynamic, calm and beautiful breathing'.

Breathing Works For Asthma by Dinah Bradley and Tania Clifton-Smith. Kyle Cathie, £8.99. www.breathingworks.com

National Asthma Campaign. Tel: 08457 010203, www.asthma.org.uk

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