The history of Buteyko

Russian medical scientist, Dr. K.P. Buteyko, theorised there was a profound relationship between our breathing pattern and our level of health. Many of the founding fathers of modern medicine, such as Bohr, Henderson, Holden, Priestley and Lavosier had previously reached a similar conclusion. He devised a program that retrained the involuntary breathing mechanism. No drugs or surgery were employed. Instead, a supervised training program of tailored breathing manoeuvres. Dr. Buteyko found that when patients improved their breathing, an immense variety of chronic conditions diminished in proportion.

When he formally presented his findings and a detailed theoretical explanation to the medical elite in 1960, they were outraged at the proposal of a non-medical treatment which claimed superior results. By 1967, official statistics cited over 1000 people "cured" of asthma, hypertension and other related conditions through respiratory reconditioning. The response from the medical establishment was to prohibit publication, or even lectures on the phenomenon. To this day, the vested interests of drug and surgical intervention have invariably opposed the principle of the drug-free respiratory reconditioning approach.

Despite repression from Soviet medical authorities, Dr. Buteyko’s work was supported by grateful patients, who included academics and the political elite. Athletes and the military also supported respiratory reconditioning for its facilitation of super endurance. Dr. Buteyko trained practitioners and they traveled across the country, promoting and teaching respiratory reconditioning, successfully treating tens of thousands of people.

In 1980, it was endorsed by the Ministry of Health after successful trials, but conservative medical resistance thwarted it’s general implementation. In 1990 it was introduced to Australia where published medical trials in 1994 showed that severe asthmatics reduced symptoms and their need for medication by 90%. Over ten thousand Australians have been successfully treated. The method has been featured in numerous major news articles and television documentaries. In 1994, it was introduced to the UK and was widely supported by patients, acclaimed by the media and, again, featured in several television documentaries.

Despite the support of individual medical doctors, claims of tens of thousands of patients, medical trials, news articles and even controversial television documentaries, the non-medical approach of respiratory reconditioning is ignored by "authorities."