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| Breathing Exercises for Asthma Patients |
An Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality recently conducted a research and what they concluded in their report is: “it depends.” Depends on what? Well, depends upon the type of exercise a patient follows. Yes, there are many; some of which are found effective in reducing asthma severity and some are NOT PROVED to be working quite well till now.
The researchers tested 22 randomized studies of breathing techniques. Generally these breathing were categorized within hyperventilation-reduction techniques, yoga breathing exercises, insspiratory-muscles training, etc. etc. Now, we are going in detail with each of these categories but we’ll discuss something useful here. Among these, the hyperventilation-reduction technologies were found to be working to some extent than the others.
Hyperventilation, the rapid anxious breath that makes you breathless, can be minimized via various reduction techniques. One is the Buteyko technique (not a technical name; Dr. Konstantin Buteyko of Russia, developed it in 1952). According to it, you have to breathe shallowly and slowly through the nose, breaking a vicious cycle of rabid, gasping breaths, airway constriction and increased wheezing. At first, it is a little hard to do but with practice it becomes habit. Why should you try? This technique has been found to reduce medication of the patients by 75%.
About the yoga practices and the aspiratory training techniques, there haven’t been found any proof that these actually work. Still, many suggest that asthma patients with intensive training of asthma-targeted yoga techniques may be benefitted.
