Many people with asthma would like to become less dependent on taking medication. So, any new therapy that offers the chance to do this may seem like a good idea. Physiotherapists and other health workers have used different sorts of breathing exercises for many years, to try to relieve asthma symptoms, which some people have found helpful. A recent survey found that 30% of those who responded to the questionnaire were using some form of breathing exercise to relieve their asthma. 

Buteyko 
The Buteyko breathing technique is a specific sort of breathing training, combined with advice and information on many aspects of asthma. Some people have made some rather sweeping claims that this technique can be used to 'cure' asthma, but at the moment there is no good research evidence to support this claim. However, there has been a lot of anecdotal evidence from individuals with asthma who maintain it has changed their lives. Professor Buteyko is a Russian physiologist who in 1952 theorised that overbreathing is the basic cause of asthma, linked to the pathology of the disease. Some support for this comes from a recent survey of 219 asthma patients in which it was found that a significant proportion had abnormal breathing. Buteyko suggested that overbreathing leads to a reduction in carbon dioxide levels, which makes your airways get narrower to prevent further loss of carbon dioxide. By teaching you to breathe less (i.e. slower and shallower), and to breathe through your nose (not the mouth) it is suggested that this will raise your carbon dioxide levels and thus encourage your airways to open without using medication.
Although Buteyko's techniques were used widely in the 1950's, until recently they received little attention outside Russia. The technique is now being taught to asthma patients in the UK, Europe, USA, Australia, and New Zealand. Here in the UK it is not generally available on the NHS, so you have to pay a private practitioner to learn how to do it properly. it is a technique that requires randomised controlled clinical trials of Buteyko have ever been published in recognised medical journals, so there is still a great deal of research that needs to be done before it can be recommended. 

Future research 
Dr Anne Bruton of the University of Southampton has recently been appointed to a Department of Health post-doctoral research fellowship for three years for a programme of research with the title: 'Investigations into physiological basis for Buteyko breathing training and its effectiveness as complementary therapy for patients with asthma'. The aim of the research programme is to test Professor Buteyko's theory that is breathing technique raises carbon dioxide levels. Phase one of the programme will consist of studies examining the physiological theory underlying Buteyko i.e. that people with asthma have lower blood and alveolar CO2 levels than people without asthma (even when they are well), and that people with asthma are more sensitive to increases in CO2 than people without asthma. The first of these studies will consist of recruiting 100 people with asthma and dividing them according to their disease severity into two groups (mild/moderate to severe) and 50 healthy volunteers to undergo a series of physiological measures. Phase two of the programme will consist of a randomised controlled clinical trial to evaluate the effectiveness of Buteyko. During which the effects of Buteyko will be compared with the effects of another intervention i.e. aerobic exercise. 

Equipment needed: Although some of the measures planned will make use of equipment already in the hospital, in order to carry out this research programme we need to purchase some extra equipment. in particular we need special equipment for measuring carbon dioxide levels in people's lungs, and for measuring their sensitivity to carbon dioxide.

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