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Where
There's a Wheeze, There's a Way
By SALLY MAGNUSSON,
The Herald, Scotland 10th October 1996
Dressing like a pop star, fumbling your slides, losing the thread
of your patently unplanned lecture, and getting grumpy with your
audience is not the approach best calculated to win the allegiance
of thrawn and sceptical Scots.
Indeed, it was not until the third Buteyko seminar that Christopher
Drake, the man claiming to bring a revolution in asthma treatment
to the country, began to realise there might be an art to explaining
complex and controversial ideas to the hundreds of doctors, nurses
and physiotherapists, and asthma sufferers, who turned up to hear
him. On the other hand, as someone remarked wryly after the particularly
shambolic second seminar in Glasgow, if he really were a quack he
would have dressed like a consultant, prepared a slick presentation,
and been nice to everyone.
Christopher Drake, a laid-back Australian, gives the impression
of being too convinced he's right to bother much about the arts
of persuasion. Maybe messiahs never arrive in the guise you expect.
'Just come to one of my courses and see whether it works,' he kept
saying. Dozens of people did, and I went along to watch.
What he does in these five evening workshops is to teach a gruelling
series of breathing exercises, designed to help asthmatics take
in less air and so boost their carbon dioxide levels. The theory,
developed by a Russian physician called Buteyko, is that asthmatics,
and others with different physiological weaknesses, are chronically
over-breathing. Asthma, so the theory goes, is one of the several
defence mechanisms against over-breathing; when the breathing is
shallow, the various triggers like pets and colds and dust mites
will no longer produce this excessive defence. Physiotherapists,
who spend their lives teaching people to breathe deeply, and doctors,
who tend to associate over-breathing with acute hyperventilation,
which is something quite different, are still pretty sceptical about
the whole thing. But some GPs, recognising their limitations with
this spiralling disease, have started to refer patients.
The people attending Scotland's first workshop in Glasgow had widely
varying ages, backgrounds, and types of asthma. What most of them
had in common was daily dependency on a mind-boggling array of drugs
- not just the steroid inhalers which are supposed to prevent attacks,
but symptomatic medications like Ventolin, Bricanyl, and the massively
powerful Serevent, all of which Christopher Drake claims are making
the over-breathing worse, leading the patient on to stronger steroids
in a debilitating vicious circle.
On the last evening I spoke to all but three of the 22 people who
had paid Pounds 290 for the course. All - to a man, woman, and even
child - spoke of initial scepticism giving way to surprised delight
as the symptomatic medication was jettisoned (steroids were to be
reduced later, but only in consultation with a doctor) and the wheezing
became controlled by breathing alone. They felt better, looked great,
and were facing the future with something app-roaching optimism
for what in some cases was the first time they could remember. Many
of them, at my request, kept a diary of the week. Lily Weir (39),
from Glasgow, who despite taking all the prescribed medication has
been close to death from asthma, was typical:
Day 1: I didn't know what to expect tonight. I'm not sure I understand
all the theories behind it and I find the shallow breathing very
difficult. The tutor asked me to stop taking Serevent. Mercy! But
I will. Taped my mouth up during the night to stop me breathing
through it.
Day 2: Dropped the Serevent today. Can't really say I missed it.
Came home very excited from the class tonight. At one point my chest
felt totally and utterly clear and without a wheeze, a way it hasn't
felt for years. It took me totally by surprise and I thought I was
imagining it, until I heard the lady next to me in class say to
the lady next to her. 'I feel really clear here', and point to the
lower part of her chest. The feeling lasted for about 15 minutes.
Incredible.
Day 3: Still struggling with the shallow breathing exercises, although
I caught myself doing it today at work, without trying to. Still
OK without Serevent. Took Bricanyl a couple of times, but even that's
a huge improvement. Still taking Becloforte, Volumax, and Unyphyllin.
The 'clear chest' feeling at class tonight lasted a wee bit longer.
Day 4: Didn't use Bricanyl at all today. Tried to do shallow breathing
as much as possible, even if it's only in short bursts. I think
I'm getting better at it. My breathing is definitely easier with
fewer drugs. I'm amazed. I was a wee bit cynical at the start, but
I can't deny I've made progress.
Day 5: I still find the exercises very difficult, but I feel so
much better. I now experience a clear chest in one-and-a-half-hour
bursts through the day and can successfully use the breathing method
to stop wheezing.'
Elaine Gillespie, a 17-year-old from Greenock, was on a frighteningly
high dosage of drugs. When she started the course she couldn't walk
up a flight of stairs without resting and had to travel to school,
one block away, by car. She wrote:
Day 1: Today was the first workshop and we were told about the 'maximum
pause' breathing exercise. I was a bit sceptical about this, because
it was the complete opposite of what I had been told to do in the
past and it was very uncomfortable. Instead of taking big, deep
breaths, we were told not to breathe at all!
Day 2: I didn't use any Serevent today and only needed six puffs
of Ventolin, which is great because I usually need about 45 puffs
plus two nebulisers.
Day 3: I am completely off Serevent, Ventolin, and have halved my
Uniphyllin dose. My appetite has diminished and I also have more
energy.
Day 4: Still no Serevent or Ventolin. I had an attack today when
I woke up and I did a maximum pause and shallow breathing. My breathing
returned to normal and I did not need any medication.
Day 5: No medication apart from the steroids Prednisolone and Flixotide.
I didn't have any symptoms and I catch myself shallow breathing
without thinking about it. I am really pleased with the way things
have gone this week. It is strange not to be constantly shaking
from the effects of Ventolin. I cannot see why this method seems
to be in for so much scepticism. It works, and no-one in the class
has not made an improvement.' Afterwards she told me excitedly:
'I've been asthmatic since I was 18 months old. Now I'm a healthier
colour, I sleep very well, and I'm looking forward to watching You've
Been Framed without having to go on the nebuliser every time I laugh.'
Nothing brought home to me the life-destroying misery of chronic
asthma as sharply as this picture of a teenager who couldn't watch
Jeremy Beadle without a nebuliser. It seems to me that if Christopher
Drake had succeeded merely in giving that one youngster the promise
of even a semi-normal life, he would have done enough to wipe the
floor with his critics. But I was getting similar stories from every
corner of the room. David Iles (53), from Galston, so severely asthmatic
that he had to give up work, approached the course grudgingly, and
only on his wife's insistence. He found the exercises difficult,
but surprisingly effective. By the end of the week he had reduced
his 'cocktail of eight drugs', was sleeping well, feeling better,
and reporting: 'If the improvement continues, I will be more than
delighted.'
A 40-year-old English woman who flew to Glasgow from Abu Dhabi
for the course, wrote of her fury at the National Asthma Campaign.
'Really I feel I've won the battle. It hasn't been easy, but it
worked. The NAC says it can't recommend this course as clinical
trials have not been conducted. I say, get your finger out and do
the clinical trials then, because this course certainly works better
than any poisonous drug being currently prescribed.'
Guy Nelson, from Rhu, said he felt 'fitter and healthier and more
in control of my body'. Meredith Cooper, also from Rhu, said: 'This
is the start of the rest of my life. I have been so amazed at what
this course has done for me and for everyone.' Karen Lynas (12),
from Glasgow, said: 'It's been good for me and I hope I stay this
way.'
Morna Dallas (25), from Glasgow, was amazed to find how easily
she could do without Serevent and Ventolin. She concluded: 'Feel
that I've come a good distance, but am confident I can go much further.'
Pam Duncan, from Arran, reported: 'It was terrible to be on all
that medication (Flixotide, Serevent, Uniphyllin, Zaditers, and
Bricanyl) and still it wasn't working. I will definitely persevere
with this method.'
Joanne Webster (16), from Angus, said: 'This week has been tough,
but definitely worth it.' Fiona Lyon, from Glasgow, who did the
course with her sons Alasdair (18) and Fearghas (8), reported benefits
to all three, although nasal problems had dogged Alasdair's progress.
Gillian Muir (23), from Stevenston, said: 'It has been absolutely
brilliant, amazing. I can't believe how much better I am.'
Diane Aitken, mother of Sarah Aitken (7), said she was very pleased.
An anonymous lady from Largs said it was worth any amount of money.
Mairi Stewart (23), from Glasgow, said: 'I hate doing these exercises
- I dread them. My progress hasn't been that dramatic, but I'm confident
it's getting better.'
Paul Birchard, father of Amy Birchard (9), said: 'We can't put
a price on the change in Amy. I think we now have the tools to deal
with asthma.' For all these people, the test over the next months
will be maintaining a difficult discipline without peer support
and in the teeth of colds and bad days at work. I hope to follow
their progress. But for many of them, those five days in eptember
have already meant the difference between an existence and a life.
Further workshops and seminars are continuing in Scotland. Inquiries
not to The Herald but to the Hale Clinic on 0171 631 0156
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