I saw someone on hexbear mention it a while ago, and went on my own research rabbit hole. It seems pretty cool, and I believe it could cure diseases and increase health in general, it’s just hard. The jist is a Soviet doctor named Buteyko realized breathing less and increasing CO2 in one’s body can greatly improve health. His method is to do lots of breath exercises, stay active, and eat healthily. I’ve been doing 15 minutes of exercises everyday for a few weeks, but it’s slow, and my control pause is a terrible 9 (probably part of why I’m always tired. Fuck school for making me wake up at an unnatural time and making me sit so long). The people around me irl that I’ve mentioned it to seem to think it’s too hard or a waste of time. For better or worse, I’m also a modernist, believing in human “perfectibility” with the right conditions and influences.
https://www.reddit.com/r/buteyko/comments/c8px11/start_here_intro_faq_of_rbuteyko/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Meditation/comments/fjh47l/a_buddhist_monks_experience_with_buteyko/
What do you think? Is it legit? Do any of you practice?
It’s absolutely not legit at all. This is pseudoscientific woowoo, and can potentially be dangerous. As far as it being an attempt to change and perfect your body, this is the same as the weird “mewing” trend in that it appears to do something in a way that might convince you that you’re progressing in some way, but the actual thing happening has absolutely nothing to do with your goal. Mewing teaches you to hold your tongue high for a time period in the hopes that it will somehow magically make you have a stronger jawline permanently, but it functionally cannot do anything of the sort. Here, you’re just learning to do weird movements and breath-holding, this is in no way improving your breathing.
The only evidence-based outcome anyone has found for Buteyko breathing in the last 70 years is that it can have a slight impact on a couple of asthma symptoms leading to a reduction of need for bronchodilator use without actually improving lung function, but does not affect the cause of those symptoms. If you’re not an asthmatic who wants to reduce their inhaler use, science has not substantiated any of the many claimed other positive effects.
I know anecdotal evidence isn’t the most legitimate, but do you think the testimonies are lies? Also, there seems to be some data backing it up. I saw a study that it can decrease anxiety. Maybe not cure a bunch of diseases. Mouth breathing seems to be agreed to cause the harm they claim. Has it been really tested recently?
Maybe this is an appeal to nature fallacy, but the difference between this and mewing, as I think about it, is that we would’ve been hold our doing the tongue thing for a while if it actually worked, whereas Buteyko is more like how people breathed during most of our species’ existence, eating in that way and being way more active.
I’m sorry, soviets had brilliant dicks like Lysenko too, this sounds like prime time bullshit
Funnily enough, Lysenko was an early epigenetics advocate, a field that it is gaining steam recently.
That’s true, im still not sure though
At best this is pseudoscientific garbage that will do absolutely nothing for you. At worst… THIS WILL KILL YOU IF YOU ACTUALLY FOLLOW HIS “RESEARCH”.
Increasing CO2 in the body will cause a condition called hypercapnia which forces cells to desperately drag out energy from carbohydrates in the absence of oxygen, also known as fermentation. This has two major and devastating effects, one, your blood will become acidic and trigger a condition called acidosis, which will cause severe organ damage, brain damage, and tissue damage which will lead to cardiac arrest, muscle and bone deterioration, lung damage, among a laundry list of other symptoms. Secondly, your brain cells will die off from lack of adequate oxygen diffusion, and you will experience confusion, fatigue, paranoia, seizures, and eventually brain death or cardiac arrest.
CO2 is a waste product. Your body is trying to get rid of it. Do you think you’ll have any benefits from holding your poop in?
If he was correct, then why has there been no follow up research from any reputable institution, university, or laboratory? He was a known quack in the Soviet Union and Russia for this idea. You know what will help you? Just exercising and living healthy.
The entire point of science is that it can be replicated and analyzed. Many have tried to follow his ideas and they have all failed to replicate his claims.
His claims are also completely asinine. Do you know what the Bohr effect is? It’s the process that your body uses to request MORE oxygen. Not less. If you don’t get enough oxygen then you build up lactic acid through fermentation, which makes your muscles hurt in order to prevent you from over exerting yourself and hurting yourself.
They say the acidity increases oxidation with the acidity. I have not had the chance to look into the clinical results and stuff, but I just found this. Would you say people think the method works because they are just so healthy in general with diet and exercise, as opposed to the breathing exercises?
Yes. The human body increases oxidation itself with constant exercise and proper breathing. When the body undergoes exercise, it’ll eventually hit a wall where it cannot get enough oxygen, so cells begin to ferment and create lactic acid to slow you down to not hurt yourself. However, with enough time, your body will become more efficient at the various process that allow oxygen to pass into cells, allowing you to go further and do more. The acid does not cause this.
This is why athletes are banned from breathing pure oxygen before races, or getting quick blood transfusions of oxygenated blood.
He’s trying to claim that it’s his laughable “breathing exercises” doing this.
Second, those studies are all but useless. I read through a handful, and they would barely qualify for a conceptual piece. The most up to date one is a small study from 1998 with 38 people, that is laughable and obsolete in the realm of science. They are also trying to sell their “program”. They are frauds. Don’t waste your time.
Just go exercise once a day and don’t bother with the waste of time.
And lastly, if it was real. Why isn’t every Olympics team doing this? Why aren’t China, Russia, and the US training their soldiers and cosmonauts to do this? It’s a scam.
That’s fair, I suppose “you have to do all the other lifestyle stuff too” is the equivalent of “you still need to tie your camel and not rely on allah.”
Exactly.
Buteyko is telling you to tie your camel, then claiming that is is Allah that made it so your camel didn’t run away, and not the very obvious rope.
Remember you can be honest and still wrong. “Feelings” you get are not science based medicine. The placebo effect is very strong indeed.
I don’t have time to look into it right now, but a lot of times preliminary studies that are not decisive will sometimes be forwarded as evidence when it’s really not. Also, there are for-profit journals where you can publish junk science (I mean all journals are for profit. But at least some of them try to do good science. At any rate, there are definitely journals that do not give a shit about science and are just there to make money. This is, of course, a problem with capitalism, but we’re talking about science right now.)
No it is not. Please be aware that the way your body naturally breathes is just fine unless you have a very well-known breathing condition.
I’m sorry, but this is junk science through and through.
I was going to look more into the evidence eventually.
I did notice on one study they claimed as evidence it just said five minutes of breath work (but not Buteyko) made people happier than meditation (that’s obviously too short for actual meditation).