I regularly sleep with my mouth taped shut. I’m not being held hostage. Nor does my husband have odd tendencies in that direction. It isn’t even to stop me snoring, though apparently it has that welcome side effect. The nightly ritual of sticking micropore tape over my lips is part of my latest attempt to put an end to asthma.

I’ve never had a full-blown asthma attack, but I’ve been wheezy for the past ten years. I’ve blamed the cats, exhaust fumes and house dust, but fastidious vacuuming, living by the sea and banishing cats from the bedroom have made no difference. When I consulted my GP, I was surprised to hear her call it asthma and prescribe me a Ventolin inhaler. Then that was upgraded to a steroid inhaler. Suddenly I was on serious medication, just to cope with my wheezes.

I still couldn’t pinpoint what was triggering my episodes, although they did get slightly worse when I was stressed, and I became increasingly alarmed at how frequently I needed to use my inhaler, sometimes more than twice a day. It was at this point, last July, that I decided to search for alternative solutions.

That’s how I found the Buteyko method, devised in the 1950s by the Russian medical scientist Dr Konstantin Pavlovich Buteyko. He had noticed that sick people tend to breathe more often and more deeply, especially as they became more ill. Could overbreathing be contributing to their problems? He felt that it was and compiled a list of 150 conditions, including asthma, that could be reversed by breathing less.

The Buteyko theory rests on the assumption that overbreathing increases the amount of oxygen and reduces the amount of carbon dioxide in the body, and this can trigger an asthma attack (see below). In our respiratory cycle we breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, which is a waste product of metabolic reactions. Rising carbon dioxide levels in the blood stimulate breathing.

Hence, the Buteyko theory sounded counter-intuitive, as we normally associate high oxygen levels and low carbon dioxide levels with good health. But a scientific trial published last year in the journal Thorax showed that asthma sufferers using the Buteyko technique were able to reduce their need for inhalers significantly. I decided to give it a try.

My quest took me to the country home of the former Olympic canoeist Suzy Brandwood, now a full-time Buteyko practitioner. When she retired from competitive sport in her early twenties, years of rigorous training came to an abrupt end and she began to develop asthma. “By the time I was in my early thirties I was taking more and more medication. I wasn’t sleeping well and I was tired most of the time.”

She read about Buteyko and threw herself into its training regimen. “I was determined to be the best.”

Rule one is simple: keep your mouth shut to prevent carbon dioxide from leaking out. This is where mouth taping comes in. Taping at night is essential, and you may think that you breathe through your nose while awake, but spending a day taped up (not easy to arrange unless you’re a hermit) can change that view. “You find out where the leaks need plugging,” says Brandwood, who claims that she can breathe through her nose while speaking. “Babies breathe through their noses naturally. And both the Queen and Tony Blair are good nose-breathers.”

Different types of minerals are also important. Brandwood claims that magnesium relaxes the airway muscles.

She hands me a bag of brown natural salt that is more rock than crystal and instructs me to take a quarter of a teaspoon in hot water each day. It tastes rather like Bovril and is not unpleasant, if you like Bovril. But the real meat of Buteyko lies in a programme of exercises designed to train the body to breathe less often and less deeply. The exercises are easy, but to make good progress you have to do it for more than an hour-and-a-half a day.

And there’s the rub. This is not a quick fix. “My ideal students are young and focused, or retired, with plenty of time on their hands,” says Brandwood. I don’t fall into either category and 90 minutes every day proved too much. Brandwood agreed that I should aim for a manageable 40 minutes of reduced breathing.

Nine months on from doing the course, I now do the breathing only when I’m feeling wheezy. Instead of reaching for the inhaler when I become short of breath, I take a moment and do some shallow breathing. Knowing that I can cope with my breathlessness has given me a feeling of empowerment, as if I’m in control of my asthma. Perhaps as a result of this, not only do I use my inhaler less but I also feel wheezy less often.

My final recommendation? If your partner snores, try taping up his or her mouth. You might enjoy a quiet night’s sleep.

What is it?

Buteyko breathing technique focuses on shallow nasal breathing, with slow exhalations and pauses between each breath.

Claims
Low carbon dioxide produces the symptoms of asthma. When carbon dioxide levels fall, the airways constrict. The Buteyko theory argues that we “leak” CO2 every time we breathe, cough or speak. Buteyko reduces breathing and keeps carbon dioxide levels high.

Contact
Buteyko practitioner Suzy Brandwood: www. buteykobreathewell.co.uk, 01295 788044; the Buteyko Institute of Breathing & Health, www.buteyko.info

Cost
Adult, £390; children/concessions, £350; and family group, £590. Courses last a day, or can be split into shorter sessions. The cost includes follow-up phone calls and e-mails.

WHAT’S THE EVIDENCE? DR TOBY MURCOTT

Can the Buteyko technique help asthma?
There is considerable testimony from asthma patients that it can, and a small number of clinical trials to back that up.

Is the research saying yes?
Not quite. A review of these and four other clinical trials, published in 2005, concluded that the different methods meant that these studies were difficult to compare.

What about the carbon dioxide?
There has been some suggestion that the Buteyko technique trains the body to respond differently to carbon dioxide, which could help asthmatics to breathe more easily. This has been examined in a trial of ten patients in New Zealand, published in 2001. Patients with exercise-induced asthma were encouraged to exercise and either breathe normal air or air containing high levels of carbon dioxide. The researchers found that breathing high levels of carbon dioxide did not prevent asthma attacks.

Toby Murcott is a former BBC science correspondent

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