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Millions of people are already living with the consequences of the asthma time bomb. How soon millions more feel its effects depends on the success of the pharmaceutical companies. The more asthma drugs their sales teams manage to sell, the bigger the bomb. The stronger they are, the sooner it explodes.
In ‘A Quarter of a Million Voices’ published in February 2005, Asthma UK states that there are 55,000 children with asthma in Wales alone. In Britain as a whole there are an estimated 1.1 million. From my own experience, I know that many of these are taking medication so strong that there is little more that can be done for them. Where do they go from here?
The very drugs that proved so effective in providing asthma relief have been abused and over used to such an extent that they now threaten the lives they are supposed to save. Wonderful for emergency relief, as on going maintenance asthma treatment, these same drugs exacerbate the condition. They are thus self-perpetuating. The more you take, the more you need.
It doesn’t matter how many you do take, sooner or later they become ineffective. To combat this, the pharmaceutical companies invent stronger drugs. When these fail, they search around for something even more potent, or combine them with other drugs, to stave off the problem for a while longer.
What they don’t do, because they can’t, is cure the asthma. They can’t cure it because not only do they not address the cause of the disease, their drugs make it worse. This is a useful side effect as far as sales go, but not so good if you happen to be the unfortunate asthma sufferer.
The pharmaceutical companies don't address the cause of asthma because they can’t afford to. They won’t admit that they know what it is because they have invested huge sums of money in their drugs. Consequently, although many millions of pounds and dollars have been spent on asthma research, it is the only major disease which is on the increase in the West and the cause of which is ‘not known’.
In truth, the cause has been known in Russia since the early 1950s when a young Dr Buteyko first developed his breathing retraining method. Medical professionals in the West have known of it and worked on it since 1990 and it’s been used here in the UK since 1996. Unfortunately however, most of the general public is still unaware that what is effectively a cure for asthma even exists.
Thousands of people in the West have used the Buteyko breathing retraining method successfully, as have over a million in Russia. There are no side effects apart from an enormously improved quality of life. Not only is it drug free, it has the potential to cut down on the drugs present day asthmatics use and eliminate the need for them completely for the asthmatics of the future.
On first consideration, it would seem obvious that this life changing news would be greeted with joy. From tiny children to pensioners, millions of lives are blighted unnecessarily. For this reason alone surely the Buteyko Method should by now be available to everybody, preferably on the National Health Service.
There are many reasons why it is not. History plays a large part. Unfortunately the method was brought to the West not by Professor Buteyko himself but by his assistant. Having worked with the Professor for many years, he was an expert on the Buteyko Method, but he was not a doctor. Yet he went around ‘curing’ asthmatics the best asthma specialists had been unable to help.
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