Asthma
The two major components of asthma are bronchospasm and inflammation
of the airways
Bronchospasm
The bronchioles are the tiny end branches of the respiratory tract.
These little tubes carry air into the sac-like alveoli where the gas
exchange between air and blood takes place. The alveoli are very tiny, a
pair of lungs containing some 500 billion of them. In the walls of the
bronchioles you find the smooth muscle standing guard at the entrance to
the alveoli. Its function is to regulate the amount of air going into
the alveoli in order to even out ventilation throughout the lungs. In
asthmatics the baseline shortage of carbon dioxide pushes the
bronchioles near to a state of closure, making them twitchy and quick to
react to any further momentary increase in breathing. A stressful
thought, a stressful allergen or even a hearty laugh can push them over
the edge. So when your doctor asks you to take a deep breath and blow
into a spirometer or peak flow meter, you shouldn’t be surprised if
you end up with an asthma attack. In fact, the instrument is really
measuring your lungs’ ability to respond to over breathing. The lungs
of asthmatics have bronchioles that are particularly good at doing their
job. For this reason, according to the Buteyko theory, these tests are
not considered useful indicators of disease.
Inflammation of the airways
Professor Buteyko tells us that allergic inflammation of the lungs is
the result of a malfunctioning immune system. This is the consequence of
the biochemical disturbances caused by an abnormally low level of carbon
dioxide. Your immune system is a finely tuned biochemical warfare
mechanism designed to seek out invaders and destroy them. It has to
distinguish between invaders that will cause you harm and the harmless
material you get in your blood after a meal, or some pollens you may
have inhaled. The immune system cannot function properly if its
biochemical building blocks are disturbed. People who have abnormal
allergic reactions have an immune system which is failing to perform its
functions correctly. In the case of arthritis, the disorder causes the
body’s immune system to turn on itself. In asthmatics the immune
system has trouble differentiating between serious and harmless foreign
material. That’s why harmless pollens can cause inflammation of the
airways, triggering hay fever or even asthma in people who breathe too
much.
Hyperventilation
Low CO2
Profound Biochemical Disturbance
Malfunctioning
Immune system
Allergic response - inflammation
of the airways, eczema...