JANET WINTER

ME/CFS/fibromyalgia asthma hayfever anxiety snoring sleep apnoea

  • BREATHING EDUCATION (BUTEYKO)
    • Breathing assessment
    • Buteyko course
    • How I help – About Buteyko breathing
    • Disordered breathing
    • Symptoms of disordered breathing
  • POSTURAL ALIGNMENT THERAPY (EGOSCUE)
    • Postural alignment therapy (Egoscue): conditions treated
  • Success Stories
    • Asthma allergies sinusitis
    • Anxiety panic stress
    • Snoring sleep apnoea insomnia
    • ME/CFS
    • Dysfunctional Breathing

The microbiome in asthma and ME/CFS

July 20, 2015 by info@breathingremedies.co.uk Leave a Comment

foxgloves

 

 The microbiome, the nose, the gut and good health

The “microbiome” or microbes that live in us or on us, is a huge area of research interest for many health areas. There are ten times more microbes -mainly bacteria, fungi  (yeasts/molds) and viruses in our guts and on our skins than there are cells in our bodies (thought the microbes are tiny and only make up about 2% of us by weight).
Some microbes can be very beneficial to us, helping provide vitamin K for example, and helping to keep bad microbes at bay. However, microbes can get to parts of the body where they should not be, or the wrong type of harmful microbe can take over where beneficial ones should be (overuse of antibiotics can be a factor here).

Gut microbiome disturbance or gut flora imbalance

There is a lot of interest particularly for ME/CFS, where candidiasis, or a yeast overgrowth in the digestive system can either be a cause of ME/CFS, or at least closely mirror the symptoms. Research into replacing the harmful with healthy gut flora by faecal transplant from healthy donors has raised some eyebrows, but it does make sense. There are some useful links on the microbiome and ME/CFS  and enterovirus and candidiasis

Nasal microbes

But today I am concentrating on the nose, or more specifically microbes in the upper respiratory tract. It seems that colonisation with the right type of microbes can help keep harmful ones at bay. Harmful ones can include molds – many people with asthma can have mold allergies, especially if they have been living in very damp unhealthy conditions. However, some people can remain chronically sick even when they move away from these unhealthy conditions with mycotoxins still detectable in their urine; their airways may actually be colonised with harmful molds, possibly as a naso-sinus fungal biofilm, which continue to produce mycotoxins and cause health problems.
As well as causing respiratory problems, mold colonisation in the respiratory tract may be a factor in ME/CFS in some people.
An altered respiratory microbiome may also have a role to play in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Recent studies looking at bacterial colonies in the nose and sinus have shown that there are 7 main types colonising humans, mostly harmless, but between 20-50% of people have the staphylococcus (which may be antibiotic resistant MRSA) type which are potentially harmful. This infection may go unnoticed until it gets into a surgical wound (a huge issue in hospitals) where cause serious problems can occur through infection; from abscesses, blood poisoning, and destruction of heart valves and bones. Current research is focusing on ways of replacing the harmful bacteria with beneficial ones -possibly by nasal spray –which can then compete out the MRSA and help avoid serious infections during surgery.
A normal birth may help protect babies by colonising their respiratory and digestive systems with beneficial bacteria from the mother’s birth canal. The lack of these beneficial bacterial may be one reason that babies born via caesarean section are more likely to have asthma and other chronic health conditions.

So it is best to breathe through your nose; as well as warming, humidifying and filtering the air your breathe, as well as making enzymes and gases that can help clean up the air your breathe, a healthy nose contains lots of beneficial microbes that may outcompete the harmful ones, this could make it less likely the harmful ones will infect you.

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Self-improvement is a big job. Breath retraining requires personal discipline and effort.

January 10, 2015 by info@breathingremedies.co.uk Leave a Comment

Yes, self-improvement is about awareness and sticking with it, it’s not just for January.

I love this inspirational quote from Doe Zantamata:real self improvement

Self-improvement is a big job.

It’s like rebuilding a house. Some things need a little touch up, some could use repair, and sometimes a whole section needs to be torn down and rebuilt.

But it can’t just be non-stop work.

You need rest. A good meal. A day off to enjoy the sunshine or just do fun stuff without thinking much at all.

It may feel like you want to just get everything fixed right now but you’ve got to be patient with yourself and step back and admire all the work you’ve done and are doing along the way.

That’s the only way to stay encouraged for the long haul.

Real and lasting self-improvement is a lifetime achievement, not an overnight success.

-Doe Zantamata

 

And here is a real-life story of someone I know that mirrors much of this. Sticking with it is certainly a theme here too. Steve Darch, a breathing educator colleague has kindly allowed me share his story of:

Recovery from Chronic Asthma, COPD stage 2 and Bronchiectasis

“I played 36 holes of golf yesterday on a very hilly course and carried my clubs despite it being very wet and muddy underfoot.
I was never at any point out of breath, my energy and concentration levels were good and woke up this morning with no aches and pains!!

If five ýears ago having been hospitalised on a regular basis and diagnosed with Chronic Asthma, COPD stage 2, Bronchiectasis and taking every medication ever invented someone had told me I was going to be able to do this I would have laughed in their face.

I believe that my healing process is still continuing and although getting older I feel younger and more energetic by the year.

I can 100% put this down to correcting my breathing.

Since changing my breathing I have lost around three stone and maintained this loss (three years) despite at times not eating or drinking as I should. Coming off medication and in particular steroid medication and reduced emotional eating improved my digestive system as well. (NB never come off medications without your doctor’s consent, as this could be dangerous. Steve could only reduce his medications because his condition had improved).

I still monitor my breathing on a regular basis but have learnt to enjoy the breathing exercises and these are now built into my daily lifestyle.

I have been signed off by my NHS Consultant and my lung function continues to improve.

At the same time I have seen a huge reduction in lung infections, coughs, allergies, flu etc.

This did not happen overnight!!!

From observing my clients many expect unrealistic changes to happen quickly and give up on their breathing exercises too quickly because it can be hard work and involves personal discipline and effort.

I believe change happens slowly and gradually and we sometimes forget how far we have moved forward since changing our breathing.

If we also consider with ageing and continuous medication how our health might be now if still hyperventilating the changes for me have been massive”.

He is not surprisingly passionate about helping others. Steve’s Natural Breathing Training website.

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About me/ contact

You can sign up to Breathing Remedies newsletter here. Information on posture and breathing and how they affect health.

Or phone me 01663 743055 (Dr Janet Winter)

 

Hello, I am Janet,  a  Breathing educator, (Buteyko Breathing Method) and I help people recover from asthma, allergies, sinusitis, anxiety, sleep problems, headaches, IBS chronic fatigue (ME/CFS) and more, by improving their dysfunctional breathing. Both myself and my teenage son have recovered from ME/CFS, and I want to help more people with these devastating illnesses.

You can contact me here (please leave phone number, landline preferably: 

What I do

Louise Bibby - CFS Coach, Blogger, Author

Louise Bibby – CFS Coach, Blogger, Author

Here is a very brief (3.5 mins) audio introduction to the Buteyko method and DEEP BREATHING; part of an hour-long interview with CFS coach Louise Bibby in Australia – the full interview will be available on her “Get up and go Guru”
site
soon.

Breathing education gently retrains a disordered breathing pattern and helps people naturally recover from breathing-related health problems.

I trained to be a Breathing Educator with Jennifer Stark and Savio D’Souza. Jennifer has been teaching Buteyko for almost 20 years and conducted several of the successful asthma clinical trials of the Buteyko method in the West. (The Buteyko Method relieves asthma symptoms, and has been listed in the UK Asthma Guideline since 2008).
I am a member of the Buteyko Breathing Educators Association and am fully insured.

I am also a qualified postural alignment specialist (PAS) trained by Nicole Lourens of the Egoscue University. Good posture is essential for good breathing and proper function in general.

egoscue023You can find a great summary of Egoscue here.

My background

I had been involved in healthcare/biomedical research for 30 years although previously in a very different role: before training as a Breathing educator, I spent 20 years in drug discovery looking for new painkillers for a major pharmaceutical company based in a London Institute.
I worked as a neuroscientist and cell biologist, directing a team of bench scientists. (So I am not a medical doctor but I have a PhD in Neuroscience) I authored or co-authored more than 50 journal articles and reviews on my research. I have also worked as a medical writer, so have a firm grounding in evidence-based medicine. My professional profile can be seen here on LINKEDIN.

Why I became a breathing educator

If you are reading this because you have CFS/ME, I know what you are going through. I know what it is like to hold onto a job by my fingernails, worried about how we would feed the family if I lost my job, come home and eat and sleep and spend my weekend recovering.
I had no social life. I was lucky to quickly get to a consultant who diagnosed me with candidiasis, and anti-fungals and a yeast and sugar-free diet helped a lot, but not enough.
I felt I had been “written off” and had nothing to offer. I was a mum, partner and employee with massively reduced physical and mental output compared with previously. I suspected my symptoms were “stress related” but they did not ease when I left my stressful job and moved out of London to the countryside.
For me (after trying many different avenues, cranial osteopathy, chiropractic, mercury amalgam filling removal and more – I became a “fat-folder patient”), breathing education worked, it was a big missing piece of my health puzzle, and one I had frankly never considered.

Changing my breathing back to a more normal pattern really helped me. One definition of stress is “anything that makes you breathe more”. And I know now that breathing too much can actually deplete the body of oxygen. And stress can be emotional or physical. Looking back on my history I can clearly see my own physical and emotional stresses accumulating, from a very traumatic bereavement, on-going work and family stresses, then a really bad summer respiratory infection and cough that was not shifted by two different antibiotics (but they probably contributed to unbalancing my gut flora, hence the fungal overgrowth/candidiasis).

A cough seems to be one of the best ways to mess up your breathing pattern, and many of my clients tell me “I was fine until I had that cough/chest infection, and I never really got my health back!!” The breathing centre in the brain gets to think that big volume breathing is normal and unless you know about it, it is sometimes hard to recover. Luckily you CAN retrain your breathing by doing a series of gentle exercises and making some life style changes, and you CAN have hope of better health.
So that is why I do what I do and why I am passionate about it; I found a way to improve my chronic fatigue by better breathing and I trained as a breathing educator so I could help others with this devastating disease. There is so little help out there for them (you?).

Then chronic backache made good breathing impossible, and I discovered postural alignment therapy (Egoscue) to help with that. And I am still amazed at the progress I am making -it’s wonderful to have decreased pain and increased function when I had accepted decline at my age was inevitable. It’s not!



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Recent Posts

  • Breathing quotes; why it might be worth learning to breathe well…
  • Is yoga breathing damaging your health?
  • The importance of nasal breathing: 11 reasons to breathe through your nose
  • ME/CFS, POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome), joint hypermobility, teenagers and anxiety
  • Smiling and snoring; humming, posture and sinusitis.
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  • The microbiome in asthma and ME/CFS
  • Self-compassion to reduce the stress response in ME/CFS/SEID
  • Is ME/CFS/SEID linked to disordered breathing/overbreathing/hyperventilation?
  • A new name “systemic exertion intolerance disease” (SEID) for ME/CFS?
  • Self-improvement is a big job. Breath retraining requires personal discipline and effort.
  • ME/CFS/fibromyalgia/anxiety: are you stuck in fight or flight?
  • How did we get a disordered breathing pattern/hyperventilation in the first place?
  • Better breathing enhances sports performance
  • How hyperventilation harms: part 3 hyperventilation can unbalance the blood gases and reduce transfer of oxygen from the blood to the organs and tissues that need it.
  • How hyperventilation harms: part 2 hyperventilation can narrow the blood vessels and reduce blood and oxygen supply.
  • How hyperventilation harms: part 1 hyperventilation can narrow the airways.
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  • I know how to breathe or I would be dead wouldn’t I? –5 Interesting responses I have had when I tell people that I am a breathing educator!
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  • The disease of deep breathing? Three dysfunctional breathing patterns; have you got one?
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  • Seven reasons why you should always breathe through your nose

latest tweets

  • Mouth breathing in children can be harmful. This can help you assess it. https://t.co/GTFekOuzkD https://t.co/GTFekOuzkD Yesterday at 08:36
  • Ecstatic to see this breathing article in the Guardian. Mary Birch is a very experienced Buteyko breathing educator… https://t.co/scqHG0yax3 February 19, 2019 20:36
  • Ok it’s funny, but it is also a good demonstration of breathing dysfunction known as “paradoxical breathing” where… https://t.co/gmG7iDPKAk February 17, 2019 17:07
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Tags

abdominal breathing asthma belly breathing blocked nose breathless bronchodilation carbon dioxide chest breathing chronic cough cough deep breathing diaphragm dizzy fibromyalgia fight or flight hyperventilation ME/CFS nose orthostatic intolerance oxygen poor circulation red alert self compassion sinusitis threat yoga breathing
Asthma allergies sinusitis

Asthma allergies sinusitis

Anxiety stress panic

Anxiety stress panic

Snoring sleep apnoea insomnia

Snoring sleep apnoea insomnia

Sports performance

Sports performance

Facial development/ crooked teeth

Facial development/ crooked teeth

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