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

Breathing quotes; why it might be worth learning to breathe well…

August 29, 2017 by info@breathingremedies.co.uk Leave a Comment

litchfield

 

 

All the healing forces reside originally in the human breathing system.

Rudolf Steiner

 

Breath is life, words are power, diet is health.

Benedict Lust

 

Breath is the door to the heart and the soul.

Amy Leigh McCree

 

If the breathing is at all unsettled, life is not your own.

Ancestral teacher Qiu

 

For breath is life, and if you breathe well you will live long on earth.

Sanskrit Proverb

 

The nose is for breathing, the mouth is for eating.

Proverb

 

Strong emotions, feelings, STRESS and the breath

 

Breath is the pulse of the brain.

We breathe our thoughts.

Anon

 

Breath is the link between the mind and the body.

Dan Brule

 

Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts.

Thích Nhất Hạnh

 

Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Concious breathing is my anchor

Thích Nhất Hạnh

 

If you don’t get it off your chest you will never be able to breathe.

A healthy mind has an easy breath.

Anon

 

When the breath wanders the mind also is unsteady. But when the breath is calmed the mind too will be still, and the yogi achieves long life. Therefore, one should learn to control the breath.

Svatmarama, Hatha Yoga Pradipika

 

Good breathing should be quiet and gentle

The greatest luxury in life is peaceful breathing because it repairs the wounds of the cosmic soul.

Amit Ray

“Yes, they are elves,” Legolas said. “and they say that you breathe so loud they could shoot you in the dark.” Sam hastily covered his mouth.”

J.R.R.Tolkien

 

How I feel sometimes!

For years I tried to help people with simple things, such as tension relief through breathing and relaxation, but all they wanted were the drugs. They wanted to numb themselves. They did not want to face their fears or feel better through their own efforts—and they certainly did not want to be illuminated.

Gudjon Bergmann

 

It’s funny, but you never really think much about breathing. Until it’s all you ever think about.

Tim Winton

fear

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Is yoga breathing damaging your health?

April 22, 2017 by info@breathingremedies.co.uk Leave a Comment

Dr Mercola on yoga breathing “In fact, the whole field of breathing and breath-work has enormous potential for improvement, as most prevailing ideas about breathing promoted in yoga, Pilates, and meditative methods tend to focus on taking big, deep breaths — which is actually the opposite of what you should do”

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The importance of nasal breathing: 11 reasons to breathe through your nose

February 3, 2017 by info@breathingremedies.co.uk 4 Comments

Use the nose for breathing.

USE THE NOSE FOR BREATHING

The founder of the American Rhinological society, Dr Maurice Cottle, stated that the nose performs at least 30 functions, but at least 50% of modern children are permanent mouth breathers.

Why is the nose treated as an optional or redundant appendage?

Use it!

Here is a shorter list of reasons to convince you!

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Smiling and snoring; humming, posture and sinusitis.

April 10, 2016 by info@breathingremedies.co.uk Leave a Comment

smileContinue Reading

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Posture and breathing

March 7, 2016 by info@breathingremedies.co.uk Leave a Comment

breathing and posture

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Records of three better breathing success stories

November 8, 2015 by info@breathingremedies.co.uk 3 Comments

One of the hardest things about breathing education and retraining is MOTIVATION, putting in enough effort (breathing exercises and lifestyle changes) early on to make a real change your breathing pattern. A colleague calls it “time, dedication and discipline” (TD&D). Sufficient effort at the beginning means clients soon see a decrease in symptoms, (after the first day or two often getting a good night’s sleep or no longer needing asthma reliever inhalers) which motivates them to carry on, and they will soon (usually after 1-3 months) be able to taper down the amount of breathing exercises; it is not usually a big time commitment long term.Continue Reading

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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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A new name “systemic exertion intolerance disease” (SEID) for ME/CFS?

February 12, 2015 by info@breathingremedies.co.uk Leave a Comment

In the USA the Institute of Medicine (IOM) are recommending a change of name for ME/CFS to SEID or systemic exertion intolerance disease. It is controversial, as SEIDexpected, but the advisory panel recognise ME/CFS as “a legitimate, serious and complex systemic disease that frequently and dramatically limits the activities of affected individuals.”

They also recognise that ME/CFS is a physical disorder, not a psychological illness.

 

“Diagnosis of ME/CFS requires that a patient have the following three core symptoms:

 

  • A substantial reduction or impairment in the ability to engage in pre-illness levels of activities that persists for more than six months and is accompanied by fatigue—which is often profound—of new or definite onset, not the result of ongoing excessive exertion and not substantially alleviated by rest
  • The worsening of patients’ symptoms after any type of exertion—such as physical, cognitive, or emotional stress—known as post-exertional malaise
  • Unrefreshing sleep

At least one of the two following manifestations is also required:

 

  • Cognitive impairment
  • The inability to remain upright with symptoms that improve when lying down—known as orthostatic intolerance

These symptoms should persist for at least six months and be present at least half the time with moderate, substantial, or severe intensity to distinguish ME/CFS from other diseases”.

More here at the IOM website.

 

Why is a new name for ME/CFS needed?

The renaming is important because:

“• Several studies have shown that the term “chronic fatigue syndrome” affects patients’ perceptions of their illness as well as the reactions of others, including medical personnel, family members, and colleagues. This label can trivialize the seriousness of the condition and promote misunderstanding of the illness.

  • The term “myalgic encephalomyelitis” is not appropriate because there is a lack of evidence for encephalmyelitis (brain inflammation) in patients with this disease, and myalgia (muscle pain) is not a core symptom of the disease.
  • The Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee recommends the name systemic exertion intolerance disease (SEID) for this disease.

This new name captures a central characteristic of this disease— the fact that exertion of any sort (physical, cognitive, or emotional)—can adversely affect patients in many organ systems and in many aspects of their lives. To learn more, and to access the IOM committee’s proposed diagnostic criteria for ME/CFS, visit the IOM website.”

“Diagnosing ME/CFS often is a challenge, and seeking and receiving a diagnosis can be frustrating due to the skepticism of health care providers about these patients and the serious nature of their disease”

Hopefully the new definitions will help with diagnosis and end scepticism of doctors and the public (I know what you mean, I am exhausted too…)

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Better breathing enhances sports performance

November 6, 2014 by info@breathingremedies.co.uk Leave a Comment


I recently witnessed a remarkable demonstration. This amateur runner was going at full pelt on a running machine breathing calmly, and gently (pretty much

Sarah, a breathing educator, running with easy breathing and closed mouth.

Sarah, a breathing educator, running with easy breathing and closed mouth.

invisibly) with her mouth closed. She was in full control of her breathing throughout, totally relaxed before during and after the exercise.

Don coaching the Oxyathlete method

 

It was a workshop lead by Don Gordon  demonstrating part of the oxyathlete programme of Patrick Mckeown ; Elite athletes trained in Oxyathlete programmes have had increased performance of up to 2%, amateurs much more.

Background

At peak performance the majority of athletes that Don assessed (from elite, amateur or recreational) felt that their breathing holds them back, not their muscles.
Most athletes breathe badly; many have heath issues connected with bad breathing (asthma, allergies, anxiety, sleep problems)
Most have no breath training, don’t warm up lungs or diaphragm or/ have been coached to do deep breathing and/or rhythm breathing through the mouth, not the nose.

The breath training programme can deliver:

  • Better oxygen delivery
  • Faster speeds
  • Better endurance
  • Faster recovery
  • More enjoyment

 Incorrect breathing can:

  • Constrict airways making it harder to breathe
  • Constrict blood vessels reducing muscle oxygenation, speed and endurance
  • Cause lactic acid build up and fatigue
  • Increase free radicals/acidosis making injury/cramp/ pulled muscles more likely
  • Reduce training days due to more ill health

 How does it work? Optimal performance is a function of how we breathe; less breathing leads to more muscle oxygenation 

Don demonstrating cycling posture of the future; straight back, free diaphragm

Don demonstrating cycling posture of the future; straight back, free diaphragm

The first stage improves breathing at rest and is for everyone. The second stage is for all athletes when they have progressed in stage one; learning breath control during exercise with mainly nasal breathing.

The second stage involves special warm ups and cool downs while controlling the breath as well as interval training, all while breathing calmly and mostly through the nose. The controlled way this is done strikes me as safer than the interval training where the breathing is out of control and takes a long time to come back down to normal after the training session.
Then for elite athletes the third stage simulates high altitude training via breath control (more in future blog posts).

 
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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.

September 30, 2014 by info@breathingremedies.co.uk Leave a Comment

Breathing air into and out of the lungs supplies us with oxygen and gets rid of excess CO2. Air entering the lungs is oxygen rich, and the blood supply, as it passes through the lungs, picks up oxygen easily and carries it round the body attached to haemoglobin molecules in red blood cells. You can buy quiet cheaply a handy device (a pulse oximeter) that you stick your finger into and it can actually measure how much oxygen is carried on your haemoglobin (I don’t suggest you rush to buy one, results can be hard to interpret, see below). Normal oxygen saturation levels (sats) are usually considered to be between 96- 99%; people with lung damage might struggle to achieve that. However, a plentiful supply of oxygen circulating in your bloodstream and a 99% oxygen reading is not always an indicator that your body and its organs are well oxygenated. There is another step to consider;  the blood has to carry the oxygen round the body to where it is needed most and that will be where there is low oxygen – for example in an actively contracting muscle -and then the blood has to release the oxygen from the haemoglobin so it can be utilised where it is needed.  An active muscle will be rapidly metabolising and will require more oxygen, and will produce more CO2. The higher local levels of CO2 and the lowered local pH are important triggers that help to release oxygen from the haemoglobin so it can be used exactly where needed.  This is known as the Bohr Effect and has been described in physiology text books for a century.

The more you breathe, the less oxygen you get.

Unfortunately, hyperventilation (breathing more than you need for the activity you are doing) can cause loss of too much CO2 from the body (hypocapnia). There is only a tiny amount in the air we breathe, so to maintain a healthy level in our bodies, we have to retain and accumulate CO2 by breathing correctly. Breathe too much and CO2 levels can become too low, and alter the whole body biochemisty.

When CO2 levels are too low,  oxygen is not released efficiently from the blood to where it is needed.

When CO2 levels are too low, oxygen is not released efficiently from the blood to where it is needed. (Picture by V Lunn Rockcliffe)

One thing that can happen with lowered CO2 is that oxygen is no longer efficiently released from the haemoglobin in circulating red blood cells in the blood supply. Instead of the oxygen being released in the body where there is high metabolic activity, and high CO2, the oxygen sticks tightly to the haemoglobin and continues to circulate in the bloodstream, where it really can’t do any good. It is easy to see that aching muscles and brain fog and a host of symptoms could be related to low oxygenation caused by hyperventilation and unbalanced blood gases. It is very common for people to say “breathe deeply” “take big breaths for more oxygen”. In fact it is easy to get enough oxygen, air is about 21% oxygen and the cells of the body only need about 2%. Much more likely deep breathing will flush out too much CO2, air only has 0.04% and the cells of the body need about 6%. So by trying to breathe deeply for more oxygen, you can do the opposite and starve your body of oxygen. The more you breathe, the less oxygen you get.
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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.
  • Posture and breathing
  • Records of three better breathing success stories
  • 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.
  • Five health benefits of breathing with your diaphragm
  • Three more good reasons to breathe through your nose and not your mouth.
  • 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!
  • My Blog Tour – meet Viviann, Gillian and Nicola – all three have inspired me
  • The disease of deep breathing? Three dysfunctional breathing patterns; have you got one?
  • ME/CFS/fibromyalgia? You are not broken: Never give up hope, I recovered, so can you.
  • Unhealthy breathing patterns and low oxygen: link with ME/CFS and fibromyalgia?
  • Five ways that chronic cough can damage your health; and how better breathing helps
  • Do you ever feel out of breath or dizzy or exhausted after only minimal exercise? How are you breathing?
  • Seven reasons why you should always breathe through your nose

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