JANET WINTER

ME/CFS/fibromyalgia asthma hayfever anxiety snoring sleep apnoea

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ME/CFS/fibromyalgia/anxiety: are you stuck in fight or flight?

December 21, 2014 by info@breathingremedies.co.uk Leave a Comment

Fight or flight or freeze -the threat response, being on red alert

The fight or flight  (or freeze) response is useful to deal with an immediate threat or danger, for example to fight or escape from a predator; or perhaps freeze in the case of a baby animal too small to run or fight, wanting to escape the predator’s gaze by keeping still. Fight or flight is when the sympathetic part of the autonomic (automatic or involuntary) nervous system is in charge (rather than the parasympathetic – rest and restore).

The brain becomes aware of danger due to messages received from the senses. Hormones are released and the sympathetic nervous system sends signals to various parts of the body to produce the changes seen below which “turn down” systems not needed immediately and focus on getting blood to the leg muscles for example :

  • Adrenaline surgesred alert
  • Heart and breathing rate increases
  • Blood is diverted away from the skin
  • Blood diverted to large muscles
  • Less saliva is produced causing dry mouth
  • Brain on red alert –more sensitive to sounds e.t.c.
  • Airways widen to let in more air
  • Increased sweating to cool down
  • Digestion slows down
  • Liver releases glucose for instant energy
  • More blood produced and clots more easily
  • Immune system suppressed while immediate threat dealt with

 When being stuck on red alert is unhelpful

Normally, when the immediate danger or threat has passed, the red alert or threat response should subside, but this does not happen efficiently when hyperventilation becomes chronic.  A disordered breathing pattern usually includes chronic hyperventilation, often mouth breathing, and upper chest breathing, with the stomach held in tightly. People frequently have a wide range of symptoms. They are constantly on red alert, even when there is no threat. This condition is sometimes called the “fat folder syndrome” as patients are sent for multiple tests and may have many medical reports in their file. Any system in the body can be affected; nervous, respiratory, immune, circulatory, digestive, musculo-skeletal e.t.c. This adaptation of the body is now not helpful but very unhealthy; it can keep people in pain and discomfort and disability with a very poor quality of life.

 

  • Blood vessels spasm causing high blood pressure, reduced blood supply to the brain and other tissuessystems
  • Brain oversensitive to light and noise, anxiety, depression difficulty concentrating, headaches
  • Hyperventilating causes chronically blocked nose and dry mouth
  • Feel tired and weak
  • Heart pounding, racing or erratic- fear of serious illness
  • Stomach bloating, IBS, constipation or diarrhea
  • Skin pallid, extremities cold,but hot and sweaty palms
  • Frequent urination
  • Sore muscles
  • Dry itchy skin
  • Numb, tingling or cold extremities
  • Decreased immune response- increased infection?
  • Poor sleep

 

A more comprehensive list of symptoms is here.

Breathing is such a basic and fundamental need that it is often overlooked by the medical profession with the assumption that “it takes care of itself”. Luckily it can be corrected, and many symptoms are often dramatically reduced. The symptoms can start to reduce once breathing is improved, becomes more relaxed, calmer, gentler, quieter -allowing the parasympathetic rest and restore to dominate and oxygen reaches the tissues more efficiently.

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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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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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