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PROFESSOR KONSTANTIN PAVLOVICH BUTEYKO
The man and his discovery

 After his experiences during the War, Buteyko felt compelled to study what he called "the most complicated piece of machinery of all" - the human organism.

In 1946 he enrolled into the First Medical Institute in Moscow. During his third year, he started working in the clinical therapy group under the departmental head, academician Evgeniy Mikhailovitch Tareiev.

During his third year at the Institute, Buteyko was given a practical assignment which involved monitoring diseased patients’ breathing. He spent hundreds of hours sitting by patient’s bedsides, recording their breathing patterns prior to death. He noticed a considerable and uniformed deepening in patients’ breathing with the approaching of death. By recording these increases, Buteyko found that he was soon able to prognose how many days or hours were left before the patient’s death occurred. This event determined the area of Buteyko’s future interest.

In 1952, having graduated from the institute with honors, Buteyko continued his experiments independently along similar lines. He asked healthy subjects to breath deeply for a period of time, and found that they became dizzy and nauseous, developed asphyxiating symptoms such as wheeziness and coughing, and eventually fainted. This (he had been told) was due to oxygen over-saturation of the brain.

  If this was being caused by over-breathing, he theorized that by correcting this breathing he may be able to cure his disorder.

He immediately began experimenting on himself. Soon, he had trained himself to breath in a more shallow fashion. He found that by reducing his breathing, some symptoms, such as headaches and rapid heart beat, also reduced. When he increased the depth of his breathing, the symptoms returned. Buteyko concluded that he had discovered the reason for his disease. He immediately set out to devise a programme by which a patient’s breathing could be quickly and effectively measured and then if need be, reconditioned. He had shortly healed himself completely.

Buteyko checked and checked his theory on patients. He measured the breathing patterns of sufferers of asthma, stenocardia and other diseases by discovering, without surprise, that they too were hyperventilating. Once again, by correcting these patients breathing to an acceptable level, Buteyko was able to normalize their CO2 shortfall and their attacks stopped immediately. Then by asking them to return to their previous breathing their attacks resumed. It was clear that Buteyko had stumbled across a very important global discovery and that current medical thinking was upside down.

Through further research, Buteyko was able to lay down the theoretical foundation for this idea. Hyperventilation causes a depletion of CO2. Low levels of CO2 in the organism causes blood vessels to spasm and results in oxygen starvation of the tissues. This results in a whole range of "defense mechanisms" that have been previously misunderstood and labeled as diseases. It was not difficult to surmise that vessel spasming occurring in hypertension could occur also with other types of diseases, for example stenocardia (Ed angina pectoris) with the resultant myocardial infarction (Ed heart attack); endarteritis (Ed inflammation of the innermost coat of an artery, usually occurring in legs), or ulcerative stomach disease. Scientific data associated with the physiological role of CO2 is discussed in more detail in the "Buteyko Theoretical Manual".

Buteyko worked very intensively at the Central and Lenin Medical Libraries researching his theory. Was it really possible that for the entire existence of the medical science such a simple thought had never occurred to anyone else? He learnt very quickly the answer to this question was, yes. For centuries, the majority of the human race had taught their children to breathe deeply, and no one ever for a moment, tried to reduce breathing. During his research, Buteyko was lucky to learn of a few experiments supporting the viability of his thinking. See Bohr, Holden, Pristley, Henderson, De Kosta. This then, led to Buteyko sharing his thoughts with his teachers, but he found no support from any of them.

He knew through his studies many medical discoveries had initially been dismissed and suppressed officially only to become accepted practices years later. He recalled the story of a Hungarian obstetrician and surgeon, Zemelweise, who discovered sepsis in 1846.

 A doctor friend of Zemelweise had cut his finger while performing an autopsy on a woman who had perished of sepsis (or puerperal fever as it was then known). Three days later the doctor also contracted the "puerperal fever". Zemelweise concluded that ‘something had been passed from the corpse and into the doctor’s cut via the blood’. At the time, microbes were not yet known of, they were discovered by Pastor 20 years later.

With the desire to confirm his supposition, Zemelweise began washing his hands prior to operations, disinfecting them with a chloride of lime solution. He suggested his assistants do the same. In those times, about one-third of all new mothers and surgical patients died of sepsis. A three month experiment confirmed Zemelweise’s hypothesis and he lost no patients thereafter. He informed his society of surgeons and suggested they follow his example. He was declared to be mentally disturbed.

Similar destiny befell Professor Lister, an Englishman, who years later, also called for disinfecting of hands prior to operation. Only after this discovery had reached the ears of the public, and hordes of patients’ relatives started to turn up at the operations demanding to know if the surgeons had washed their hands before operating, did this procedure become accepted by the surgeons. This happened half a century after the initial discovery of Zemelweise.

Historical knowledge of this nature made it clear to Buteyko that voicing his convictions was not likely to bring any positive results at that stage. He knew he must organize an experimental laboratory. He had to gather evidence, develop it, and only then announce the fundamentals of his ideas. Later that year, Buteyko became a clinical therapy intern under Academic Tareiev again. Here, he was given his chance to establish a functional diagnostics laboratory. This project failed due to lack of funds, personnel and equipment. An attempt to establish the laboratory under the auspices of the Ministry of Health Hospital in Moscow was also unsuccessful - the necessary equipment was made available, but not the scientific personnel. In 1958, Buteyko was invited by Professor Meshalkin to join the Institute of Experimental Biology and Medicine at the Siberian Branch of the former USSR Academy of Science (where Meshalkin was the director). Once again he set about the task of establishing a laboratory of functional diagnostics. This project was completed in 1960.

In 1958-1959, Buteyko conducted clinical studies on nearly 200 people, both healthy and sick. When the first data, various measurements, associations deduction, correlations, regulations, etc., were obtained, all of these confirmed the correctness of Buteyko’s discovery. On 11th January 1960, he presented his work to the Scientific Forum at the Institute and tried to explain the concepts of his thinking. He told those present of the experiments, which showed the objective linear relationship between the depth of breathing, the content of carbon dioxide in the body, and vessel spasming and degrees of illness.

Buteyko’s colleagues were stunned. Surgeons took the studies as some dirty trick, because Buteyko offered to treat such diseases as asthma, hypertension, stenocardia, without a knife. Invasive surgery never cured these diseases anyway, everybody knows that, and mortality was high, whereas the Buteyko method gave a quick, almost 100% recovery. Quite naturally, Buteyko had expected the opposite. Nevertheless, he did receive temporary approval from Professor Meshalkin who chaired the Forum. Meshalkin said he understood the perspective and wanted the research to continue.

Over the next ten years of the laboratory’s existence, Buteyko and his team were able to obtain extensive information on the basic function of the human organism - whether healthy or diseased. The laboratory was equipped at the highest level. There was a compendium of over forty various instruments capable of registering almost all basic functions of the human organism, and producing approximately 100,000 pieces of data per hour. Analysis of this information was done on computers, mathematically deriving physiological measurements and the various conformities of the body’s processes.

Two hundred medical specialists were trained in the laboratory, most of whom by the way, had suffered from one condition or another and successfully treated themselves with the method. Soon, they were all treating other patients utilizing Buteyko’s method. Official statistics showed that as at 1 January 1967 more than 1000 patients suffering from asthma, hypertension or stenocardia had been successfully treated and had totally recovered from their illnesses.

Despite this Meshalkin categorically refused Buteyko’s request for an approbation to be conducted at the institute clinic. Shortly thereafter, Meshalkin mysteriously implemented brutal repressions, up to the forcible confiscation of the laboratory equipment. There were to be no publications, and strong reprimands were made for any public appearances or speeches on the subject. This attitude was exhibited not only by Professor Meshalkin but by all of his student-surgeons. In 1963, Professor Meshalkin had also subjected a few new ideas which challenged current opinion of surgery, to a similar treatment. As a result of these unseemly management practices, the Institute was disbanded and closed.

This disbandment may have saved Buteyko’s laboratory. He was able to keep one-third of all the instruments, personnel and the laboratory original premises. From 1963 to 1968 the laboratory was attached to the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Science. Professor Meshalkin’s clinic was reassigned into the system of the Russian Ministry of Health. Buteyko’s repeated requests to accredit his method had not met any support whatsoever.

Only in January 1968, after representations made by local and foreign press in defense of his discoveries was the approbation carried out in Leningrad, at the Institute of Pulmonology under academician Uglov. Shortly before this, a visit was paid to Buteyko’s clinic by the Minister of Health, academician Petrovsky. The minister informed Buteyko that if he successfully treated at least 80% of the patients given to them, Petrovsky would make recommendations for an immediate entrenchment of the method into standard medical practices. He promised also to make available a 50-bed clinic for the continuation of Buteyko’s clinical work. Yet, the minister had one condition, that the patients used in the approbation were the most serious and difficult cases, not otherwise treatable by conventional methods of medicine.

Of the 46 patients who underwent Buteyko’s treatment, 44 were officially recognized as cured. Only two from the 46 had a smaller positive affect. Some of the patents had up to twenty different conditions each. One of the female patients had been recommended to undergo a mastectomy as she was diagnosed to have a malignant tumor in the initial stages. She had refused the operation. She was included on the list of patients because of the rest of her complaints, including the tumor. It should be added that the two patients not included in the success rate had informed the Minister responsible. Consequently, in effect, Buteyko could describe the results of his method as having had a 100% success rate.

The official conclusions of the approbation, which was monitored by the health ministry, were sent to the Health Minister, academician Petrovsky. These conclusions were never seen by either Buteyko or the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Science. The Ministry later, in a phone call to the chairman of the Siberian Branch, academician Lavrentiev, advised that the approbation had failed, with only two out of the 46 patients having been cured. This unexplained falsification served as a foundation for closing the Buteyko laboratory. On 14 August 1968, all of the scientists were dismissed without any offers of alternative employment and all of the equipment was confiscated or pilfered.

Success after success forced the government to once again look into the method. The second official approbation was conducted at the First Moscow Institute of Pediatrics Disease in April 1980 at the direction of the Government Committee for Science and Technology of the Soviet Ministry of USSR. The study confirmed the findings of the earlier approbation, conducted in Leningrad: 100% success rate. This time the results were officially recognized.

Whilst the Russian approbation’s tended to focus on treatment of asthma, it should be understood that this method is also extremely effective for a whole range of related disorders (such as sleep apnea), breathing problems etc.

THE BUTEYKO METHOD IS NOW FULLY ENDORSED BY THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT.