I feel a bit like the proverbial laboratory rat. I'm conducting an experiment on myself, so I am at once the mad scientist, and the rat. I have COPD - Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. The disease is relentlessly progressive, not curable and beats the body into submission and death. The current meteoric rise of the disease is startling as Baby Boomers age and begin to feel the results from decades of smoking cigarettes.
Back in the 50's almost everyone smoked. Ash trays, some of them very creative depositories, were everywhere; doctor's offices, sporting arenas, elevators, coffee shops, bars, cars and especially homes. Black and white photos abound of James Dean, cigarette defiantly dangling from his lips, oozing the epitome of cool. Last week I saw Revolutionary Road, the story is set in the 50's and throughout the movie Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet sip double olive martinis and gloriously chain smoke.
Basically people with COPD can't breathe. As the disease progresses the simplest of tasks causes breathlessness, even taking a bath or tying your shoes. Breathlessness is a strange bodily phenomenon. It's very uncomfortable. Initially it's not painful, but it is a definite form of suffering. The breathlessness is chronic hyperventilation. A medical fact known as the Bohr effect states that when more air is breathed than is required, tissue cells are starved of oxygen. The result of this over breathing is a lack of oxygen in the brain, all other major organs and glands and every one of the body's trillions of cells.
Most people on the street don't know what COPD is, but it recently surpassed breast cancer as the number one cause of death in women. Cancer, AIDS, and diabetes are, if I may use the term, the sexy diseases. Lots of press, public relations and millions of research dollars. COPD is the poor cousin living in a run down trailer court. That will change as the cost of the disease becomes more and more a burden on health care. So the West grapples with the problem, but has no idea how to solve it, most likely more toxic drugs. The medications used today primarily take aim at symptom relief and slowing the progressive disability the illness brings
Western medicine treats people with COPD as dying statistics. Patients are put through batteries of breathing tests, prescribed inhalers, perhaps prednisone, and eventually oxygen. Doctors know the oxygen is strictly palliative, and once the O2 is added to the treatment, death is lurking. So present treatment doesn't slow down the progression of the disease or stop it. In the eyes of western scientists and doctors the disease is incurable, and those that have it are doomed.
Fortunately for me and everyone else on this planet we have the extraordinary work of a brilliant Russian, Dr. Konstantin Buteyko.
When America and Russia were racing to put the first man on the moon, the Americans spent millions researching and developing a pen that would write in space - the Russians used an archaic device that worked perfectly well, a pencil.
This little story reveals a lot about Russian ingenuity. Russia has had a long and difficult history, it's not easy to survive there, as a result its people are hardworking and practical. In Russia they don't treat COPD with drugs, nor do they view the disease as incurable. They train people with COPD to breathe correctly. They are aware of the powerful and transformational properties of breath. They teach them the Buteyko Method of breathing. Legend has it that Dr. Buteyko cured his wife's emphysema.
In a nutshell Dr. Buteyko discovered that people who hyperventilate have a shortage of Carbon Dioxide in their system. This lack of CO2 prevents the blood from efficiently transporting oxygen to the tissues. Once oxygen attaches itself to the hemoglobin in the lungs, it is transported to the tissues where it is needed. When baseline level of CO2 is too low, the oxygen is not fully unloaded resulting in tissue hypoxia, http://eb,wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypoxia_(medical) the consequence is a feeling of breathlessness, which aggravates the condition.
Dr. Buteyko bestowed upon mankind the great gift of self healing through breath. http://www.buteyko.com/method/index_buteyko.html
There is much information on the net on Buteyko and the physiological consequences of low CO2, do the Google thing.
So my experiment is this: To increase my levels of CO2 and thus correcting my O2 starvation. I will accomplish this by practicing the Buteyko Method, some light yoga and a 28 day juice fast.
It's really a numbers game. Dr. Buteyko's great medical discovery for planet Earth is what he termed the Control Pause. It's a simple way to discover the level of CO2 in the body, and thereby your level of health. Use a watch or clock with a second hand. Sit straight without crossing your legs and relax. Breathe normally. On an exhalation pinch your nose closed and stop breathing, hold your breath - count the number of seconds until you feel a slight discomfort, or hunger for air then resume breathing. There should be no gasping for air, just a resumption of your normal breathing pattern. The interval of time in seconds from the breath hold to the first gentle inhalation is the Control Pause.
Healthy individuals with normal breathing patterns should be able to hold their breath after exhalation for 40-60 seconds. Most contemporary people have a control pause between 20-40s. This is not to be confused with taking a deep breath in and seeing how long you can hold it. It is simply the measure of time in seconds after the exhalation until there is a slight need for air and the inhalation. So like I said, it's a numbers game. Today; February 27, 2009, 3:30 PM, my control pause is 15 seconds. So my CO2 levels are very low, I'm breathless most of the time, walking is a chore, I can't walk too far, small hills are impossible mountain ranges, and I avoid stairs. If my control pause decreases, my present state will deteriorate. A control pause of 10 and life becomes quite miserable. At 5 death is imminent.
The end result of the experiment is to increase the control pause. My goal is a control pause of 20 seconds by Tuesday, March 31. This is really, really a numbers game, that's only an increase of 5 seconds to my present control pause. That 5 seconds will make a huge difference in my health and overall feeling of well being. The world's most proficient Buteyko practitioner, Christopher Drake, told me that if I can obtain a control pause of 25, I'll be a new man living in a more beautiful world. That's only a 10 second increase in my present pause of 15. It seems so damn doable and I'm inspired.
I decided to publish my experiment online so friends, family, and whomever gives a shit can keep tabs on my progress or lack thereof. I'll post a diary every day. This public arena will also motivate me to stick to the experiment. It'll document my case which I think will benefit others suffering with this disease. If it works I'm writing a book and creating a COPD website, 'cause God knows there are hundreds of millions in my condition that need help.
Thanks for taking the time to read my post, I know you have lots of other things to do.
John
