How to Use AYO BT+ to Practice Reduced Breathing of Buteyko Method and ‘Calibrate’ Your Breathing

by admin | Feb 13, 2023 | 6&6 breathing pattern

Buteyko Breathing Method has proven to be very effective for alleviating or even treating a wide range of chronic diseases, particularly asthma.

The key element of the Method is Reduced Breathing, which is described by Dr. Buteyko in his original manual in the last century as:

Decrease
The depth
Of breathing
By relaxation of the diaphragm
Till slight shortage of air (Buteyko, 1991)

It is understandable that without access to advanced breathing measurement equipment at the time for each individual outside a medical lab, this was probably the most practical way Dr. Buteyko could describe the method.

Based on this description without measurement metrics, the task has to be taken by Buteyko Method practitioners to interpret and guide the learners correctly.

For example, some practitioners describe the breathing method as: Light, Slow and Deep breathing, where:

‘Light’ means small volume.
‘Slow’ means low breath rate.
‘Deep’ means diaphragmatic breathing.

However, how light and how slow are not clearly defined here, thus it is up to each learner to perform based on how they feel or guess about it. Inevitably, this could be done incorrectly.

If you could have face-to-face training sessions with a qualified practitioner, you might learn the right way, but there are only limited qualified practitioners worldwide, although the number is increasing yearly, however, compared to the potentially vast numbers of people wanting to learn the Method, the number of practitioners looks like a drop in the ocean. That may explain why this proven method has not gained widespread adoption after so many years since its introduction.

Further, when you eventually reach the prescribed breathing pattern, over time, your feel and sense of the breathing pattern may shift. Even scientific measurement equipment requires periodic calibration, let alone the sense of human beings.

Here is where Aimwell’s AYO BT+ would come in, which can accurately measure your breathing while you practice the Buteyko Method.

For practicing Buteyko Reduced Breathing, the Lite model of BT+ is adequate, and here is a quick guide for what you should monitor during the practice:

Real-time waveforms:	Make sure the breathing waveforms are smooth with gentle rise, fall, and pause in between.
Peak Flow:	Monitor the Peak flow when practicing ‘breathe-light’. The typical Peak flow of light breathing should be < 40 L/Min.
Minute ventilation:	This is THE most important parameter when practicing Reduced Breathing. It is the air volume you breathe in a minute that needs to be reduced. The physiological norm is 6 L in a minute, which is the target you should practice towards.
Tidal volume:	This is the volume of air you breathe in each previous breathing cycle. It is a quicker feedback to monitor in order to timely control the air volume you breathe. As to how much you should control the Tidal volume depends on the Breath rate, which is the next parameter to monitor.
Breath rate:	in Buteyko Method, there is no specific requirement for breath rate. However, medical research in the past 10 years shows that breathing at around 6 breaths per minute will maximize Heart Rate Variability, which is an important indicator of human health. For this reason, we recommend a breath rate of around 6 per minute. Therefore, the tidal volume should be aimed at around 1 L.

Thus, we simplify and vary the Reduced Breathing of Buteyko Method as ‘6&6’ breathing pattern.

The practice is best done with the Meditation exercise of the BT+ App, where at the end of each session, a summary report will be provided, which can be saved for you to refer to/compared with later. This is a great way to monitor your progress over time.

The screenshot on the right is from the BT+ App as an example to practice for the ‘6&6’ Reduced Breathing.

Don’t be discouraged if you can’t do it right away. With persistent practice and using historical data to see your progress before you could feel it, you will be sure on your way to mastering this optimal breathing pattern.

It is also advisable to breathe the ‘6&6’ breathing pattern whenever you can throughout the day. Using the BT+ to practice the ‘6&’6 breathing pattern once a day, especially before sleep will ‘calibrate’ your sense and feel for the pattern, thus enabling a better quality of sleep and reaffirmed reference for breathing the next day.

AYO BT+ is an ideal training and management tool for asthmatics or for many of those with lung/breathing issues, and it is a great Australian invention and a game-changer for helping you breathe better.

A small investment today will open the door towards a giant leap for your breathing and overall health.

How to Unblock a Stuffy Nose with AYO Breathing Exercise Device

by admin | Jan 18, 2023 | 6&6 breathing pattern

A blocked nose is one of the common physiological phenomena most of us experience from time to time, and according to research, at least 10% of people suffer from chronic nasal congestion of different severities.

Among many causes, such as the common cold or allergies, it has been demonstrated that in many cases, the culprit is actually due to over-breathing!

Back in the 1950s, Dr. Konstantin Buteyko discovered that many common chronic diseases, such as asthma, can be caused by over-breathing. He and his clinical team went on to spend almost half a century researching and developing breathing techniques to help people normalize their breathing.

According to Dr. Buteyko, the blocked nose from over-breathing is due to a defensive mechanism of the body against excessive CO2 losses. Often, when people have a stuffy nose, they would open their mouths to breathe, which would make them continue to over-breathe, resulting in the noses being kept blocked by the body’s defensive reaction.

One of the exercises from the Buteyko Breathing Method is to help you unblock the nose, which involves one or more short breath holds.

This is a temporary method to quickly unblock the nose. However, if you still over-breathe after that, the nose would block again.

If we analyse the principle of this exercise, it works by temporarily stopping or reducing breathing, which:

Increases CO2 which works as an air passage dilator that helps reduce the blockage.
Reduces nasal constriction due to the defensive reaction of the body to over-breathing.

So with this understanding, here, we introduce a solution to fix the root of a stuffy nose due to over-breathing by using the AYO breathing exercise device AYO BT or BT+.

Why AYO breathing trainers can help unblock the noses? This is because they can:

Reduce the air intake to cut the culprit of the issue directly and effectively.
Increase the CO2 level in the air passages as well as in the blood thanks to the unique design of the mask, which the increased CO2 works as a nasal dilator, and it also helps oxygen release to tissues from the blood thus reducing the need to breathe more.
The uniquely designed mask also works as a humidifier to warm and moisten the air and to thin the mucus in the nose.

AYO BT method:

Adjust the BTi to a low setting, such as Setting 2 or lower.
Sit on a comfortable chair, with the back straight and full body relaxed.
Wear the BT as normal.
Breathe in slowly and gently, so that you don’t feel much resistance otherwise from fast and hard breathing.
Breathe out slowly and gently, trying to create a slight but tolerable air hunger.
If your nose is completely blocked, try to purse your lip to breathe via your mouth a bit, but as soon as your nose is not completely blocked, use your nose immediately but breathe slowly and gently.
Do not panic if you have the urge to breathe fast and hard, just relax, it is quite OK.
After a while, you will find it easier to breathe as your brain adapts to a higher CO2 in the blood, and your nose will be completely unblocked.
Continue to breathe like this for 20 -30 minutes to finish one session.
If feasible, you could do this a few times throughout the day, such as 3 times a day.

AYO BT+ method:

Adjust the BTi to a setting of your choice, but preferably Setting 2 or lower.
Sit on a comfortable chair, with the back straight and full body relaxed.
Wear the BT+ as normal.
Use the Real-time screen to monitor your breathing data and waveforms.
Your key breathing metrics are: 6 breath per minute and 6 litres per minute –This is Aimwell’s recommended 6&6 healthy breathing pattern.
Try to breathe towards the metrics by breathing slowly and gently, so that you don’t feel much resistance otherwise from fast and hard breathing.
If your nose is completely blocked, try to purse your lip to breathe via your mouth a bit, but as soon as your nose is not completely blocked, use your nose immediately to breathe slowly and gently.
Do not panic if you have the urge to breathe fast and hard, just relax, it is quite OK.
After a while, you will find it easier to breathe as your brain adapts to a higher CO2 in the blood, and your nose will be completely unblocked.
Continue to breathe like that for 20 -30 minutes to finish one session.
If you can achieve the 6&6 breathing pattern, your nose should be completely unblocked.
In fact, if you breathe with 6&6 breathing pattern all the time, you should always have an unblocked nose.

These methods are found effective not only for blocked noses caused by over-breathing, but in many cases apply for common cold and allergies induced blocked noses as well. When applied correctly, you would eliminate using a nasal spray and enjoy life-long unblocked noses!

Further, if you can naturally breathe with the 6&6 healthy breathing pattern whenever you are in a calm and resting condition, your breathing health will be enhanced, and so will your general health.

How to Achieve a Good Night of Sleep Through Reduced Breathing?

by admin | Jan 10, 2023 | breathing exercises

Did you wake up this morning feeling tired and thirsty with a stuffy nose? The chances are you slept with your mouth open, causing hyperventilation which activated your sympathetic nervous system and put your body in working mode instead of resting mode.

A simple but effective way to prevent mouth breathing during sleep is to practice reduced breathing through the nose before sleep. This conditions your breath makes it nicely slow and gentle, and activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which turns your body into rest/repair mode.

An easy way to practice reduced breathing is to use AYO BT modular breathing trainer which is designed to train diaphragmatic breathing through reduced breathing via the nose.

In addition, AYO BT extends your natural airway that retains some CO2 off your breath in the mask, resulting in less desire to breathe once you take off the AYO BT.

To be effective, prepare to wear AYO BT for 20 – 30 minutes before bedtime, and set it in a lower setting such as Setting 1 to 3 that creates a small but tolerable air hunger.

The beauty of this method is that it allows you to do other things while performing the breath conditioning, such as reading books or changing nappies, the AYO does the work in parallel to reduce your breath.

To get the best result, however, you would preferably need to concentrate on your breathing, as if your mind is somewhere else, your natural breathing habit would most likely tend to make you breathe faster and more than you aim for, which can limit the result to its possible best. For this reason, I would recommend doing it in meditation, where slow and gentle reduced breathing and meditation work together resulting in enhanced benefits to your body, mind, and ultimately your sleep.

A novel and more advanced method is to use the world-first breathing measurement and training device AYO BT+ to guide your breathing in your meditation.

Here is the protocol:

Firstly, do not eat too full, especially too much red meat. No Alcohol.
Do the meditation with AYO BT+ before sleep and at least 2 hours after the meal.
Adjust the BTi to a low setting, such as 1-3, or a setting that creates a tolerable air hunger.
Select Breathing in Meditation in the BT+ App, and set a time for 10 – 20 minutes.
Sit comfortably, place your mobile phone in front of you at a height that allows you to look straight ahead and maintain a straight back.
When inhaling, gently and slowly push the diaphragm down, then a brief pause to prepare exhalation.
At the start of exhaling, simply relax the diaphragm and let it return to its resting position by itself without you driving it.
Pause in that position and do nothing until you have a slight air hunger and feel like inhaling.
Repeat the breathing cycle, pay attention to the following:
Relax your full body at all times, especially the diaphragm, and keep your shoulders low and relaxed.
Observe your breathing waveform periodically, and try to make each inhalation small and gentle, and exhalation slow and relaxed.
Observe your Breath Rate (BR) and Minute Ventilation (MV) to gradually reduce them from their initial values and maintain these lowered values.
Imagining the following:
- - Let go of everything except your calm and relaxing breathing, in and out.
  - No more responsibility whatsoever, just enjoy the moment alone by yourself.
  - You are so free, so relaxed, think nothing, do nothing, just breathe lightly and gently, in and out.
  - You are so free, free as a bird and soaring in the sky.
  - You are so free, no worries, weightless, floating in the universe, just breathe lightly and gently, in and out.

Your breathing waveform should be like the one shown on the right.

If you can breathe less than 6 breaths BR and less than 6 L MV comfortably at the end of the meditation, you should achieve a high-quality sleep afterward.

A 6-hour sleep like that is all you need to get you refreshed and pumped up the next morning.

What is the Optimal Respiratory Rate at Rest?

by admin | Jan 10, 2023 | Reduced Breathing/ Normalised breathing

Respiratory Rate is one of the vital signs of human body along with Body Temperature, Pulse Rate, and Blood Pressure. More and more people become aware of the importance of breathing and are eager to train for healthy breathing.

If you search the internet for a definition of normal respiratory rate for an adult, you may find the answer to be either 12 to 16 or 12 to 20 breaths per minute (BPM).

However, this answer can be very misleading and even harmful if used as a guide for healthy breathing without mentioning the tidal volume. The reason is that one could breathe at 16 BPM but leading to an adverse health issue due to over-breathing if the tidal volume is 1 L/Min.

Minute Ventilation (MV), which is the product of Breath Per Minute (BPM) and Tidal Volume (TV), is one of the important breathing metrics to monitor. For example, a MV of 15 Litres at rest is associated with very sick people, and it is a breathing volume contributing to hyperventilation, which is at least in part responsible for a range of chronic diseases, such as asthma, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, etc.

On the other hand, a MV of 6 litres at rest is defined as the physiological norm for a 70 kg adult that most of us should aim for, no matter if we breathe slowly or fast. If your breathing volume is more than your physiological norm, for example, at 12 Litres per minute, you will over-breathe (hyperventilation), and you would likely develop Asthma, which will make any breath rates irrelevant.

Now let’s come back to our original question “What is the Optimal Respiratory Rate at Rest?” Also, does it depend on age, sex, height, weight, race, etc?

There appears a lot of medical research has been undertaken in the last decade on breathing techniques and their potential clinical benefits. This is in the context of the breathing retraining method for reduced breathing and slow breathing known as Buteyko Breathing pioneered by Dr. Konstantin Pavlovich Buteyko started back in the 1950s, when he discovered that over-breathing is the root cause of asthma. Buteyko Breathing has been demonstrated to be very effective in treating a range of chronic disorders, particularly asthma, as well as a wide number of profound health benefits.

Recent research has also found that breathing can affect heart rate, in particular, during inhalation, it makes the heartbeats faster, and during exhalation, it makes them slower. In the physiological term, this is called Heart Rate Variability (HRV).

Higher HRV is more desirable because it indicates a healthy heart and overall healthy physiological functioning, including a more balanced parasympathetic-sympathetic functioning. Research has shown that HRV peaks when the breath rate is 5.5 or rounded off at 6 BPM, and this is common in healthy humans.

Coincidentally, research has also found further benefits at 6 BPM, such as:

- Most efficient gas exchange at the lungs
- Increase of blood pressure fluctuation leading to significantly lower average blood pressure for the same cardiac output.

Based on the above, it is logical to conclude that a 6&6 breathing pattern should be adopted by most people to not only gain the benefits of maximum HRV but also to ensure no over-breathing occurs. Therefore, instead of trying to breathe at the optimal respiratory rate, we should try to breathe with an optimal breathing pattern, i.e., to breathe at 6 BPM AND with 6 litres MV at the same time.

You could try to breathe the 6&6 pattern at any time at rest, but especially do it via meditation before sleep to gain an immediate additional benefit of better sleep quality.

Now you may wonder how you could know your MV, assuming you could manage the BPM by a watch.

The short answer is that it is not straightforward to measure without an advanced breathing measurement device.

The great news is that Aimwell’s AYO BT+ Breathing Measurement and Breathing Exerciser can do just that, plus many more functions to train for healthy breathing.

Your physiological norm of Minute Ventilation is proportional to your weight, which can be calculated from 6 Litres for a 70 Kg adult. For example, if you weigh 100 Kg, your physiological norm of Minute Ventilation is 100/70 * 6 = 8.6 Litres.

The image on the right is a screenshot from the App of AYO BT+ during a 20-minute meditation. By monitoring the BPM and MV from the App during the meditation, one can control the tidal volume to breathe towards the 6&6 healthy breathing pattern.

In summary, optimal respiratory rate alone is not sufficient to ensure the best health outcome, and your physiological norm of Minute Ventilation must be included together to ensure you do not over-breathe,

Aimwell AYO BT+ Breathing Measurement and Breathing Exerciser is an effective tool for you to measure your breathing volume and train for the optimal breathing pattern.

Exercise-induced Asthma Management via AYO Breathing Trainer

by admin | Jan 10, 2023 | Asthma Management

The Causes

If you are an asthmatic and also a sports person, especially often participating in high-intensity exercise, you may be aware of or even suffer from exercise-induced asthma.

The causes of asthma can be many, such as

Family history / genetic
Airborne allergens, such as pollen, dust mites, mold spores, pet dander or particles of cockroach waste.
Respiratory infections, such as the common cold.
Physical activity.
Cold and dry air.
Air pollutants and irritants, such as smoke.

In the Exercise-induced Asthma context, Physical activity, Cold and Dry air are the more likely causes.

Exercise-induced-Asthma-Management-via-AYO-Breathing-Trainer

Our airways are naturally accustomed to warm and moist air. At rest, we normally breathe gently via the nose in low tidal volume and slow breath rate typically around 500ml and 12 breaths per minute respectively. When cold and dry air passes the upper airways through the nose, the air gets warmed and moisturized before traveling to the lower airways and lungs where airways are narrower and more sensitive to cold and dry air. Thus normally when ventilation is low, the upper airways work well as an air conditioner to ensure the lower airways are not experienced with cold and dry air.

However, when we do high-intensity exercise, we often breathe more quickly via the mouth, where tidal volume increases dramatically such as to 2.0 liters or more, and the breath rate can go up to 40 breaths per minute or more. The minute ventilation at high-intensity exercise can be 15 times or more than that at rest. At such a ventilation volume with cold and dry air, the upper airways simply cannot cope, leading to the cold and dry air reaching the lower airways and lungs, causing inflammation and contraction of the small airways making them narrower or even blocked. When the situation is severe enough, it triggers an asthma attack.

How to prevent it?

Most people with Exercise-induced Asthma continue to exercise and remain active by treating the symptoms with asthma inhalers, which are typically steroid-based prescribed medicines. All medicines can have some side effects. Common side effects of asthma medicines include:

A faster heartbeat
A hoarse voice
A sore throat
fungal infections of the throat

Most asthma inhalers work as an anti-inflammatory drug, and this is a passive strategy in that, it mitigates the effects caused by the cold and dry air but does not address the source of the issue directly.

The good news is, there may be ways to prevent Exercise-induced Asthma at the source without using asthma inhalers. AYO BT is one of them when used correctly.

Click here to read Part 2 - AYO BT can help prevent Exercise-induced Asthma