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Stopping your Asthma is now easier than ABC Written by Dave Lupton
From a survey undertaken by Asthma UK in 2004, it was estimated that 5.2 million people have asthma in the UK - 4.1 million adults and 1.1 million children. It concluded that there are over 1,400 deaths each year attributed to asthma, and that the 69,000 hospital admissions for asthma each year - one hospital admission for asthma every 7.5 minutes – cost the NHS almost nine hundred million pounds. The government have also estimated that the total cost of asthma to the UK economy now exceeds £2.3 billion a year with asthma accounting for at least 12.7 million work days lost each year. Apart from these alarming statistics that are available about asthma and the damaging effect that it has upon the infrastructure of our society, there is a much more personal facet of this debilitating condition that is rarely heard about. That is, how it affects those individuals who experience asthma and the sense of helplessness and lack of control they feel in being able to
prevent or end the condition.
Easier than ABC …
Asthma is often described as feeling as though something has been wound tightly around the chest, crushing the rib cage and making it increasingly difficult to breathe. Although the description may vary from person to person, they all have one thing in common – the belief that there is nothing they can do to end this debilitating condition, or their reliance on the potent asthma medication prescribed for them. But not any more. There is now a transformational technique available from Spain that not only provides people with an understanding of what causes their asthma, but also how they can control it AND end their dependency on the powerful steroids that form the basis of most asthma medication.
Asthma Breathing Control (ABC) programme
This new method of asthma management is called the Asthma Breathing Control (ABC) programme and, although based upon the Buteyko method, it is more holistic and less medically biased in its approach.
Developed near the market town of Lanjarón in the heart of the Sierra Nevada National Park in southern Spain, this natural, medication-free treatment greatly reduces the symptoms and severity of asthma and in a high percentage of cases ends it completely - along with the need for any further medication!
Asthma management
The lead coach for the innovative ABC programme is former Buteyko practitioner Dave Lupton. Having experienced asthma since early childhood, Dave, then in his late forties, realised that he was becoming more and more reliant upon both the preventive and relief types of bronchodilators (puffers) prescribed for his chronic asthma. Not only that, he was certain that the asthma medication was having less of an effect on the condition over the years, and that his asthma was worsening.
In the summer of 1996 he decided that enough was enough and enrolled on a 5-day Buteyko asthma management course. At the end of the course Dave found that for the first time he fully understood what caused his asthma; how he could simply stop the symptoms as soon as they started to appearAND that he no longer needed his asthma medication to do this!
The Buteyko method
In the late fifties, a young Ukrainian doctor called Konstantin Buteyko became interested in asthma and the effects that it had on some of his patients. Dr Buteyko realised that what was seen as a disease, was in fact a natural phenomenon. It is the body attempting to repair itself after a larger than normal amount of oxygen had been allowed to flood into the lungs. He saw that, by restricting the airways, the body was attempting to restore the delicate balance between the carbon dioxide and oxygen in our blood. He concluded that correcting the breathing practices of his patients could
eradicate the symptoms of asthma. Dr Buteyko also discovered that those patients who had asthma also had a
low tolerance to environmental triggers, such as pollens, dust mites, cigarette smoke, etc. Their reaction to these stressors was to over-breathe or hyperventilate, often without realising that this was what they were doing. From this he went on to devise the Buteyko breathing control method. This method involves learning a radical new approach to asthma; about the
important chemical balances within the human body and how to rectify these imbalances by learning to breathe in a different way.
Buteyko practitioner
Because of this positive experience, Dave decided to train as a Buteyko practitioner and pass on this simple but effective technique to other people with the same condition. However, after qualifying as a Buteyko practitioner in 1998 and working with people with asthma in the south of England for several years, Dave felt that there was something significant missing from the sessions he facilitated. It was not as if the Buteyko method wasn’t working – it was; it just felt to him that the treatment he was offering was incomplete in some way.
Move to Spain
When he decided to move to southern Spain with his wife in 2005, Dave was fortunate to meet up with another alternative therapist, Ann Batten, a qualified and experienced practitioner of acupuncture and shiatsu. Ann, who was treating people with asthma with these traditional Chinese and Japanese remedies, was also achieving some success in helping people to control their asthma. However, like Dave she also felt that a component was missing from her own treatment regime.
Combined treatments
As they began recommending each other to their respective clients, it became apparent that the combined effects of the Buteyko method and the alternative treatments that Ann was offering were having an improved effect on both sets of clients. Encouraged by this, Dave and Ann started working collectively with clients, and based upon the results of their combined treatments the Asthma Breathing Control or ABC method of asthma treatment was born.
Missing piece of the puzzle
Dave explains: “Although still based for the most part on the Buteyko technique, the ABC programme, with its more holistic approach and the combination of therapies that Ann and I provide, seems to reduce the symptoms and severity of asthma much more effectively than the Buteyko method ever seemed to do on its own. It was the missing piece of the puzzle I had been searching for.”
Inborn ability
Ann adds: “Running the ABC programme also allows us both to put into practice one of our shared, core beliefs. This is that everyone possesses an innate ability to participate more fully in the healing process of most illnesses, especially asthma. “These skills have been lost over generations as we’ve allowed others to take control over this important aspect of our lives. Our role in the ABC programme is to facilitate this; providing the information and support that is needed to rediscover this self-healing ability.”
Major benefits
The major benefit of choosing this particular asthma management course over some of the more conventional Buteyko courses is that with the ABC programme people can be more actively involved in their treatment. This means that, rather than participating in a course that manages and controls their involvement as part of a group from start to finish, each participant on the ABC programme is in control from the onset and can decide what parts of the treatment process are more beneficial for them.
From discussion with people who have attended other asthma breathing control courses, Dave learned that some of the other courses often confuse participants with medical jargon and terminology. They appear to usemedically based practices not just to monitor progress, but to also control the involvement of participants. Dave and Ann decided that people attending the ABC programme would be encouraged to relate to the therapists and each other on a more equal basis, respecting and acknowledging their respective skills and experience of asthma as a major part of the treatment process.
Alternative health practitioners
Having worked in the Alpujarra region of southern Spain for several years, both Ann and Dave have come to know and trust other alternative health practitioners who work to the same high standards as themselves. These additional therapies, which include chiropractic, massage, homeopathy, counselling, relaxation techniques and art therapy, can also be included in the ABC programme if considered beneficial or requested specifically by the client.
“This bringing together of the different approaches to working with asthma has provided the piece of the puzzle that was missing during the earlier part of our separate work in this area of alternative medicine,” adds Dave. “We both now feel that we are offering our clients a much more holistic and complete way of dealing with their asthma.”
European wide
As well as offering this unique service to people who live in Spain, Ann and Dave are also promoting the ABC method in the rest of Europe, especially within the UK. Clients coming from outside of Spain to attend the Lanjaron based course can be emailed information about flights, car hire and accommodation options and other useful information about this beautiful
area of Spain where they will be staying whilst experiencing the ABC programme.
Further information
For further information about the unique Asthma Breathing Control (ABC) programme, please go to the ABC web site at www.abcmethod.org or email Dave or Ann at
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and they will be pleased to assist you further.
Editors: Please contact Dave Lupton on (0034) 638 880 548 or email him directly at
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if you require photographs or further information for your article. Thank you.
This information was last updated on 4th February2009
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