I Never Thought I Would Enjoy My Child’s Silence For Years, Asthma Left Donna Urquhart Wheezing and Coughing – Until a Revolutionary Technique Eased Her Breathing. By Rebecca McQuillan

SEVERE asthma dominated Donna Urquhart’s pre-school years. Diagnosed with the illness at the age of two, she got through each day with the help of Ventolin syrup, inhalers and, during the worst attacks, anxious dashes to hospital in the arms of her mother, Sharon, to be nebulised (having the medication applied in the form of a fine spray).

Not long before her fourth birthday, Donna suffered a particularly serious attack.

Sharon, from Glasgow, recalls:

“We didn’t think she was going to make it. Donna herself said she was going to die.”

After a struggle she pulled through but, following the attack, her doctors increased her medication. She was taking the drugs Flixotide and Seretide as well as steroids. “She wasn’t getting better, ” says Sharon.

“She was peaky and lifeless and still having to be nebulised.”

Distressed by news about Emma Frame, a five-year-old girl who had died after taking extremely high doses of Flixotide, Sharon found an article about Jill McGowan, a complementary therapist who teaches Buteyko breathing, a technique designed to help asthmatics.

Sharon took Donna, now seven, to see Jill the next day, but was not prepared for the scale orspeed of the improvement in her daughter.

“From that night, Donna did not take Ventolin any more, ” says Sharon. Within a couple of weeks, she stopped taking Seretide and then her dose of steroid tablets was gradually reduced to nothing. She is now on a much-reduced dose of Flixotide only.

Sharon is delighted – and relieved. “Donna never had a lot of energy before, ” she says. “She would go to nursery for a couple of hours in the morning and then sleep. Now she goes horse riding, dancing, does gymnastics and she’s in a swimming club.”

Buteyko (pronounced bu-tayko) is a drug-free therapy for controlling the symptoms of asthma and other respiratory disorders. The technique was first developed by a Russian doctor, Konstantin Buteyko, in the 1950s.

Practitioners believe asthma sufferers “over-breathe” (hyperventilate) . This does not refer to breathing at a rapid rate at rest, but “silent hyperventilation”, meaning that too much air is inhaled, resulting in depletion of carbon dioxide (CO 2)levels. The body actually needs a certain level of CO 2, but when levels drop too far, haemoglobin, which transports oxygen through the blood, cannot work efficiently. The airwaves go into spasm or swell, leading to breathlessness and wheezing.

With Buteyko, sufferers are taught “shallow” breathing which helps to limit the loss of CO 2.McGowan, a former practice nurse in the east end of Glasgow, says: “We teach people to read their breathing.

When your breathing gets out of control, you stop what you’re doing, assess yourself and get control of it.”

Once a full-blown attack has begun, medication will still be required, but, says McGowan, “it will buy you time to have help, so no one needs die of it”.

Buteyko allows for a reduction in the use of medication which, McGowan believes, can actually make asthma worse by boosting adrenaline and raising the heart and breathing rate.

One study of Buteyko in 1998 showed a major reduction in the use of symptom-relieving medicines on a small sample group, while a study involving 600 people in Scotland, organised by McGowan and published in the journal Thorax, showed similar results.

McGowan’s attempts to encourage the medical establishment to embrace its benefits, however, including inspiring a debate in the House of Commons, have so far met with limited success. “Just because it’s different, the science of it isn’t accepted, ” she says.

Not to be put off, she has organised Asthma Relief Day on May 7 in an attempt to raise [pounds]1.8 million to train 365 Buteyko practitioners.

The charity Asthma UK, the country’s leading support and information service for people with asthma, said it was aware of Buteyko and had funded research into it. A spokeswoman said that, for some people, it showed Buteyko helped to reduce symptoms and use of reliever inhalers, but it did not improve the underlying condition. In the charity’s view, it may help people feel more in control of their treatment and be worth trying for those who are willing to commit the time required.

She added that the charity advises anyone who is considering trying Buteyko to discuss it with their doctor first and to use it alongside any prescribed treatment, unless otherwise advised.

Whatever the official medical view, cases such as that of Donna Urquhart are arresting.

The technique has changed everything for her.

“When we went to see Jill the first time, you could hardly hear her speak for the coughing and the wheezing, ” says Sharon.

“Within a couple of days, my friend said: ‘Can you hear that?

Silence. There’s not a cough or a sound.’ I said: ‘You’re right, there isn’t.’” She is looking forward to a peaceful future.

For more information about Buteyko and Asthma Relief Day on May 7, call 0870 749 0259 or visit www. buteyko-asthmatreatment. com