Only the people pushing scams.

BTW: You haven't a distant clue what you're talking about.  In fact, you
couldn't get a clue during the clue mating season if you stood in the
middle of a field of horny clues, smeared your body with clue musk and
did the clue mating dance.

Hi Larry,

Undoubtedly the simplest breathing exercises for asthma are those using
inspiratory muscle trainers (SIMT = specific Inspiratory muscle
training).  Do an Internet search with the key words

inspiratory training

to get material from various different manufacturers.

You breathe in thru a small device costing 10$ upwards. There are
also sophisticated systems for connection with a PC. The inspiratory
muscles and more especially the diaphragm are recruited and strengthened
so that the asthmatic is able to overcome narrowing of his airways.
This sort of stands to reason, although conventional presentations of
asthma never mention overcoming resistance in this way.

Also the devices reduce SOB (being short of breath) as opposed to the
actual airway narrowing as measured by the peakflow meter and felt as
lack of physical condition. Often SOB is what mostly bothers the
patient.

There seems to be a parallel between SIMT as used for asthma and to
train athletes and incentive spirometers used for postoperative
patients to re-establish deep breathing and get rid of atelectasis
(failure to ventilate areas of the lungs). In asthma there may be air
trapping in the lungs and this might also explain the effect of SIMT.

It is often objected that in asthma the lungs tend to be become
over-inflated so that the patient cannot easily breathe out.  However,
trials of SIMT (in which breathing in is made more difficult) seemed to
work on asthmatics quite generally.

The effect of an SIMT device can be tried out by simply putting a finger
into
your mouth between your teeth and lips to leave a gap and then breathing
in the this gap so that your cheeks are pulled in a bit. There may then
be the feeling that the gap is somehow directly wired with the action of
your diaphragm.  The smaller the gap, the more powerful the diaphragm
action - a bit like the effect of a reliever in some cases. This "pursed
lips inhale" may in some respects be better than using a device, since
it is easy to vary the gap and therefore more sensitively control the
diaphragm.

As with all physical therapy protocols, there is the danger of using
tricks, which provide some relief but generally do more harm than good.

One of such tricks is to hold one's breath to stave off an attack of
asthma, because of cause the aim of breathing exercises should be to
normalize breathing, that is to say breathing at a normal rate (liters
of air per minute).

A good address for breathing exercises is the IARP website, see f. i.
http://www.ohiou.edu/isarp/conf_02/papr_4.htm about hyperinflation in
asthma and COPD by Professor D. Hillsman of the University of
California.

It is generally agreed that authentic diaphragmatic breathing is
effective against asthma. Unfortunately the issue is a bit confused
because the diaphragm not only has the function of inhaling but also of
pushing the abdomen outwards. Judging from instruction offered by breath
therapists on the Net, the methods are wrong, because the student is
told to put one hand on the chest and the other on the abdomen and then
to minimize chest movement and increase abdomen movement.  This works
without breathing at all.  See page 10 of Prof. Hillsman's article on
"belly puffing".  So make sure that the diaphragm is actually being used
for breathing in diaphragm exercises. Its action can be felt by f. i.
simply sniffing.

As should be clear the SIMT exercises tie up with the idea of breathing
in against a resistance which in breathing without the SIMT device
should be in the nose (or throat).  The standard medical opinion is
however that resistance in the nose should only be that due to the
nose's function of warming, humidifying and filtering the air.
Furthermore a doctor would normally advise against anything tending to
obstruct an asthmatic's breathing.

In yoga (pranayama) alternate nostril breathing and ujjayi (oceanic
breathing) in the throat also  produce an effect like SIMT, but it is
probably much weaker typically.  In SIMT the resistance may be 30 cms
water column.

Generally it is well to note that asthma treatments are seen in the
framework of effects on lung function as measrued by instruments.  The
valuable role of breathing maneuvers in curbing attacks may
overlooked.   Regards, Richard Friedel

Try this site, the exercises are buried in all the text of this page:

http://www.perf2ndwind.org/html/breathing.html