The key difference between an asthma sufferer and a healthy person's breathing pattern is the number of breaths taken per minute and the volume of each of these breaths.

An asthma sufferer will breathe between 15-20 times per minute compared to 10-12 times per minute for a healthy person. Additionally, each breath an asthma sufferer takes will be nearly twice as large as a healthy persons, around 700ml-1 litre in volume compared to 500ml.

When you combine these together you have an asthma sufferer breathing 10-15 litres of air per minute, 2-3 times that of a healthy person who breath 5-6 litre per minute.

Breathing this volume of air is considered to be over-breathing.

So why is over-breathing a problem? Wouldn't this simply mean more oxygen gets delivered to the body?

Unfortunately the opposite is true and it all has to do with an often overlooked gas, carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide, or CO2, is commonly thought of as a waste gas. It is a byproduct of cellular metabolism which we expel through the breathing process, however it actually plays an essential role in the uptake of oxygen into the body through the Bohr effect. Without CO2 no matter how much oxygen you intake, the body cannot absorb it.

When we over-breathe we flush too much CO2 from our body and actually impede oxygen absorption. This is the reason why if someone hyperventilates for too long they will eventually pass out from lack of oxygen, despite excessive oxygen being available. It is for this same reason that breathing in and out of a paper bag can calm hyperventilation as the person is being forced to breathe back in the CO2 that they are expelling.

CO2 also acts as a powerful vasodilater, relaxing your veins and arteries, and the smooth muscle in your lungs. In asthma sufferers, the lack of CO2 may cause constriction of the throat and lungs making breathing harder. This is thought to be why asthma sufferers often also suffer from hayfever, nasal congestion and sleep apnea.

The answer lies in CO2. What is not commonly known is that the urge we feel to breathe is actually triggered by rising levels of CO2 in the body, and not from the decreasing levels of oxygen as we may assume.

As our cells metabolise they produce CO2, as that CO2 builds up it eventually reaches a certain threshold where the urge to breath arises. We then flush out CO2 and take in oxygen. In a healthy person this threshold is at a point where the body has sufficient CO2 to allow for oxygen absorbption and other critical functions. However in an asthma sufferer this threshold is much lower meaning the urge to breathe is triggered well before enough CO2 has accumulated. This sensitivity is often developed in childhood and then remains throughout adulthood.

Luckily, there are simple techniques we can learn to reset our breathing patterns and return breathing to the healthy range. In doing so the symptoms of asthma disappear.

These practices invole carefully and deliberately breathing slightly less than our body is used to, thereby slowly acclimatising it to higher levels of CO2 and bit by bit moving our threshold into the healthy range. These techniques were developed by Dr Konstantin Buteyko in the 1950s and have been tried and tested throughout the world since the mid 1990s. Whilst there remains debate about the exact mechanism by which they work, multiple scientific studies have shown that they do indeed work and that people can become medication and symptom free after learning them.

Learning these techniques is done over the course of 5 days where your coach will tailor exercises to your specific needs and provide you with a clear plan and simple ways to measure your progress.

Learning the practices only takes a week however retraining the bodies breathing pattern can take 2-3 months. This will vary depending on how severe your symptoms are to begin with, your level of fitness and how dedicated you are to the process. The techniques learned allow you to instantly address asthma symptoms as they arrive often replacing any need for reliever medication from the very beginning.

Your coach will be available to you throughout this process to make sure you stick with it and can pass through any hurdles that arise.

90% of people who follow these practices, after consultation with their doctor, are able to come off all medication within the first 3 months.