A SUCCESS STORY
After a Lifelong Battle...How I Beat Asthma

TOM BYRNE with his daugher Christine Byrne-Ralfs. After a lifelong battle with asthma that nearly took his life, he is now 85 years young after discovering a natural cure for asthma.

HEALTHIER than ever Tom credits the breathing method for his recovery.

TOM BYRNE just before he learned about the Buteyko breathing method.

TOM BYRNE is shown above practising the Buteyko breathing method which has led to a cure from asthma.

By TOM BYRNE

I have had asthma all my life, from the age of five years old. Each and every doctor I visited as a child in Dublin all had the same statement to make.

After diagnosing me with asthma they would say, "I'm sorry to have to tell you that you have asthma and there is no known cure for it. The good news is that you will not die from it and there is a possibility that you may grow out of it, a lot of children do, others are stuck with it all through their lives."

I was too young at the time to realize the sentence that was being passed on me, but my mother knew only too well what it meant as she knew several people suffering from the same complaint. To make matters worse there was no remedy.

Keep him warm they would tell my mother, and try to not let him catch colds. I was given various prescriptions by different doctors; cough mixtures, cod-liver oil and malt, Scots emulsion and linseed oil poultices applied as hot as I could bear it to my chest and back.

I have had my chest painted with iodine. I have had Vics spread over my chest and throat, and applied to my nostrils. I have inhaled Potters asthma powder. This was placed on a saucer and ignited and I inhaled the smoke. I have also smoked asthma cigarettes, which could be purchased at the local chemist shop.

My mother and her sister, my aunt, took me to every hospital in Dublin in the hopes of finding a doctor who would provide the magic answer to my complaint and come up with a cure.

My mother took me to an herbalist who had been recommended as very competent with a good reputation. She tried to help me, but it was in vain.

A doctor in Sir Patrick Dunn's hospital in Dublin suggested that I see a specialist, for nose and throat. He thought maybe that my sinus might have something to do with it. He arranged an appointment for me to see the specialist which I did. The results were a work out on my nose. It was a terrible ordeal.

I had a syringe pushed up my nose and a cleaning process took place, cleaning out mucus from my sinus into a kidney basin held by a nurse. I was scared stiff. I thought that my brains were being sucked out. This treatment did nothing for my asthma.

When I was eight years of age, way back in 1932, the doctor wanted to cut out my tonsils; a very popular event in those days. Several of my school friends who had this operation done on them told me that they got ice cream after the operation.

I wasn't interested in the ice cream or having my tonsils cut and I strongly objected. I kicked up such a commotion when I got to the hospital that my mother decided against it.

To this day I still have my tonsils intact, although a lot of my school friends had theirs cut. I don't know what good it did them. I suppose that the doctors had a good reason for it, maybe it prevented infection. I never found out. I was very happy and content to hold onto mine and I don't think that I'm any the worse off for it.

When I was in my early teens a doctor who was a very good friend of my dad's gave me a hypodermic syringe and a small bottle of adrenalin chloride and showed me how to inject it in to the muscle of my arm whenever I got a severe attack.

I tried to show my mother how to give me the injection as I found it very difficult with my hand shaking while having an attack. My mother could not bring herself to do it. She said she was too scared.

Consequently, I had to do the job myself which was not an easy matter while I was gasping for breath. My hand would be shaking while I was trying to insert the needle into my arm.

As soon as I injected the fluid into my arm, I could feel the adrenalin creep up like a cold stream of ice water and across my neck and down into my lungs. The effect was almost instantaneous; as soon as it hit my chest, my breathing would return to normal.

Unfortunately after a few hours the attack would return and I would have to give myself another injection. It became obvious to me that although the adrenalin gave me fast relief it was a waste of time.

What good was it to me if I had to keep on taking it every few hours. It was only giving me temporary relief. I decided to stop using the adrenalin and let the attack take its course, which lasted for three or four days.

I could not eat anything during my asthma attacks. If I did I paid dearly for it as it made my breathing all the more difficult after eating a meal. I would satisfy myself with some tea and a slice of bread and butter until after the attack.

When the attack was over I would be back to normal, until the next attack came along and hit me, which could be anything from a few weeks to a couple of months. I could never join in any sports at school because of shortness of breath.

When I was 16, in 1941, I was recommended to a Doctor Fitzpatrick who lived near Mount Argues chapel in Dublin. I was told that he was having some success in his treatment of asthma.

I decided to go and see him and find out if this was true. I asked him straight out if he could help me. He assured me that he could. I was happy at last I had met a doctor with a positive attitude. This gave me new hope.

He gave me a course of injections over a period of six weeks, each injection getting larger than the proceeding one. After each injection I got an attack. The doctor had warned me that this would happen. I told him that I could take it if it was going to help me. He assured me that it would. I felt encouraged he spoke with such confidence.

After the first injection I got a very severe attack, which in ordinary circumstances would have deterred me from going back to him. But I was no quitter. I was determined to give it a fair try and not allow it to discourage me from continuing the treatment. I liked this doctor. He was sincere and I trusted him.

I had the feeling that at last I had found someone that was going to cure me. I went to his office religiously for six weeks for my injections. After the last injection, which was a large one I did not get the usual attack. Whatever it was in those injections he was giving me, there was no doubt it was working.

I felt on top of the world as I left his office, so much so that I decided to go to England to work. I was now part of the human race.

There was a war going on and London was not the safest place in the world to be with all the bombs dropping, but I had suffered so much all through my childhood I did not care. If I was going to die, I would rather go with my boots on.

I went to an agent in Stephen's Green and signed up for a job with the Great Western Railway. My mother was heart-broken but she understood my feelings. "I will pray for you." she said as she saw me off on the tram which was to take me to the boat in Dun Loughaire.

There had been a lull in the bombings over in London in the past few weeks. But soon after I arrived the Germans started to bomb London again. Not a very kindly welcome from Hitler.

I went to work on Paddington Station and being one of the main line stations, it was an inevitable target. It got a lot of attention from the German Air force.

I did not worry about it too much, my health was good and that was all that mattered. The climate in London seemed to agree with me much better than the Dublin climate and the asthma attacks weaned off.

Whenever I did get an attack it was less severe than what I had been used to back in Ireland.

The treatment I got from the doctors I attended in England was ephedrine tablets. They were small white pills and very bitter. I would take one if I felt an attack was brewing and those little pills usually did the job and nipped the attack in the bud.

In 1956 I left England and came to Canada with my wife Betty and three daughters; Carmel, Christine and Kim. Kim was the youngest, she was just an infant of six weeks old.

I came to British Columbia and took up residence in Burnaby, and later moved to Kitsilano in Vancouver. The asthma was still with me, I could not run away from it.

I was able to get ephedrine pills here in Vancouver. My doctor gave me a prescription for them and if taken in time they usually worked. Then for some unknown reason the ephedrine tablets were taken off the market.

Next, I went on a puffer called Breath-Easy. This helped my breathing and I carried that puffer with me every where I went. I had to have it. Then, to my surprise, Breath-Easy was removed from the market.

I could not understand why there didn't seem to be any interest in research for a cure for asthma, maybe there was, but I could see no evidence of it. I naturally assumed that all resources were being funneled into finding cures for other diseases. Nobody seemed interested in finding a cure for asthma. That was 40 years ago.

Over the years it became apparent that asthma was on the increase, more and more people young and old were being diagnosed with asthma. This prompted the pharmaceutical companies to sit up and take notice and try to find new remedies.

Eventually ventolin and other puffers came on the market together with a host of other drugs, all of which I tried, including prednisone This was a real wonder drug and worked very well. The only drawback I found with prednisone was that it was not an easy drug to get off once you were hooked on it, and it also caused you to gain much weight.

In the year 1977 I went to live and work in the far north above the Arctic Circle. Then in 1979 I moved down to Dawson City in the Yukon and for the next 28 years of my life I performed the Robert Service Show all through the summer months in Dawson City. I would return and live in Vancouver in the fall.

The asthma attacks would come and go. I would use the ventolin puffers and the long action puffer prescribed to me by my doctor in Vancouver. When these failed to work I would go to the emergency and be treated with oxygen and nebulizers and sometimes it was necessary for me to go on prednisone.

My asthma attacks were becoming more frequent from the year 2002. In 2005, when I came down to Vancouver from the Yukon my health really worsened. I was hospitalized about eight times. I was beginning to give up the fight. I said to my brother Sean " I think I'm heading for the last roundup."

I was on prednisone, ventolin, symbicourt, and nebulizer I carried a nebulizing machine around with me in the trunk of my car. I could not walk any distance without getting out of breath.

I went to the Vancouver Home Show with two of my daughters and they had to push me around in a wheelchair. This was not like me and I couldn't believe this was happening. I was unable to walk around Safeway without having a shopping cart to rest on.

My doctors were doing all that they could for me, my lung function was 30 percent. My doctor told my daughter Christine that I had CPOD and that it could not be reversed. I was also told that I would have to take prednisone for the rest of my life, there was no way out of it.

A good friend of mine, a prominent lawyer in Vancouver by the name of John Creery, was searching around on the Internet and came across a natural cure for asthma called the Buteyko breathing method. He knew how I suffered with asthma so he downloaded some information and gave it to me.

I passed on this news to my daughter Christine who went on the web to find out more about this miraculous cure for asthma. She downloaded everything she could find out about the Buteyko method.

It turned out that Doctor Konstantin Pavlovich Buteyko was born in the Ukraine and practiced medicine in Moscow. He discovered a method of treating asthma by teaching patients how to use his breathing method. This was way back in the year 1952.

After trying for years to get the establishment to recognize that asthma could be cured, or kept under control without the use of drugs, he finally succeeded in getting the Russian Government to do a full research and trials with asthma sufferers.

The results were astounding. He had proven that his method of successfully treating asthma really did work. In 1983 his discovery was finally acknowledged and recognized.

My daughter also discovered that a Buteyko practitioner, who by a coincidence was also named Christine, was coming to Vancouver to do some workshops. My daughter Christine, got in contact with her and signed me up for the workshop.

I was looking forward with great eagerness for the coming workshops, unfortunately when the time came a couple of months later for me to attend the sessions, I was in Richmond General Hospital as a patient with asthma.

I was very disappointed with this turn of events, and asked Christine to take the workshop in my stead and report back to me what she had learned.

She agreed to do so and came up to see me every day while I was in the hospital to report what she had learned. She told me that the Buteyko method was all a matter of breathing. We take too much air into our lungs and the secret was small breathing. We must also always breathe through our nose. She demonstrated to me what she had learned.

On her next visit to the hospital, I was surprised to meet Christine Bowman, the practitioner who was giving the workshops. She told me that she had been asthmatic herself for years and had taken the course while living in Australia.

It cured her and she was now free from asthma and all medications. She was so impressed with the results that she decided to become a practitioner herself and help other sufferers.

I made up my mind that I was definitely going to do the Buteyko exercises. I had tried everything else all my life from the age of five up to 82 years old. I had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

I immediately started work on what I had learned. I found it difficult at first, after all I had the complaint all my life and I did not expect overnight miracles. After I was discharged from the hospital, I continued with the exercises which I found very helpful.

I said to Christine if I was 20 years younger, I would go to Russia and train to become a practitioner, everyone should be made aware of this treatment.

Then, a thought came to me and I turned to my daughter and said "why don't you go and take the training, you would make a great practitioner. It would be a wonderful career for you, helping to heal asthma sufferers the natural way."

Christine who had several years experience working in the field of alternative medicine didn't hesitate at my suggestion. She was excited at the idea and agreed to go. This did not surprise me for she is a very kind and understanding girl and always looking out for the benefit of others.

I figured she would make a wonderful practitioner and this would be a great chance for her to help other asthma sufferers regain a new life.

When she got online to arrange to travel to Russia for training, she discovered that there was a practitioner by the name of Patrick McKeown in Ireland who had trained under Dr. Buteyko himself.

He was a fully qualified teacher, so she decided to go to Ireland instead of Russia for her training. She contacted Patrick who lived in Galway and made the necessary arrangements.

Ireland is only a small country and already it has several Buteyko clinics throughout the country. When she got there, Patrick told her that he had asthma all his life and was now free from it for the past eight years. He was a firm believer in Buteyko.

Christine finished her training and is now a fully qualified Buteyko practitioner operating in Vancouver where she holds her workshops. She has succeeded in giving new life to those sufferers who were fortunate in learning the Buteyko Method for treating their asthma.

I am happy to say that I have not had an asthma attack since taking the course two years ago. I have had no cause to use my nebulizer which I carried in the trunk of my car for emergencies. I was on heavy doses of prednisone, which I am now free from. I am free from ventolin.

My lung function was at 30 percent for years, on my last reading in September 2007 the reading of my lung function had increased by 50 percent.

In the last few years prior to my following the Buteyko method, I was a constant visitor to the emergency department for treatment and on many occasions hospitalized. I could not walk half a block without getting out of breath.

Now, I walk 45 to 60 minutes every day. I feel better and look better, much to everyone's amazement.

I have had asthma all my life, since I was five-years-old and I am now 85 years young. I wish that I had heard of Doctor Buteyko years ago, it would have saved me a lot of suffering and discomfort.

I wholeheartedly recommend and endorse the Buteyko Breathing Method to all people suffering from asthma. Believe me, it works. There are clinics in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, England...and now in Vancouver, Canada.

If you have asthma, you owe it to yourself to get rid of it. Give yourself a life. Do not hesitate act now, you will never regret it. I am living proof that Buteyko works!

To contact Christine Byrne-Ralfs, call (604) 723-0479, or visit: http://asthmacare.ca or www.buteyko.ca.

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