It is a long-standing belief amongst yoga practitioners that yoga breathing exercises can definitely help those people suffering from mild asthma and similar symptoms.
It is further maintained that these exercises may improve their capabilities of breathing without the aidof low-dose drug inhalers, used by sufferers in wheezing attacks.
If they don't totally remove the use of inhalers, then the systematic practice of the breathing exercises will reduce their usage greatly.
Scientific research carried out at the Respiratory Medicine Unit, City University, Nottingham, England has called for more studies based on ways and techniques of improving breathing control.
Their social studies have indicated that the types of studies mentioned earlierhave been largely ignored by Western medicine and medical researchers.
If this is indeed the case then a more natural, Eastern alternative such as yoga is a ready and able alternative.
Yoga practitioners have long believed in the benefits of pranayama breathing exercises to aid people suffering from breathing difficulties, especially asthmatics.
Although this may be the case, it has been hard to study formally under laboratory or test conditions.
However, by using a device known as a Pink City lung - this device imposes slow, artificial breathing on the user , which can mimic the pranayama breathing exercises - it has been possible to measure the effects of controlled breathing in a hospital trial.
Two simulated pranayama exercises were tested during this trial, the slow , deep breathing technique and the breathing out for twice as long as breathing in technique.
Generally speaking, as an asthma sufferer your airways become restricted making it difficult for you to breathe.
The condition is increasing rapidly in the Western world, where in the UKmore than three-and-a-half million children and adults are affected.
The condition is also responsible for over 2,000 deaths annually.
Recent medical studies involving the amount of air a patient could blow out in a second, and the testing of the general irritability of the patient's airways showed that after practising yoga breathing exercises, their affected airways were two times less irritable! Though it is not the intention of this piece to advise asthma sufferers to stop using their medication, its purpose is to educate them to the benefits they will receive from trying the breathing exercises and discovering the freedom they will receive from doing so.