Buteyko Manual For Asthma Continued. Page 80 Problems When Sleeping The majority of children have some difficulty during the night. To wake a couple of hours after going to sleep with a nasty cough is common. As is snoring, bed-wetting, and restless sleeping [thrashing about and waking often].  There is a simple explanation, and a direct solution. Remember the simple lesson of the mouse and the elephant. The only way to cause asthma is by breathing like a big ......elephant. One of the easiest ways to breath like an elephant is to sleep on your back. In this position there is no resistance to huge deep breaths. Turning on your side makes it physically more difficult to breathe so deeply — your body pushes down on your lungs more. The other problem with being asleep is that your mouth will usually open — this allows us to breathe even more deeply. On top of this our breathing gets deeper as our sleep gets deeper. When we are in our deepest sleep, our breathing is at its deepest — very deep indeed if we are on lying on our backs with our mouths open! Too deep. This elephantine breathing cause loss of more CO2 than we produce, the level gets dangerously low, and various defenses including spasm of smooth muscle and increased mucus production kick into gear. So your child starts coughing, snoring or wheezing, or the constriction of the smooth muscle around the bladder causes it to feel very full and bed wetting occurs. [Snoring is just your throat closing a little to try to stop you breathing like an elephant.] The answer to this is to keep your mouth closed when you are asleep. The Manual contains a full section on this, but in brief, use surgical tape to keep your childs mouth closed. Do this only on children over 5 years. It has been used on younger children, and the reason I suggest this age is to ensure that the child has the ability to pull the tape off himself if needed. Before you write this idea off as absurd and dangerous listen to the Go to page 81     Go to beginning of Chapter | HOME | PRODUCTS | ORDER FROM | CONTACT US |