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Dec. 4, 2022 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole

01:45:22

Christopher Drake

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	I love Danny Paul!
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	I love Danny Paul!
	And there's another time, subscribe with me!
	I love Danny Paul!
	Welcome to The Delling Pod with me, James Dellingpole.
	And I know I always say I'm excited about The Speak Special, yes, but this podcast has been a very long time coming and lots of you have been gagging to, well, I think you have, you've been gagging to hear my old friend, Christopher Drake, talk about Bottega.
	But Christopher, before I introduce you properly, I want to tell you a story.
	A few years ago, I was sitting on my computer, scrolling through my emails, and I got this email from this random, random bloke that I'd never heard of before, who turned out to be a big fan of whatever I was doing at the time.
	It can't have been the podcast.
	And this guy said to me, I'm a big fan of yours, and I would love to teach you Botteco.
	Yes.
	And I'd never seen this word before, B-U-T-E-Y-K-O, and I thought, well, yeah, maybe.
	And I do what I always do with these emails that I'm not sure what to do with them, and I sort of put it on the back burner, and normally what happens is I then forget about them.
	It's not that I want to forget about them, I just do.
	And not long after I got this email, I felt really quite ill with all manner of horrible, horrible problems, ranging from insomnia to flu-like symptoms to etc, etc, etc.
	It was horrible.
	I lost all my strength and it was a nightmare.
	And I thought, well, maybe this Botteco weird guy will be able to help me.
	And, well, the weird guy was you, Christopher, and it was a lifesaver.
	You were a lifesaver!
	You really were.
	I'm delighted.
	I mean, you know, I always think I'm just lucky.
	That's the way I view my situation.
	I mean, I have lots of, you know, Difficulties and problems to solve and day-to-day stuff.
	But on the whole, I just, I'm overwhelmed with gratitude.
	It sounds so pompous, doesn't it?
	I'm so overwhelmed with gratitude.
	No, I'm just so, I feel so fortunate and so I'm very compelled to tell people about this any chance I get.
	um but on the face of it it's so off the wall um superficially off the wall that it's very hard to get to the base where the real the meat is to explain why this thing is very logical and sound because it sounds very very It's a breathing method.
	You know, I remember as soon as I heard these Russians were telling me this wonderful professor has got fantastic inventions.
	He's a genius and he can treat all kinds of diseases.
	And back in those days, I was involved in the medical world to the extent that I ran medical centers.
	And I was intrigued.
	And I said, well, how does he do it?
	What's the deal?
	And they said it was a breathing method.
	And immediately I thought, oh dear, some scam again.
	A breathing method.
	Holy water.
	The beans of the bongo, bongo tree from Brazil or something, you know, another one of these things.
	And we ran clinics.
	We had doctors, nurses, people working there doing serious things.
	And I was very disappointed when I heard it was a breathing method.
	So in some ways, you've got to always get over this superficial stuff, you know.
	So, these medical centres you were running, they're presumably conventional medicine, which you presumably believed in at the time.
	It was just, I was a businessman, and we operated businesses whereby the ancillary services, blood pathology, sports medicine, what they call vanity medicine, plastic surgery and such things, and we would build a centre and then rent out Yes, I did believe it.
	I thought that was the only way.
	I mean, the obvious logical proper way is proper medicine.
	We're going back more than 30 years ago.
	aim to make a profit on it.
	I wasn't a huge...
	Yes, I did believe it.
	I thought that was the only way.
	I mean, the obvious, logical, proper way is proper medicine.
	We're going back more than 30 years ago.
	So, you know, the alternative...
	Even the term chronic fatigue was barely known back then, you know?
	Was this, so we're talking in the 1990s?
	Yes, yes, late 80s, 90s, yes.
	We're talking in the 1990s.
	Right.
	Yes, yes.
	Late, very late 80s, 90s.
	Yes.
	Right.
	And was this in Australia?
	Yes.
	In Sydney, mainly in Sydney.
	Okay, so how did you get to hear of this guy, Boteko?
	Well, I'd sold a business and somehow the word got around, or somewhere, somehow, and this one particular Russian gentleman approached me And said that, um, was I interested in doing, you know, you know, to make a lot of money or something?
	And I said, yeah, well, you know, okay, fine.
	He knew someone that I knew, and I had a meeting with him.
	And then he said that he had a delegation of Russian businessmen in Sydney, and they had all kinds of business opportunities in Russia.
	And I didn't really, I didn't think it was very appealing at all, actually.
	We didn't know anything about Russia.
	It sounded like a bloody disaster, from what I could tell.
	But anyway, nevertheless, I invited him over.
	One in particular must have been seven foot tall, absolutely bald, shiny bald, and on the third meeting that we had together, he came with hair.
	He wore a toupee, starting on the third day of a series of five meetings.
	I didn't know what to say, because one day hair, one day no hair.
	They were very comical guys.
	They were out of the... and I liked them very much.
	But they had the wildest business plans I'd ever heard.
	Do you want a bank?
	Would you like to buy a bank?
	We can sell you a bank.
	A bank?
	I mean, I've never run a bank or anything like that.
	And then there was, would you like to get the franchise for cigarettes?
	Or would you like to do this?
	Or an aluminium smelter?
	You see, Russia was collapsing back in those days.
	And all the people were running in there and stealing everything.
	And basically these chaps were trying to set up deals for Western investors to go in there and get assets very cheaply or start businesses in what they Advise me was an absolute goldmine and the more they spoke about it, the more terrified I became of these proposals.
	I'd never seen people like this.
	I'd never spoken to people about business the way they and I just was out of my depth completely.
	And then I had to sort of wind it up and say guys.
	I mean, I really enjoyed my time with you, but I just there's nothing here for me.
	Except there was one last thing.
	It was this Russian professor.
	And they said, oh, you're into medicine.
	You're into medical.
	You'll like this.
	This is really something.
	I said, oh, yes, please tell me more.
	Oh, it treats all diseases, everything.
	Take it off.
	It's very well known.
	I mean, this had a stack of papers all written in Russian, which I couldn't make any sense of.
	And then they said it was a breathing method, and I thought, OK, great.
	Yes, I'll let you know if I'm interested.
	And I wasn't.
	Then they rang me.
	One of them rang me and said, we have one of Professor Bouteika's proteges in Australia now, and you can meet him.
	And he was not like this group of Russian businessmen.
	He wasn't friendly at all.
	He was barely pleasant.
	Um, and that was, that was Potego's protege.
	That was Alexander Stolmarski.
	And somehow I was attracted to him because this was all about money as far as I was concerned.
	And he should have known that I'm going to put money into his venture.
	Um, which wasn't doing anything at the time, this Potego idea.
	And yet he treated me with disdain.
	And I was very attracted to that.
	He looked at me as if I was a second-rate person somehow.
	You know, he looked down at the end of his nose at me.
	And I was very curious.
	Why would you be... You want me to invest in your business?
	And you're so standoffish.
	And then he gradually told me about his professor and his own story and so forth.
	And I got involved because I felt sorry for him.
	I thought, oh, this miserable Russian guy's not making any money.
	He's got this probably psychological idea, breathing or something.
	And I just more or less see if I can get him a couple of patients, you know, to help him along.
	And that's how it started.
	I just tried to recruit a few people that I thought would do, you know, maybe a bit stressed out or a bit sick and he could sort of make them feel better or something.
	It turned out that he was able to reverse their diseases.
	And then it turned out he gave me a long list of his students in Australia.
	Not long, about 20.
	And I checked them over and I was convinced that these people At least they were convinced they were cured of some rather serious diseases.
	And that's the point that I began to investigate it more closely.
	The more I investigated it, the more I found it to be legitimate.
	Just quickly, have you got... What's the mic on your computer?
	Are you using the mic on your computer?
	No, I'm using the...
	This superfine microphone, this monster thing here.
	Do you want to move it a bit nearer you or something?
	I don't know, it's... Alright, yes.
	You're sounding quite faint to me.
	Is that better?
	Yeah, it is, yeah, yeah.
	Alright, alright.
	Well, so apologies everyone for the sound earlier on.
	I don't want to miss your words of wisdom, Christopher, because it's a great story.
	In fact, you're the least likely sort of alternative health person I think I've ever come across.
	Because you're...
	I'm not interested in health at all!
	I mean, technically, I'm interested technically in reversing diseases, but I've never been interested... I mean, I've gone to the gym and I don't mind a bit of sport, but I'm not really that much into it.
	I'd rather have a cup of coffee and a piece of cake.
	And I smoke, and I've always smoked.
	And I still smoke.
	It was probably terrible.
	And I just, the only reason why I'm involved in this, I'd never wanted to be a teacher of any sort or a practitioner of woe betide a health, the health, alternative health thing.
	That wasn't on my radar at all.
	I was not interested in that at all.
	And that's not why I got involved in it.
	Do you want to tell us a bit about Buteyko, who, I mean, I've forgotten what his, even what his first name was.
	Tell us about him.
	His name was Konstantin Pavlovich Buteyko.
	And he was a like honors degree student and very high, you know, like academically and so forth.
	And then eventually he did some research and he made some discoveries relating to that.
	He's got a huge compendium of publications in medical journals, Russian medical journals.
	So he was absolutely conventional.
	And he remained a conventional doctor.
	He couldn't say that Professor Bouteka was alternative at all.
	And he has sort of achieved a very high rank in the former Soviet Union as a doctor and as a scientist.
	And then, probably now must be 60 or 70 years ago, he developed or he had a sort of, what do they call, antagonistic high blood pressure, which is a very serious type of high blood pressure.
	And he was able to reverse that.
	Because he, you know, this idea came to his mind.
	In his words, it came to my mind that the depth of breathing might be actually disturbing the proper functioning of the organism.
	And so he was a very serious scientific man who was absolutely neurotic about measuring things.
	He measured everything, you know, physiological measurements and so forth.
	And he came across what he called a discovery, and then he spent eight years developing the discovery and getting the pertinent biochemistry and all the evidence lined up for it.
	And then he pursued the idea of having it recognized by authorities and he wanted it.
	His dream was to have it taught to all mothers and all small children. - Okay.
	Um, in order to avoid, in order that they avoid unnecessary chronic disease.
	And that was his idea.
	It never came off, of course, but in his trials and in his testing and so forth, he attempted to prove the validity of his discovery.
	By treating extremely ill people with all kinds of asthma, allergies, angina, bronchitis, bronchiextasis, diabetes mellitus, emphysema, hormonal disorders, and so forth.
	And the word got out that he was somebody who could do things that other people couldn't, I guess.
	So, did he have a big following in the Soviet Union?
	Did serious people take him seriously?
	Yes.
	Yes, he did have a big following, primarily in the... he was a bit of a strange person.
	He lived in a place called Academicity in Novosibirsk, and it was a suburb or an enclave which was only for scientists.
	It wasn't for regular people to live there.
	And he lived there, and he gave lectures there, and he would go from one institute to the other and tell them what they were doing wrong in the aeronautics department, and straightening out the modelling department, and going over to the chemistry department, having debates at the math department, and so forth.
	Everyone grew quite sick of him because he was a nosy fellow and he used to sort of go around and talk about his method and what he could do and so forth.
	And he was quite well known in the academic world, in the wider world of the Russian community, Yes, he was known as someone very important, and for all intents and purposes he carried the rank of Accommodition, and an Accommodition is a rank in that society, so he was a very important man, yes.
	And so, I mean, for example, did Politburo members use his method?
	Did No, I mean, um, he was a very good scientist and an extremely poor politician.
	And so he basically insulted them and said that they're all deep breathers and the reason why they're getting everything backwards and wrong way around was because they've all got brain vessel sclerosis brought about by hyperventilation, overeating and not being physical enough.
	And you don't really do that well when you insult the most powerful people in the Soviet Union.
	But they didn't really take it against him because he was not political.
	He was just scientific.
	So they just thought, oh, it's Boteko rambling on again.
	He did have a very good relationship with the Soviet space program.
	He was well...
	Received or well used in the high altitude department of high altitude flying where he worked on all these bits and pieces that to keep pilots going when they're at 40,000 feet or 50,000 feet or whatever.
	So he had very good connections with the government.
	Yes, and he was well-recognised as a serious man.
	What about, because that strikes me, would have been a very good way of improving the performance of the Soviet teams in athletics or whatever, in the Olympics.
	Did he do that?
	Yes.
	I know he did work with some weightlifters because some of the biggest lifters, it's not that they lack the power in their forearms to lift the weight up, but actually their pelvises can be damaged because the weight they lift is so vast.
	And he was working on ways to stop the erosion of calcium, which again he claims comes from deep breathing, the weakness which occurs in bones and the brittleness and so forth.
	So yes, and I do know he worked, and the only reason why I know that he did work with these massive weightlifters was because there was one chap that was doing a maximum pause in his clinic, and someone said to him, why don't you just wave your arm around, you know, to distract you, and he did, and he accidentally knocked a wall down.
	So, before you explain the technical stuff about how this crazy shit actually works, tell us what it can do.
	Obviously you can't break patient confidentiality, but presumably you can tell some of the extraordinary conditions that you personally have helped treat.
	I've talked about, I'm just guessing now because I used to sort of, you know, because I started in Australia and then I went to the United Kingdom and then of course there was the BBC documentary which basically I organised because I treated Sally Magnusson's a family member and that's how she became involved and that's why a BBC documentary occurred at which point I went to the United States
	And, you know, began things over there, whilst Dalmatsky, my teacher, carried on in the UK, then I went to Asia.
	Um, and, uh, so I think I've seen around, somewhere around 30,000 or 25 to 30,000 students.
	Um, in the early days it was only asthma really.
	We only used to promote ourselves for asthmatics because you could get very quick, very straightforward, uh, results.
	Well, other diseases could be a little trickier and take a little longer.
	And back in those days, the method was not very well known.
	So you more or less could find yourself in all kinds of legal hoo-ha unless you're able to show pretty quick, immediate results.
	And with asthma, we could do that.
	And then, of course, there were the asthma trials which followed, where there was a double-randomized control placebo crossover trial.
	Which we did.
	The Asthma Foundation of Queensland organised that and the results were fantastic.
	It was published in all the medical journals and of course it didn't yield any results at all and it bankrupted our business.
	I spent a quarter million dollars on doing the medical trials and the result was we went bust.
	Great!
	Well, that's the problem when you try and play by the rules of a system of vested interests, isn't it?
	They don't want people like you coming in and kind of rocking the boat.
	Well, Buteyko suffered the same fate.
	I can't really put myself in his category, but the politicians didn't mind him.
	The Minister for Health made an approbation, and the official method in the Soviet Union, back in those days, to treat asthma, and hormonal diseases, and a range of other diseases, was the Buteyko method, and that was signed by the Minister for Health.
	But it was never implemented.
	So there's your certificate, there's your bureaucratic approval, the stamp of approval, but no doctor knows what to do, there's no arrangements, there's no financing, there's no nothing, there's no facilitation.
	And so that's when Bouteka just said that's it, you know.
	We won We got approval and now nothing happens.
	And so in Australia, it was exactly the same.
	And I had the belief, when I heard about the tragedy of what happened in Russia, I was of the view that, well, we Australians, I mean, we're honest, fair, decent people.
	We're not going to have that communist crap over here.
	When the doctors finally come round to realising how effective it is, They'll be absolutely enthusiastic for it.
	And, um, I was wrong.
	Okay, so asthma medical, the conventional medicine has agreed that Buteyko works for that.
	By the way, I'm loving the fact that you're smoking a fag.
	I think you might be the first person ever to smoke a fag on the podcast, which is crazy.
	And it's a health podcast, which is even funnier.
	So tell us about some of the other things that you have successfully treated.
	Our diabetes type 2.
	Chronic fatigue in the thousands now.
	I mean, if anyone cares to go to the Bottego YouTube channel, they can see, you know, if you bore yourself mindless listening to one testimonial after another.
	Chronic fatigue, depression, obesity, Of course, a lot of asthma, allergies, angina, high blood pressure, all the diseases which are called chronic diseases.
	These are not contagious and they're not congenital.
	These are chronic diseases.
	And interestingly, up until the 1950s, They used to be called, that category of diseases, used to be called the diseases of civilization.
	That's what they were called.
	And when you speak of asthma, it's spelt, I know this sounds really tedious, but it's worth understanding, it's spelt A-S-T-H-M-A.
	So, and it's pronounced asthma.
	Now an asthma of the heart, It's spelled A-S-M-A.
	It's an asthma, which is a sort of, where something constricts very quickly.
	An asthma of the heart is called angina.
	For example, an asthma of the brain is called migraine headache.
	And so an asthma is the body's attempt to hold in carbon dioxide by constricting vessels, which in effect is asthma, or in the case of bronchial asthma, they call it asthma, A-S-T-H-M-A, but many other conditions are also asthmas, yes.
	And how did we get onto that?
	Diseases of civilization.
	And they dropped that name for some reason.
	I don't know why.
	Right.
	So you've now mentioned CO2, which I think was actually how you came upon me, because you've been following my stuff about the whole climate change scandal.
	Yes.
	And I've been saying, because The real science supports this, that CO2 is a trace gas which is actually beneficial, it causes global greening and so on.
	Yes.
	And that's why you wrote to me, you said, wait, there's another thing about CO2 which you don't know about and you should.
	Yes.
	It's really important for your health.
	Now this flies in the face of what everyone imagines, everyone who's not familiar with Bottega, anyway.
	Everyone imagines that CO2 is a poison, because they've been conditioned into thinking that way for 30 years now, since the Rio Earth Summit, at least.
	Quite, yes.
	Which was 1992.
	Oh, before that!
	Wait, wait, wait!
	Oh no, you've got to go a long way before that, because you've got to go back to medieval times.
	Oxygen augmented combustion, so if you put oxygen in a fire, the fire got bigger.
	Carbon dioxide suffocated combustion, and back in those days, people believed that the human organism worked on the same principle as fire.
	They believed that our method, if you will, was combustion.
	And it's not.
	We don't operate like fire.
	If you give someone more oxygen, their temperature doesn't go up.
	When they don't burn more quickly, or anything like that.
	I was reading that fascinating book on breath, which I think you're vaguely familiar with.
	It mentions Potejko quite a lot.
	I can't remember the author.
	I keep forgetting his name.
	It'll come back to me.
	But he was describing how, I think, was it the 1960 American Olympic team?
	I mean, even as late as the 1960s, most international athletics competitors were given oxygen before a race.
	It doesn't do you any good, does it?
	No, no, no.
	To the contrary.
	You see, we're getting back to that point about carbon dioxide being a pollutant.
	I think it was the church that had to make, because Black and Priestley discovered carbon dioxide and oxygen, and they decided that one was from God, oxygen, and the other was from the devil, carbon dioxide, and to this very day,
	If you open up a high school textbook, physiology, the human body or whatever, they even have oxygen going in, which is good, and carbon dioxide going out, which is like a waste product.
	Well, this waste product, according to Christian Bohr, Who, he's not a bore like me, he's a bore, that's his name, B-O-H-R.
	He's the father of Niels Bohr, the physicist.
	Well, his father developed a thing called the Bohr Law.
	And this is very important to understand Bottega Method.
	If you don't understand this principle, Bottega Method will be lost on you, at least technically.
	The amount of CO2 in the form of Carbonic acid, or that CO2 which is being held in the blood in the plasma, determines the rate at which oxygen breaks free from the hemoglobin and goes into cells and tissue.
	This is called the oxyhemoglobin disassociation curve.
	Sounds very complicated, it's actually very simple.
	Oxy, oxygen, hemoglobin, the red color, the red stuff in the blood, disassociation means to split and curve implying it's not linear.
	Oxy, hemoglobin, disassociation, curve.
	It's the Bohr effect.
	And as that line curls up, as the levels of CO2 increase, more oxygen is liberated from the blood than if it was a lower level.
	So the higher the level of CO2 in your blood, the more oxygen is released from the hemoglobin.
	Every doctor learned this.
	Every single person has got any kind of a medical degree.
	Maybe they forgot it, but they certainly learned it.
	And it's called the Bohr law.
	And you can look it up, B-O-H-R law or...
	You've got to wade through a lot of stuff about Niels Bohr, you know?
	Yeah.
	His dad is not so popular as the physicist, but still, Bohr Law, and he describes this oxyhemoglobin dissociation curve, and it actually shows how, within the organism, CO2 and oxygen work together.
	Without CO2, you're not getting oxygenated.
	No blood will leave the hemoglobin.
	Yeah.
	So, all this stuff about when we're sort of encouraged to stand on top of a hill and take a... and fill our lungs with healthy, life-giving oxygen... Yes.
	It's a... it's an illusion.
	Yeah, you've got no sensitivity to oxygen.
	If I were to somehow seal up the room that you're in, presuming it's a small room and I can seal it all up, and with the use of some machine, I can't imagine how it would work, was able to somehow suck the oxygen out of that room, you would not be gasping for breath.
	You would breathe normally, except you'd feel sleepy, and then you would collapse and die.
	You would not be saying, oh I'm not getting enough oxygen, I want to get more oxygen.
	You don't feel oxygen.
	If on the other hand I was to elevate the level of CO2, It would stimulate your breathing because your very breathing is regulated by CO2, not oxygen.
	CO2 is what regulates your breathing, it's what triggers the message to the Well, obviously the vagus nerve system but also to the respiratory center in the medulla oblongata and that's why you breathe.
	You breathe because CO2 is built up in the lungs and that triggers a response from your respiratory center.
	So, you mentioned earlier that a lot of these chronic health conditions used to be called diseases of civilisation.
	Yes.
	Does that mean that there was a time in the past when people breathed better than they do now?
	Oh, definitely.
	Oh, really?
	Oh, definitely, most definitely.
	I mean, when I, when Professor Wilteker made his discovery, he believed the average control pause Which is a breath-holding maneuver that you time, but it's actually indicative of your, um, the amount of air that you breathe per minute.
	Um...
	Basically, according to him, say, 50 or 60 years ago, suburban Russia, if you will, people breathed, you know, probably 5 or 6 litres a minute.
	And now, on average, they're breathing around 8 to 10 litres a minute.
	I mean, people are breathing A lot more, a lot more deeply than they did in the past.
	And there's a range of reasons for this.
	There's toxicity, there's lack of physical activity, there's the respiratory center which becomes Somehow, because of all these other things, becomes improperly oversensitive and so people have this cul-de-sac effect and they over-breathe and over-breathe and over-breathe more and more.
	Because you'd think, wouldn't you?
	Intuitively, it would make sense that the more exercise you do, The more deeply you'd breathe.
	So you would think that in the past, when they took more exercise, they'd have breathed more deeply then?
	Yes, but carbon dioxide is generated within the body.
	We're not getting any carbon dioxide from the environment.
	There's a bugger all there.
	We need around 7%.
	And what are we running out of at the moment?
	In the atmosphere!
	No, no, no.
	What I mean is, we need 7%.
	What are we getting in our bodies at the moment?
	Well, I mean, I'm not trying to evade what seems like a reasonable question, James, but CO2 comes in the following form.
	CO2, the gas, Dissolved carbon dioxide or what is also known as carbonic acid or DCO3 in the blood, carbonate, bicarbonate and carbamate.
	So it's, you know, but in for example in the bronchus you're looking at around six and a half and in various other organs around around seven percent by volume should be CO2 which is 200 times higher than the environment in which we live.
	Believe it or not, the environment in which we live is poisonous to us.
	And we actually have to create a different environment inside our organism to survive.
	And this is the reason for lungs.
	Right, okay.
	So, do you want to give us a brief intro into what these techniques involve?
	How does one increase one's CO2 in one's body?
	Well, your respiratory center, which is this... well, no one really understands it, but it's an organ, if you will, that's somewhat mechanistic.
	It lives in the medulla oblongata, which is the primitive part of the brain stem.
	And it somehow, and I've tried to find out, I've spoken to physiologists and so forth, and they're not giving a very clear picture, but somehow it's triggered by the level of CO2 in the bronchus and lungs, and that's what causes you to breathe.
	And through one thing and the other, infection, Bad lifestyle choices or other problems and difficulties which create this hyperventilation syndrome.
	The respiratory center becomes accustomed to being more sensitive and so your breathing gets progressively worse and we have a training to reset the respiratory center and we do that with breath-holding maneuvers to, I mean, I should come back You've got a physiological norm for body temperature.
	I think it's 98.6 or something.
	You've got a physiological norm for blood pressure.
	120 over 80.
	You've got a physiological norm for pulse.
	50, 60, 70 is within the norms.
	And the breathing, according to medical textbooks, should be 3 to 4 litres per minute.
	And most people are breathing around 3 or 4 times above that.
	And that's resulting in a dilution of CO2 within the organism.
	And that lowering of CO2, well I've already explained how it affects the oxygen uptake.
	And diseases like high blood pressure and so forth, because high blood pressure is a compensation against a low level of CO2, and that's why the vessels constrict.
	Much like an asthma prevents breathing, so asthmatics can't breathe because the body is trying to hold on to its CO2.
	Interesting point about asthmatics, of course, is that there's no medical literature that indicates that any asthmatics died from asthma.
	Until the introduction of bronchodilating medications.
	It was never considered a fatal disease.
	Inhalers.
	Until recently.
	Yeah, you give an example there of I think why unconventional techniques like yours are frowned upon by the establishment because they're much more interested in pushing pharmaceutical product than they are in tackling the root cause.
	Even the science seems to take a second place because there's all this practical stuff.
	It's not that they're... It's not that... I can't buy the argument that all these doctors are like, you know, just like juicing the system and trying to extract every penny and sell people poisons and make all this money and then what?
	What do they do with this money?
	You know what I mean?
	Like then go where and do what?
	Well, they spend it on volcanoes with their lairs inside.
	Something like whatever, but I can't really buy that.
	But they're part of the big, complicated, bureaucratic, with many influences, and they've all got families that need things, and there's status involved, and there's other things.
	People are doing things and it's I just I the individuals I really I mean they're just that's why I always consider myself lucky that I came across this because there are lots of people who are much better people I would say probably you know more reasonable and more qualified more knowledgeable more studious Um, but they never came across this.
	Yeah.
	So it's just my luck.
	And so I'm not really angry with the doctors, but the system is rotten to the core.
	It's not their fault.
	Well, yeah, so, it's kind of a... it's kind of a health hack, isn't it?
	It's a shortcut.
	It achieves remarkable things for... Well, I wouldn't say it was not much effort, because, I mean, we can talk about... Huge amount of effort!
	It's horrendous!
	I'm sick and tired of... I get all these practitioners, or people trying to be practitioners, or whatever, and the first thing they're trying to do is tell people how easy it is.
	It's horrendous work!
	I mean, the only thing worse than having the bloody disease that you're trying to treat is the method itself to treat it!
	Is that true or not?
	It is.
	In all fairness, you did not say, like one of those dentists, this won't hurt.
	You said, it's going to be horrible.
	You're really going to hate it.
	There will be times when you want to give up.
	The side effects will make you feel really, really bad.
	Yes.
	Cleansing reactions are dreadful things.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Tell us about cleansing reactions.
	Well, the rate at which the antibody bonds to the antigen is linear to the level of CO2.
	And everybody says they want a strong immune system.
	No they don't.
	They say they want a strong immune system because they think that they won't get colds and flus and get sick.
	What they don't realize is a strong immune system starts crawling around the body, finding infections, finding things that are not right, and starts going to war.
	And the next thing you know you've got the shits, you've got the sweats, you've got headaches, you feel nauseous.
	If you're fatigued, you're having diarrhoea, you know, one thing, not necessarily all together like that.
	And you get weird, you get weird like spots and boils.
	Oh yes, oh yeah.
	You know, I've treated multiple sclerosis quite a few times.
	I've always got good results.
	I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that it's such a shit disease.
	It's so debilitating and your future is so miserable knowing that you're going to deteriorate like that.
	The people with MS, they're much harder workers than most.
	So if I tell them, look, I can assure you everyone I've seen who's got their pauses up has seen visceral Improvement beyond any doubt and you know if you get the pauses up to the levels which I'm suggesting.
	And they will go for it.
	And I do remember one woman in particular.
	The doctor actually recommended that she come to see us because he'd seen some good results.
	And she looked worse and worse and worse.
	Dark circles under the eyes.
	Her gums went all a bit blackish.
	Her hair went all flat.
	You know, like, sort of like, she lost quite a bit of hair, and she got very skinny.
	And I even checked with my teacher and said, I mean, you know, this is not looking so good.
	And, but, you know, but, but she's feeling good.
	She's in a good mood about it all, but she's having very strong, these cleansing reactions.
	And I had members of her family approach me and say, It's not good.
	This has got to stop.
	I mean, she looked terrible.
	But she said herself, I'm feeling better.
	And then, at a certain point, she was able to walk, you know, without the stick and this and that.
	And finally, rosy cheeks came back.
	Finally, all the puffiness in the face and the darkness around the eyes went away.
	And she sort of came back to normal.
	But for about six weeks there, she looked a fright.
	I'm really happy that you've had success dealing with MS, because it is one of the most horrible diseases that you can get, and we're told that it's incurable, aren't we?
	I mean, the conventional thinking is that MS is just a... you're stuffed, basically, when you've got that.
	Bear in mind that they're not necessarily lying, because that's what they've seen.
	They've not seen anything else.
	And so, they've seen this many times, it always goes the same way, they've got interferon, they've got steroids, they've got this, they've got that, but like sand in a hand, they just slip away and it just deteriorates.
	The same can be said with chronic obstructive pulmonary COPD, emphysema, This Crohn's disease, which is something that afflicted myself... How long did you have Crohn's disease for?
	What?
	How long did you have Crohn's disease for?
	Well, I guess it started... I'm not sure when it started, but I'd noticed it when I was in my thirties, I guess.
	Twenty-eight?
	Twenty-thirty or something?
	So you've had personal experience of Botteco?
	Well, you know, that was funny because I was working with Stelmarski and I was helping him in the clinic.
	And when I would get these bouts, I would take some steroid or whatever and I'd get over it.
	But I would have a miserable few weeks and I'd recover somewhat.
	And then I had long periods when it wasn't bothering me.
	And I remember I said to Stalmanski, I said, I'm not in very good shape at the moment.
	You know, I've got this bloody thing, you know.
	And I said, that's a pity, the method doesn't work for Crohn's.
	And he said, well, it does.
	And I said, why didn't you tell me?
	And he said, well, you never asked.
	So that's when I started to practice.
	Up until that time, I was actually running a clinic, supporting the clinic, and this Stalmarski character, and I hadn't learned the method myself.
	I wasn't interested.
	Right.
	I just saw it that I was of the view that this was someone that was worth supporting and I just made up my mind that I was going to do that and I was going to take care of business to make money and this was something on the side that I would do because I wanted to see this thing move ahead.
	I didn't see how well you know I of course I hoped that one day You know, the authorities would, you know, whatever, and there'd be all kinds of money.
	But that never happened.
	And I've had a very fortunate time in my other businesses, so I've been able to keep it going.
	I'm acutely aware that in like 20 minutes, you've got to do a Zoom call with one of your... It's been delayed.
	Has it?
	Oh, good, good.
	Okay, because I don't want to miss out any of the good bits.
	I wanted to just talk to you about one of the things that, one of the side effects that I had when I was really pushing my Bottega, and it, I mean, it was, as I say, it was a lifesaver because I had chronic fatigue, which is one of the symptoms of Lyme disease, and I had no energy or anything, and so I was really keen to be able to, you know, I wanted to be able to play with my children again.
	I mean, I couldn't even play with my kids anymore.
	It was horrible.
	And the... You're making me want to fag by having all the cigarettes you're having.
	I might go and stop and roll one, see.
	One of the side effects I had was...
	I became horribly emaciated.
	I became, you know, you could see my ribs.
	Yes.
	And it was, I think you mentioned at that time, you mentioned, look on the internet and look up skinny Buddha.
	Because we think of the Buddha as a big fat man with a smiley, smiley character.
	But also he went through a very, very skinny phase, didn't he?
	Yes, he did.
	Yes.
	And I experienced that.
	Why does one lose this weight?
	What's that about?
	Well, one of the ways... The body's very clever.
	Incredibly complicated and enormously clever.
	If it can't get rid of toxins and poisons, it stores them in fat tissue.
	It stores them in fat tissue.
	And so, what happened was that your body was storing all kinds of toxins, poisons, infections or whatever in fat tissue.
	And then, when the rate at which the antibody bonds to the antigen is enhanced, because you're pushing the level of CO2, your immune system kicks in very strongly and it starts to discharge these poisons.
	They re-enter the metabolism.
	The reason why it puts it in the fat cells Is because the body doesn't want it to go into your heart, or your liver, or your brain, or something like this.
	It wants to be, it wants to secure it, it wants to bury it somewhere.
	And so, when you start doing Bottega, all that stuff starts coming out.
	Yes.
	That makes sense.
	That's why you lost weight.
	I didn't understand that.
	So I lost the fat because I had to lose the fat because that's where all the crap was stored.
	Yes, correct.
	Correct.
	It made me so unpopular with my wife.
	I mean, you know, and probably you by extension, because wives, okay, wives don't want their husbands to be fat.
	fat but they don't like it when they get really it's unattractive and they think it is they think it's unhealthy because because wives even though they sometimes don't show it they do actually care about you they want you to be to be well and they look at this and we've been taught to think of somebody who's skinny as like a victim of malnutrition or or something like that well i mean the plight of these these
	um these jews that were put into terrible camps and held prisoner and even murdered and so forth and And all the guards are all well fed, they're all dead.
	And many of the people imprisoned and starved to death lived well into their 80s and 90s.
	And there's not many guards living there at all, but there's lots of the prisoners were.
	Because they were starved!
	That's an interesting point, and very sort of counterintuitive.
	I'm just going to give me give me one minute.
	I'm just going to get my fag so I can have a cigarette to keep you company.
	Yeah.
	So people are going to be thinking, what the hell is going on here?
	Why is he having a fag and stuff?
	But actually, I'm using this to, apart from everything else, to satisfy my nicotine craving, to raise a very interesting point about Botteko.
	And it's one of the unsung benefits of it.
	If you get your pauses up to a decent level, we can talk about that in a minute, if you get your CO2 You can do naughty things like have cigarettes and you can eat cream cakes and things, can't you?
	Look, I mean, it's like this way, James.
	This is the way I see it.
	Yeah.
	If one of your friends is some multi-millionaire or billionaire, you know, gets a bit of financial advice off you or quizzes you from time to time, and he says to you, listen, I'm thinking about going to Vegas for the weekend, and I'm thinking about blowing, you know, bringing £50,000 or £100,000 and having a big party over there.
	What do you think?
	And you'll say, well, if you want to do that, go and do it.
	I mean, you know, you only live once, and if you want to do that sort of, you know, rubbish, you go right ahead.
	Yeah.
	And I hope you enjoy yourself.
	But if somebody came to you and said, I've got 600 quid, what do you think I do?
	Should I go to the casino and have a go?
	You'd say, are you mad?
	Are you out of your mind?
	Yeah.
	So, you know, if you've got a control pause of, you know, I've had students, not that many, mind you, but I've had some, Where their pauses have been so high, where I've said, I can't work with you because our purpose is to bring your breathing to normal.
	Like blood pressure 120 over 80, body temperature 98.6, uh, pulse 60 to 70, respiration 3 to 4 litres a minute.
	So if someone came to a class with all their money and all ready to start the class, and I check their control pause and it's 50 or 60 seconds, check their maximum pause and it's 2 minutes, I just say, well here's your money back, get out, have a great life by the way.
	I mean, wish you all the best.
	I've got nothing to teach you.
	So, it's only those people who chronically hyperventilate, and particularly to do with the depth of breathing, because CO2 is heavier than oxygen and nitrogen, so it sinks down, so the depth of breathing regulates your level of CO2 enormously.
	So, the method is, but Pateka's objective is to bring people's respiration to within the physiological norms.
	That's all it is.
	And so what happens is, if you breathe within the physiological norms, you eat like a pig, or you oversleep, or you do this or that, well it's not a big deal, you can recover from it quite easily.
	Yeah.
	But if you've got a very low control pause, very low maximum pause, well...
	You're not in such good shape.
	You can't, you know, yes, you're in danger.
	I once wrote a piece about it, I think I wrote about it in The Spectator many years ago, and I remember the deputy editor saying, you know, this is, why do you do all these cranky things?
	And I was thinking, well, you don't know until you've tried it.
	If you do it, it really does work.
	And I think I started the article by saying, imagine if You could do whatever you, you know, you could eat what you wanted, you could smoke, you could drink, you could... If there was a health method that enabled you to do this with impunity or near impunity, would you do it?
	And most people's answer would be yes.
	Obviously, duh, it's a no-brainer.
	But what they don't understand is that in order to maintain those control forces and the CO2 levels, you've really got to work at it.
	It's really hard.
	There's a price to be paid for health.
	Well, even what they call Kumbhaka Pranayama, which is breath-holding yoga style, and I've treated lots of yogis and yoginis, and rather serious ones, and they'll tell you that controlling the breath, that's the most difficult component in yoga.
	I mean, It's very peculiar.
	Someone once said, and I have to agree with them, that if you're determined, you must succeed.
	You will absolutely succeed.
	And if you're not earnest, you won't.
	That's it.
	That's it.
	If you're earnest, it's easy.
	If you're not earnest, it's quite impossible.
	So what proportion of your students can't hack it?
	Well, the novelty of the idea gets them through the first stage, and the first stage they can see things like their heart rate lower, they feel very calm, they feel relaxed, their blood pressure lowers, they feel warmth in their face and their extremities, and so something starts to happen in their mind that when I do this, I feel a sense of well-being.
	I feel, you know, for the first time for many people, I actually feel a bit... That doesn't last long, obviously, because all they've done is improve their situation a little bit.
	I mean...
	Look at it like money, James.
	If some bloke on the street, you know, living under a bridge, looking for, you know, handouts, and you gave him a hundred quid, well, he'll never forget you for a start.
	And he'll have a great meal, and probably wash himself up, but when that hundred quid's gone, it's gone, and he's back on the...
	Back under the bridge again, you know, so you need income, you need this constant revenue.
	And to keep that going is, it's not that time consuming.
	It's more the aversion that develops, because nothing is stronger.
	than the urge to breathe.
	And, um, you know, as someone said to me that, you know, if you were to strangle somebody, put your hands around their throat, and as they can't breathe, they're not thinking about their wife, or their mother, or their children, or anything.
	They only think of one thing.
	To breathe.
	To try to breathe.
	Because the urge to breathe is so strong, The urge to breathe is so biologically strong that it overwhelms the rest of the brain.
	And that's why Lord Buddha, who is... I'm not an advocate for Buddhism, by the way.
	I mean, I agree with what Lord Buddha says, but I'm not trying to promote Buddhism or anything.
	But even in his basic instruction on meditation, 17 times Lord Buddha says, watch the breath.
	Watch the breath.
	Watch the breath.
	So even because the breath controls the functioning of the mind.
	Mind and breath is like horse and rider.
	And when you try to put difficulty toward the respiratory center and it triggers and it gives you that urge to breathe, you can easily develop an aversion to it.
	And one does develop an aversion to breath holding.
	Yeah, one does.
	I can vouch for that.
	And it's actually one of the reasons why I don't think that Bottega is something you can just teach yourself.
	You need an instructor.
	And you need somebody there at the end of the phone to do what... I often used to ring you up when I was going through this hell.
	And I need somebody there to load my misery on.
	And somebody to say, do another pause.
	I'm feeling terrible.
	And you always say the same thing.
	Do another pause.
	And you also say about drinking a small sip of water with some salt.
	Yes, yes.
	Well, you see, what happens is that if you get a mirror and breathe on the mirror, and you'll see the amount of steam, even on a cold day, you breathe and the steam comes out of your nostrils and mouth and so forth.
	Well, your breath has a very high humidity level, and if you reduce your breathing, the depth of your breathing, The liquid retention or the water retention is huge.
	And this will cause, of course, a dilution of electrolytes.
	And so if you don't take a bit of salt, you'll become fatigued.
	So you take a bit of salt when you practice, we'll take a method where if you need it, you don't take it just, you know, like it's a vitamin, you take it if you need it.
	But sometimes you do need it because otherwise your electrolytes will be diluted.
	And you'll look at it... I've noticed that you seem to... Bottega seems to require less water consumption than is generally... A lot of people say you should drink lots of water.
	Yes, of course.
	But you don't... Well, no, Bottega's advice on water is you drink if you have thirst.
	If you don't have thirst, you don't drink.
	That's it.
	And the same with food, isn't it?
	You should never eat if you're not hungry.
	Yes.
	Correct.
	Correct.
	Absolutely.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	And that sort of makes sense, but tell me a bit more about that, because we all sort of... do we all overeat?
	Well, this is why I think they cancelled the name, The Diseases of Civilization, because Bouteika's idea to reverse the damage done to the respiratory center, which, you know, causes this persistent hyperventilation, chronic hyperventilation, Well, the cause of it, of course, is our lifestyles, and they've been very militarized.
	So, even when you're a small child, breakfast, lunch, dinner, bed, you know, you're on a timetable, and you'll have breakfast whether you want it or not.
	And if you don't have lunch at 12 o'clock, you're not going to have another chance to eat until 6 o'clock or 7 o'clock.
	And so, you know, even the cat has more freedom when it eats and sleeps than we do.
	And so this is probably a big part of why the diseases of civilization have come about, because... I'm not against it, I'm not against civilization, but everything has to be synchronized.
	And so you have to, you know, eat, sleep, by the clock.
	And this is dreadfully harmful to the organism, unless you compensate for it.
	Because there are these sort of saws, aren't there, as in SAW, that we are taught.
	And we're taught that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
	Yes.
	But you say the opposite, don't you?
	Absolutely.
	Well, not the opposite.
	We... That would mean that, you know, your evening meal is the most important.
	Now, we would... We don't... We'll take a... It was of the view that breakfast's not much good.
	At all, really.
	And that you shouldn't eat until you've been awake and up and about for three or four hours.
	But then, as the day progresses, the middle of the day of your activity would be your biggest meal, and then as you moved toward the evening and rest, the meals would be smaller.
	And the first meal of the day should be very small.
	But this is another aspect of Boteko which is very hard for, if you're in a relationship, for example, with somebody who isn't doing Boteko, they want to eat, you know, breakfast, lunch and dinner, and the other person's doing this thing where, you know, you're being anti-social in a way.
	You're not having breakfast with them and you're... Well, there's a reason for it.
	It's not a moral situation.
	It goes like this.
	That your body, one of the things that regulates your breathing is corticosteroid.
	And one of the things that operates, that works with your immune system is also corticosteroid.
	And when you take protein, food, and even if it's just vegetables, it still contains protein.
	The more protein, the more steroid is required to suppress your immune system When you eat, because if you don't suppress your immune system when you eat, you'll vomit it all out again.
	Pardon the colourful descriptions there.
	So you don't want to vomit all your food out, so thankfully the body's got a system whereby it will use its steroid to suppress your immune system whilst the food is going down and until such time as the digestive processes have started.
	That means that if you're eating when you don't have appetite, there may not be enough steroid to control your breathing and to suppress the immune system simultaneously.
	And this occurs primarily when you're not hungry.
	So if you don't have appetite, Buteyko would say that you shouldn't eat.
	But the problem is that for people who over-breathe, their sugar levels can drop easily and they're not doing anything.
	They can't overcome the appetite.
	They can't overcome the drop in sugar level.
	So even though you might say to people, do this and that, they can't do it.
	But if they're practicing and learning Buteyko Method, they have no problem missing meals.
	They have no problem following the rules.
	Although the rules do seem counterintuitive, and certainly against what we're used to.
	Yeah.
	I quite like the idea of the keto diet, but again, Bottega isn't very big on meat, is it?
	No, no!
	He was of the view that some people absolutely need meat.
	Meat is critical for them.
	They need it.
	Other people, not so much.
	But basically, when a person is in good health, and their respiration is within the physiological norms of 3 to 4 litres a minute, and they've got a controlled pause of around 50 to 60 seconds, he said they can more or less eat whatever they like.
	They're not going to eat when they're not hungry.
	They won't feel like it.
	They won't like it.
	They won't enjoy doing that.
	But people who have drops in sugar level and they've gone into this sort of pattern of eating and sleeping and they're identical every day, they find it very difficult.
	But once they start to learn the method and they can overcome, for example, drops in sugar level with a few pauses, they can easily follow the rules.
	But yes, the rules are odd.
	Very difficult with parents.
	When you're, you know, dealing with their kids and you say, just let them eat if they want to eat.
	If they don't want to eat, you know, don't force them to eat.
	And of course, I was raised in a home, in a family when you bloody well ate what was on the plate, mate.
	Of course you did, yeah.
	My father went through the war.
	Yeah, but how does one deal with, like, my wife gets very pissed off when she sees me getting gaunt.
	you know, oh, I don't feel hungry.
	I'll give you that.
	It's not going to work.
	But that's what we do.
	That's what Pataka would recommend.
	Yeah.
	But how does one deal with, like, my wife gets very pissed off when she sees me getting gaunt.
	How do I deal with that?
	You see, the views on health and the views on longevity and the views on functioning and so forth...
	I mean, it's a propaganda situation, and so I don't know what to say about that, you know?
	The people themselves know, and they can choose to, you know, avoid a lot of diseases, avoid high blood pressure, avoid medication, avoid diabetes, avoid brain vessel sclerosis, and what, occasionally you lose a few pounds, or what, you know?
	I just don't think it's a metric.
	I mean, what can you say?
	You know, I don't know.
	I have difficulties myself explaining that, you know.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I liked your stories about... I think it's amazing that you teach Buddhist monks how to breathe.
	I mean, you'd think the Buddhist monks would know already.
	How does that work?
	Well, they do.
	The reason why you can teach them is because It's Dharma.
	I mean, the idea of breath control and the idea of watching breath for them is the basis of what's called the Anapanasati.
	But I kicked off with the monks, the Theravada monks in Thailand and in the UK, because one was brought to my attention who suffered with emphysema.
	And he was a well-loved monk.
	And, you know, I turned up there.
	They were very polite, but they don't want to learn anything from anybody else.
	They've got Dharma.
	They're Theravada monks.
	They're not going to listen to me.
	But they saw him improve enormously.
	They saw him come out of his coochie and was able to walk around again for the first time in a long time.
	And for that reason, I had the opportunity to have a talk to them.
	And when I spoke to them and explained the biology, the physiology will take us to discovery, They were only interested in meditation, and what they all found was the same.
	As soon as you do a few pauses, it's much easier to slip into meditation, and it works perfectly.
	It's perfectly congruous with the Anapanasati approach that Lord Buddha taught around meditation.
	And of course the other thing I did was, you know, I would go to the Dharma Hall before anybody else and I would sit in repose in a meditative state after everyone had already left.
	So I basically had to sort of show my, you know, meditative muscle or whatever, you know.
	Yeah.
	And could you do it?
	Oh yeah, I just followed Bhutaka mentally.
	Just watch your breath.
	I just followed what Bhutaka said and what Lord Buddha said and it worked out fine.
	I could sit there for four hours.
	Easily.
	Was Bhutaka rediscovering something that was known to previous civilizations, generations?
	I think definitely because his language was the language of physiology and biochemistry.
	And by the way, On our website, you can see the, I'm not trying to promote the website, but on our, I've got the biochemical analysis of Buteyko method, and that was drawn up by Karzimoff, and for those fans of yours who are into biochemistry, they'll know who I'm talking about, one of The Soviet Union's greatest biochemists, and it's all there.
	So the physiology is absolutely watertight as far as the role of CO2 in the functioning of all the main systems from a biochemical perspective.
	But when you look at what the ideas of yoga
	uh... and this is not the and i'm not against it and i'm not meaning to insult anybody but i'm not referring to stretching exercises for bored housewives i'm talking about yoga practice which is to pierce the nature of existence through focus and attention and self-control those kind of that kind of practice just comes in to take a like hand in glove
	And all the serious yogis just cleaved to it.
	It made all their practice easier.
	Those who do yoga find their asanas, they can hold them for longer and all this kind of stuff.
	And those who are into meditation, they can get into a good meditative state much more quickly.
	One of the enemies of meditation are irritation and falling asleep.
	So you've got to maintain your focus and you shouldn't, you know, nod off.
	And we'll take a method and following the practice helps that or prevents that.
	Yeah.
	I don't want to talk too much about The exact techniques.
	I really think people watching this should actually go through your programme.
	Because I don't think this is a thing you sort of want to approach half-arsed.
	I think that... Yes.
	How does it work?
	I think the first thing that I almost insist upon, unless they're small children, because kids, they don't have any prejudices, they'll do whatever's fun, and we've got, like, exercises for kids which are very competitive and more fun, basically, so they don't mind it so much.
	But for adults, I almost insist that they have a working understanding of why they're doing this.
	What does the control pause mean?
	What does it indicate?
	Why are you doing this?
	Is there, do you have questions that need to be answered?
	Because if they've got some question in the back of their mind, it will erode their willpower.
	You need willpower to practice and your willpower will be eroded if you've got unanswered questions or something in the back of your mind.
	Why am I doing this?
	What is it for?
	And so the first thing is I would encourage people to come to a free webinar.
	Where we explain and people can ask questions and we can give very precise answers as to how you can eliminate symptoms, what sort of numbers you have to reach, how long it will take, how much work you'll have to do to get the result that you need or that you want according to your condition.
	And so we can be quite accurate with it.
	I mean, not, you know, dreadfully precise, but reasonably accurate.
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	One has to be very careful when talking about cancer, because there's the whole industry which is designed to shut you down if you suggest for a second that you can cure cancer.
	But I know that Buteko, in his latter years, maintained that Buteko can treat pretty much anything, or certainly prevent pretty much anything, everything from piles to cancer.
	Yes, yes.
	Well the cancer, the first thing that you have to, there's one word, cancer.
	But when I see, there's some cancers that we have no luck with.
	The Buteyko Method's not fast enough to catch them, in my experience.
	Now that doesn't mean to say, if there was a practitioner of more skill, and knowledge, maybe Boutteca himself, maybe he would have some other, you know, some other way.
	But when it's like the slow-moving cancers, these tumors, brain tumors, they just start to shrink straight away.
	Within weeks, they're shrinking.
	Cure, I don't know about any cures.
	But I do know that the tumors shrink and pretty, doesn't take too much, doesn't take long to see the results.
	But these cancers, these weirdo things, this liver cancer and this sort of, this stuff, what do you call it?
	Pancreas, pancreatic cancer.
	I, we just, we don't even, we, we, we, we don't catch up to it somehow.
	That's been my experience.
	What about vaccine damage?
	Have you, have you been seeing any, any patients with, with, with vaccine damage?
	Well the vaccine damage is suspected and I'm not knowledgeable enough to know if the people have been compromised by the vaccine or there's other reasons.
	So I don't really pay too much attention to that and I just aim to getting their pauses up because After seeing 25,000 or so people, I just never saw anyone who didn't improve, whose control pause improved.
	If their control pause improved, they improved.
	Sometimes we couldn't get the control pause up.
	They couldn't, or I couldn't, or we couldn't do it.
	But in every case where the control pause came up, always, without exception, The disease compensation mechanism, or whatever you want to call it, that mechanism either stopped, was retarded, slowed down, or reversed, depending on the degree of the work being done.
	So, yes, it was absolutely the case.
	But I must say that we haven't always been successful in getting those pauses.
	Right, right.
	Breath is, breathing is really, is the new thing, isn't it?
	There's lots of different methods and people are getting very excited about it, this wonderful resource we've had who didn't know about.
	And there is, for example, Wim Hof, the Wim Hof Method, which seems to be The exact opposite of Boteko, in that it's about... Boteko would be called hypoventilation, wouldn't it?
	Yes, correct.
	And Wim Hof, as I understand it, is more about hyperventilation.
	But they seem to achieve similar results, but you're not such a fan of Wim Hof, is that right?
	Well, no, I mean...
	Once again, it's a bit like this chap who goes to Vegas and is a multi-millionaire and he blows 50k, 100k, has the time of his life.
	I mean, great.
	I mean, you can afford to do it.
	You do it.
	But if you've got high blood pressure, if you're tending towards diabetes, if you've got asthma, allergies, sleep apnea, migraine headaches, Um, and such things.
	And then you start doing deep breathing?
	Well, you don't have to believe me.
	Start deep breathing now, through the mouth, deeply and quickly.
	And I can guarantee in five minutes you're sick.
	Your blood pressure will go up, your pulse will go up, and if you're prone to asthma, you'll start getting a wheeze.
	If you're prone to migraine headaches, they'll come on in about five or ten minutes.
	If you're fatigued, it'll get worse.
	If you've got, you know, and so you can see it almost immediately.
	Just hyperventilate for three or four minutes and see how good you feel.
	Yeah.
	And what have you done?
	You didn't get more oxygen.
	You got less oxygen, obviously.
	That's why your pulse went up.
	And so you can see it.
	So, and the aim of Bottega Method is just to bring the respiration to the physiological norms.
	Now, if you go to a doctor and say, my blood pressure is 110 over 70, I want to improve it.
	He would say, well, that's as good as it gets.
	You don't get better.
	There's nothing you can do to improve it.
	It's perfect.
	So likewise, if someone comes to me and they've got a high control pause, high maximum pause, I'll say I've got nothing for you here.
	I've got nothing to sell you.
	That's it.
	Goodbye.
	What happens if you really push it?
	You mentioned some of your students get... I must say, I pushed it once.
	I think my record for breath holding, my maximum pause was four minutes.
	Yeah.
	What does that do when you get to that level?
	Well, I mean...
	It's not really recommended, but I don't see any harm in it.
	I mean, you're not going to run out of oxygen for like five or six minutes, and the rate at which oxygen uptake will be improved anyway, so I don't see any great harm in it.
	I don't recommend it because it can promote too much cleansing reactions.
	Right, yeah.
	You can get too sick afterwards, and you want to regulate your cleansing reactions I remember, you know, I had one young lady and she had all kinds of health issues and I explained to her that for the next two weeks you're going to be as sick as a dog and you'll be throwing up and vomiting and one thing and the other.
	But don't worry, it'll clear up in a week or two and you'll be in good shape.
	And she burst into tears.
	I said, what's... I was a bit shocked.
	And she said, I'm getting married.
	I said, well bugger it then, get married, and once you're married, come back and we'll still sort you out.
	I mean, you know, you don't want to be on your honeymoon with diarrhoea, do you?
	Or covered in pimples or something, you know?
	So, just hold over until you're ready to do the work.
	So... I don't know how we got onto that, but I mean...
	You should practice in an orderly fashion and bit by bit chip away at it, bring out the toxins, have your cleansing reactions in a way that you can live with as best you can.
	There are ways that you can make it a lot easier on yourself, but if you're consistent and persistent and your practice is regular, orderly, you'll get regular, orderly, positive results.
	Are there any athletes who've used Bottega?
	Oh yes, yes.
	Well now, it was Con Barrell as a front row forward in the All Blacks, I think.
	A number three bronze canoeist.
	An Ironman in Australia somewhere.
	I didn't try this guy.
	There was a number three What do you call it?
	Squash player Karen Klonda in Australia.
	There's an Olympic swimmer who's actually now becoming a facilitator, a South African lady.
	But you see, one of the problems for athletes is, is that quite often I tell them, well, if you're going to learn the method, your body is probably going to get rebuilt.
	So you'll probably lose weight in the process, and you may lose some of your physical abilities temporarily.
	And a lot of them aren't too keen on that.
	I've been I've been talking to my personal trainer, you know, about breathing and stuff, and he's now encouraging some of his other clients to, when they're doing the exercises, to breathe through their nose rather than, you know, not... Yes.
	Inhale and exhale through the nose rather than the mouth.
	Yes, of course.
	And they've all noticed a remarkable difference, that they have much more energy at the end of their sessions.
	Yes, of course.
	Yes.
	I mean, as soon as you start practicing, you see the positive results.
	And so I can say basically that everybody gets positive results, but how much And from stage to stage in the process, not everyone gets through.
	My main concern is when you say like Wim Hof and such things and breathing methods for all the rage and so forth, we don't really concentrate.
	On that aspect, we treat disease.
	If you've got asthma, we'll sort it out.
	If you've got allergies, I'll show you how to stop them.
	If you've got migraine headaches, I'll show you how to discharge them.
	The role of the breathing technique is only To normalize and to improve the level of CO2.
	As far as we're concerned, there's nothing mystical in the functioning of the intercostal muscles and vagus nerve system.
	That's understood physiology, and that's not where the juice is.
	The juice is in the maintaining and improving the level of CO2 and that's a medicine for the body in a sense and that improves the functioning of the organism and therefore those defence and compensation mechanisms, which are usually called diseases, Despite the fact they're not contagious and they're not congenital, they're actually mechanisms.
	But we don't like them, so we call them diseases.
	They're actually mechanisms.
	The body is trying to save itself.
	And so, that mechanism will not be required if you improve your level of CO2.
	Just that simple.
	I was just remembering one of the most terrible symptoms I had.
	I had a year and a half of insomnia.
	Ah, yes.
	And it was Buteyko that helped me deal with that.
	And one of the things he made me do was he made me tape up my mouth at night, which I still do, which is really important, I think.
	Tell us a bit about that.
	Well, this is...
	I have been teaching with Acre Method for 25 years.
	30 years, sorry.
	No, 30 or more years.
	And I've spoken to other Russian practitioners who've been working for a lot longer than I have.
	And we all agreed that we've added nothing to the method.
	There was nothing that I brought to this method, the Christopher Drake component, which made it better, or anything like that.
	Nothing.
	You could have a style of teaching, perhaps, or a style of promotion, but the method itself, I brought nothing to it.
	But there was one person, only one person amongst Buteyko practitioners that actually brought something to the method that didn't come from Professor Buteyko himself.
	And that was a young nurse.
	And she worked in a hospital, an orphanage for retarded children.
	So you can imagine what that looked like.
	She came for asthma to his clinic.
	And he taught the method and gave them instruction and so forth.
	And she said that, what about for my children?
	Would the Buteka Method help them with their, you know, learning difficulties and retardation and so forth?
	And he said, Yes, my method, you know, la la la la, as usual, Bouteika explains how it could be done.
	And she said, but there's no way to keep their mouths closed.
	They're all chronic hyperventilators.
	There's no way that we're going to be able to instruct them.
	And Bouteika said, that's it then, they have no future.
	They cannot recover if they can't stop this bad habit.
	And she came back to him later and said, what if we tape the mouth up?
	And he said, yes!
	That's the way.
	Do it.
	And so she added that.
	That was her idea, not his.
	But he agreed with it.
	And the idea is not to gaffer the mouth up so you can't possibly breathe.
	It's just to sort of... so you don't habitually open your mouth during night and hyperventilate.
	Yes.
	Yeah, I use, just in case anyone wonders, I use this, um, the tape you use to, to correct your, the muscles on your back, you know, like physio, physio tape, that, that, that.
	Because you don't want something that rips your lips off when you take it off in the morning.
	No, especially if you've got them in the air, it's a disaster.
	Micro 4 is pretty good, you know, that's soft.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, exactly.
	The other thing that you encouraged me to do was, when you were in bed, instead of sort of, you know, lying there thinking, how can I, how am I going to sleep?
	Oh, I must lie in the right position and I must, you know, you said, prop yourself up with pillows and just concentrate on shallow breathing.
	And I found that if you sort of go through these weird phases, there's a phase where you can really hear your breath going in and out.
	Yes.
	And you keep working on it and working on it.
	And eventually you get to this stage where you get, like, incredibly spaced out.
	Like, it's almost like you almost have visions.
	It's like a drug.
	What's going on there?
	Well, you know, is this when you're in repose or this is when you're aiming to sleep?
	No, this is when you're sitting there.
	You can't sleep like this because it's actually quite arduous.
	But what you find is that the shallower you make your breath, and if you relax your diaphragm as well, using your diaphragm, what you find is that your breaths almost become continuous, like if it were on a... It's like a vibration.
	Yeah, it's... Yes, yes.
	And then you... Well, it is like a drug.
	It is like a free drug.
	Well, CO2... I mean, the vessels in the brain will dilate, and the rate at which neurons synapsing with brain cells will increase.
	More importantly, your thoughts will become more orderly.
	I mean, I've worked with lots of executives And traders and all kinds of people who are very stressed out, their wife thinks that, you know, breathing lessons will help them to relax or something.
	When, of course, if you take a method, it's hardly relaxing, but the result of more CO2 is very relaxing.
	So the actual work itself is kind of stressful in a sense, but the result, of course, is the opposite.
	And what I found was that many of them wouldn't practice that much.
	They're not very good students, particularly.
	They're very preoccupied with their careers and their work and so forth.
	But when they were under stress, that's when they would do massive pauses.
	They would grow their pauses during stress.
	And I got report after report of them being able to get through exceedingly difficult times.
	You know, just with a breath holding and sitting still and getting on top of their breathing.
	That's true.
	When I used to do public speaking engagements and I used to get nervous, I don't get nervous anymore so it's not a problem, but when I did, I used to do pauses before Like when I went on BBC Question Time, for example, I'd just do pauses beforehand.
	Yes.
	And it made a huge difference.
	It just sort of calmed you down, got you to the right mental state.
	Well, there's a few things that are going to happen.
	First of all, the vessels are going to open.
	That's why you'll feel warmer in the face.
	The rate at which neurons synapse with brain cells becomes more orderly.
	The threshold of excitability will change so you become calmer in the body, your pulse will drop down, your blood pressure will come down a tad, and of course you'll feel enormously more relaxed if you hit a few good pauses out.
	Of course you'll get that kind of boost and that results in feeling much more relaxed.
	And yet, more attentive, much easier to focus on things.
	So yes, it's very effective.
	And do you not get colds and things, and coughs and stuff, if you're on two minute maximum pause?
	One minute?
	I do get colds and flus, but if I attack them with the method early on, There's something there, but it's not bothering me.
	I'm functioning.
	I don't stay in bed, ever.
	I don't get sick like that.
	I've got something, you know, whatever.
	But I'm still functional.
	Absolutely functional.
	There's no downtime with being sick.
	Well, tell us where we can... I'm not going to describe the techniques, because actually, you know, people can, if they're interested, they can find out more.
	Well, what I would like to do, I was thinking, because I don't know when this podcast will be done, but if you wouldn't mind, or if you, you know, if you could, When you let me know when you think it might be, whatever, then I can promote, or you can leave a link to a free webinar for all your listeners.
	Yeah.
	And so they can come and we can discuss it openly.
	They can all meet.
	All the team Dellingpole and the Sharklings and things, they can all meet each other online.
	Yes, yes, yes.
	Yes, yes.
	They can come to a Zoom meeting and it's most important that they understand the basics and then they can ask proper questions around their condition and what's realistically possible and what's involved in achieving the results.
	And we're usually quite accurate with that.
	You know, we can usually give a pretty good estimation of what is required.
	We don't pressure people to do the course.
	I'm desperately keen that everyone becomes aware of this because I think it's one of the greatest medical discoveries ever made.
	There is something, I don't know how I would describe it, but very confidence building that you can manage yourself as a self-regulating person you can have some real effect.
	I'm not against diets and very healthy food and things like that at all.
	I'm for all this healthy stuff.
	But if you're sick, they don't work.
	Everyone knows that.
	If you've got multiple sclerosis and you start eating salads or something, what's that going to do?
	You know?
	Yeah, yeah.
	I think Part of the problem with Botteco is it's almost too good to be true.
	I mean, despite what we said about misery and the arduousness of it.
	Having used Botteco to deal with most of my symptoms, I then tried lots and lots of other things because I didn't take it as... What's the word I'm looking for?
	I didn't, I didn't respect it enough, because it just seemed too, you know, it was just another thing I tried, and yes it was good, but having come back to it recently, because, you know, reaction to my mercury, mercury, having my amalgam fillings taken out, and I was having, I was having some really scary, terrifying panic attacks, or something like that, and you just said, do some pauses, and yes, it will pass.
	And it did pass.
	Before we go, Christopher, what's the most spectacular case that you've... What's the one you're happiest about having solved?
	Was that too hard?
	Well, there's a gentleman in Singapore.
	I thought it was...
	I found it very amusing.
	He must have been in his late seventies and his son did the course and his son and Had me brought to his father, and he was a grand old man.
	And, uh, he was bedridden, emphysema, oxygen, doctors, the whole thing, you know.
	And he, and the doctors were entirely, completely honest, because everybody in his condition that they had seen, um, you know, progressively got worse.
	And we worked and we worked and slowly, slowly, slowly.
	And, um, the last time I spoke to him, some time ago...
	He was actually complaining that occasionally he was getting a chest pain.
	And I said, well, how long does it last?
	And he said, well, it might last a minute or so.
	I said, is it sharp or dull?
	And he said, well, it's a bit sharp.
	It's not too bad.
	I said, well, what did you do just prior to that occurring?
	And he said, well, it was usually after my walk.
	And I said, how far do you walk?
	He said, three or four miles.
	The guy's like nearly 80 years old, and when I met him, he was non-ambulatory in a bed next to an oxygen tank.
	Um, and now he's complaining, saying that I'm getting a bit of a chest pain after I walk for four miles.
	I think I'd get a chest pain if I walked for four miles, but um, at that great age.
	So it just shows you that...
	I'm surprised you, if he's how I imagine, a sort of grandee, was a sort of, one of those sort of super rich people in Asia, very, very sort of, very, well, difficult.
	I mean, was it quite hard to train him?
	No, because He felt he was on the verge of life this life and the next and he wasn't ready to go obviously so you know and your your pride and your ideas and all these things go out the window when you know you know that you can't make it from your bed to the toilet you know you're stuck and your your fate is rushing towards you but he got he was able to come off the oxygen within
	Well, he reduced it by half within three or four days.
	And then another two weeks, he didn't need it at all.
	No oxygen at all now.
	Didn't require it.
	And then he started to walk.
	And in the beginning, it was painfully small.
	It was only like 10 steps, 20 steps, 30 steps.
	And it developed into miles.
	And this has happened, you know, Quite a few times.
	It's not the only time, but in his case it was funny, because I got this phone call.
	And this is typical in a way, because I used to bring all these forms, all these patients, and I eventually just threw them all away, because I'm going to carry suitcases of patient information forms all over the place.
	But I'd ring people up and say, oh, you did the method a year ago, how are you doing?
	And they're like, oh, yeah, well.
	Yeah, it's fine, you know, it's okay.
	And they sort of gave me the impression that, yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's just okay, you know.
	And I said, what about your, on your form here, it says migraines.
	And they're like, oh yes, no, they've gone, no, I'm not getting migraines anymore.
	And it says here, high blood pressure.
	I said, oh no, no, that's stopped as well.
	I see.
	And what about, Your chronic fatigue.
	And they said, oh no, no, not really having any fatigue anymore.
	So I said, apart from the migraines, the blood pressure and the chronic fatigue, not much.
	Yeah.
	That sounds very familiar.
	We forget how awful it was when we were seriously ill.
	You quickly get habituated to being... Subjective, objective.
	It's a very rare mind that can somehow negotiate between those two polar opposites.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Well, I've really enjoyed this chat, Christopher.
	I mean, I knew it was going to be a good one.
	I think it's going to be very popular.
	May I say to my listeners and viewers, if you've enjoyed this podcast as much as I have, remember that it is becoming increasingly hard for people like me to survive financially because basically the entire system is working to demonetize me.
	You know, I've already been knocked off YouTube because Oh, I said wrong things about the death jab and stuff, and I mean, who wants to be in a place like that where they sense you like that?
	But I've noticed that in the payment processing and so on, that people are... I'm on Substack, I'm on Subscribestar, I'm on Locals, and I'm on Patreon.
	And it doesn't matter which one of those you use, because basically all you're trying to do is support me.
	I mean, forget about all the extra perks.
	You're doing it basically because you like what I do and you want to support me.
	I mean, let's be honest.
	That's what it's about.
	So please do use one of those methods.
	Whichever one will accept your card payments or your bank, you know, that won't shut you out.
	And I know people have problems.
	Just go for that.
	I really appreciate it.
	I mean, look, if Christopher manages to sort out your health problems, I mean, you definitely owe me one for introducing you to him.
	Christopher, tell us what your website is, where they can find you.
	Oh yes, it's Learn Bottego Online.
	Learn, as in L-E-A-R-N, Bottego, B-U-T-E-Y-K-O, Learnbotecoonline.com or .org.
	I thought it was .net.
	.net!
	Yes.
	.net.
	Sort out your marketing.
	Actually, one more thing.
	Do you actually make a living out of this?
	Because it doesn't seem to be a very good, like, way of... Well, I... Look, you know...
	It's very odd.
	I do other things business-wise as well and somehow I managed to get 80% of my revenue from my business activity and possibly nothing or maybe 15 or 20% from Botteco.
	And yet I spent 80% of my time on Bottega and 20% of my time on the... It's very odd and it's one of the reasons I feel very blessed somehow.
	I don't think a day goes by when I think...
	Boy, you know, there's such a thing as grace, you know.
	Somebody looking out for you.
	I hit the jackpot.
	Because I've got... I wasn't interested.
	I wasn't interested at all.
	Just sort of one thing led to the other.
	And so... I can't believe it, actually.
	I really can't believe my own situation, you know, so, and I thought it's very challenging and very interesting, and I'm very happy that people learn it and understand it, because once you learn and understand it, even if you slack sometimes, and even if you go backwards, you can always get yourself going again, and then I find, as you've experienced, you know, but you've had it for a while now, you see, so you've become more mature.
	About these things, and you've been, you know, going for it.
	I remember you were very wobbly in the beginning, you know, pain in the arse, you know?
	Yeah.
	Well, you do get these, like, bursts of irrational rage, or you get blows, or... Oh, yes!
	Oh, yes.
	That's what I mean.
	I mean, look, this stuff gets discharged.
	I do remember one chap in particular, mainly because of his character, and I said, how are you doing?
	And he said, I'm furious.
	He said, I am livid.
	I said, about what?
	He said, I don't know.
	He said, I dare not go into the office.
	I will smack somebody.
	If anyone comes near me, I will belt them.
	And I said, oh, really?
	And so these emotions and these things, they get discharged as one progresses.
	But it's all orderly, and it's as it should be.
	And so if people have confidence, and they do it in an orderly fashion, and they're guided in what they do, they can get marvelous.
	I can honestly say, with my hand on my heart, Don't recall any person who practiced, who did increase their pauses and did a good job, who wasn't delighted.
	They all, if they do the work.
	There's quite a few of course.
	We didn't get to manage them to do the work.
	But I don't really, no one comes to my mind that did a fairly decent job of practicing, got their scores up and wasn't able to I don't find real benefit, real significant improvement.
	Yeah, that's what I can say.
	I think we should leave it there.
	That's a good way of ending.
	Okay, we'll sort out a special, you know, introductory session.
	Yes, well, I will do a podcast for your people, and then you can give them the link in your telegram or whatever, and it'll be for all your... it'll be just for your gang.
	I won't promote it to anybody else, just for the Delling polls.
	Okay, good.
	Yeah, great.

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