Richard Friedel

Sat nam Joan and Oversoul, My remarks in the posting of 3.28.2006 about not being able to inhale with the tongue held down and the head held back were of course nonsense and not applicable to someone in good health. The SIMT devices I referred to in the posting of3.25.2006 may well revolutionize chest disease treatment in the West.. Since they are considered to provide and effective treatment for asthma, and medical treatments are based on the peculiar hypothesis of airway inflammation or remodelling not being caused by asthmatic breathing, they must be considered as scientific and not merely "adjunctive" or "complementary". Personally I see SIMT as a great opportunity to reduce health system costs by outdoing treatment of chest diseases with drugs, which seems to be a medical disaster comparable with lobotomy which once got the Nobel Prize. Using a finger placed between the lips seems to define a better form of resistance for SIMT. Apart from saving money, the degree of resistance can be varied during an inhale and more especially increased toward the end to get a satisfactory abdominal breathing pattern going. According to the principle of Occam's razor (using simplest of possible arguments) this might mean the end of asthma. RF