There are a few free apps that will teach it, I have used the “Advanced Buteyko” ios app.
If you demand extensive peer reviewed medical evidence of some specific quantified outcome before doing any activity in life you will miss quite a lot of valuable things that can’t be easily quantified or measured, or funded academically. There is however actually a lot of medical research on breathwork like this, they just will use the technical terms for what you are actually doing instead of a name like Buteyko.
I only did the basic free thing, and found it an interesting experience that calmed me down a lot. Personally I've moved on to other breathwork systems that I think accomplish the same things, but I like better- I practive several of Wim Hof's breathwork methods, as well as the breathwork training that freedivers use.
All of them involve intentionally and temporarily invoking hypercapnia (high CO2) and hypoxemia through slower breathing and/or breath holds.
Medical evidence costs money. What would look convincing costs sums few can pay. If you use only that medicine you basically use only Big Pharma. And they are set to produce only specific type of medicine: something you have to buy, preferably for life. A breathing technique is not like that so it will never amass that much "proof".
1. There are plenty of non-profitable non-financial things that do have scientific evidence backing them. Massage for example which can be performed by essentially anyone.
2. There needs to be some way to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were. Otherwise we all drown beneath the waves of lying charlatans. So how do we differentiate what works? "Evidence" seems like a reasonable criterion.
Evidence is an excellent criteria, but only if you look more broadly so you're not ignoring most of the actual evidence available to you. All you really need to try something personally is decide that the likely benefit, given the limited information you have, outweighs the likely risk.
If you're sufficiently convinced it's not dangerous or difficult, the reasonable standard of evidence for some possible benefit needed to consider trying it might become correspondingly low.
Scientific studies are strong evidence of something really narrowly specific that they tested like "does X cause Y," but most decisions in life need to be made from things like direct observation, and anecdotes, because the scientific studies rarely exist to provide the full picture, even a good study on "does X cause Y" might tell you absolutely nothing about if "X causes Z" even if Z is more important than Y.
If there is something like a breathwork technique developed by a long dead soviet physician that regular people all around the world have been using for 60+ years and consistently reporting that it offered them some tangible benefits and didn't harm them, this is evidence that it might be worth a try. With the Buteyko method, most of its strongest advocates I have personally heard of are long dead from normal old age, and never had any plausible financial or personal motive to promote it.
For things like breathwork, I usually do carefully and broadly look at things like personal reports from regular people, on e.g. forums that are unlikely to have any motive to lie. If there's a strong consistent pattern of some harm or benefit, that can be quite useful evidence, even without any formal studies.
> the lack of medical evidence tells us that this is in fact not a valuable thing
Except almost none of the most valuable things I've encountered in life had any convincing medical evidence I could find beforehand.
I am an academic scientist that designs and reviews studies all day long, so I am very steeped in the practicalities and limitations of biomedical research, and as such have completely lost any illusion that biomedical research is in a state where it can guide most of my personal decisions in a useful way- maybe it will be someday. There are many things I know about as a scientist, but can't get funding to study or publish on because the funding agencies don't care about them, and/or there are practical constraints that make it impractical to study.
If all of your personal decisions are guided by peer reviewed literature in it's current state, you'll probably be sicker, and have an empty dull life compared to someone that just uses common sense, tries things, and pays attention. I say this from having seen it happen many times in the biohacking community, the people most steeped in attempting to translate research into life decisions often died young, or even got to be one of the only modern people to experience diseases of malnutrition.
For one, you have to pretty much assume there is some specific benefit you can physically quantify, and that it will apply to almost everyone in your study population, both very unlikely to be true in cases like studying breathwork.
For example, I'm a person that tends to be pretty uptight and overstressed, what you might assume in scientific terms is "sympathetic activation"- and there is a lot of breathwork research showing that almost anything that has an extended exhale can shift you into parasympathetic activation, where you calm down and relax. There is lots of research on this, and it arguably covers Buteyko, but they won't use that term in the article title, because it's more general than just Buteyko alone.
Now, I don't need some peer reviewed study to just try Buteyko for a few minutes, and immediately feel calm and relaxed, and see that I can suddenly notice the colors around me, and feel joy, when I couldn't before. If a massive peer reviewed study proved to me that this does not happen to most, or even any other people except me, why would I care about that at all? Does it mean I shouldn't do it? What if I have a problem not enough of those people have to make it show up in the statistical analysis, or my body responds in a way most of theirs do not?
There are huge limits to how meaningfully you can generalize from scientific studies about populations of other people, to yourself. Moreover, you have to choose up front what outcomes or effects you will look at in a study, and if our biological understanding can't even guess at the outcome that would have been useful to look at, the study is doomed to miss everything.
Sit down, and try it- or don't, but don't assume you can learn ahead of time if it will be worthwhile or not for you personally by looking on Google Scholar.
A lot of the Buteyko studies suffer from small sample sizes unfortunately. I have heard good things about Buteyko from athletes but I’m not well-read on this. I think myofunctional therapy has more Western research done on it and is strongly related
1) The franchise actually does represent a decent amount of stability and financial security for the franchisee. Well-run locations typically could clear a modest profit for the owner. These were not money losing franchises for the most part (until the prosecutions started of course).
2) The post offices were geographically distributed pretty evenly throughout the UK so there were positions in far-flung locations well outside London. In many of these communities it was a good and stable job compared to what else was available.
3) Many of the postmasters reported liking working retail positions where they get a lot of face time with customers. In many small towns the post office was a central part of the community.
I bet number 3 on your list there is super-appealing to many people. It sounds lovely to be the kind of person in a smaller community that everyone knows and says hi to, that helps you out with paying your bills or whatever it is. I’m guessing you’re also often the closest contact to the state in a smaller village, so there’s probably all sorts of applications and permits you’re asked to help out with.
Especially if you’re on the older side, it sounds like an absolutely wonderful way to spend your time. Assuming the post office doesn’t try to ruin your life afterwards.
It might not be fully clear to the reader, but many of these Post Office franchises are co-located with a Spar, or other shop. People have to go to the Post Office (IME to a greater extent than here in the US where I now live) and they then shop for other items. Obviously, other businesses tend to cluster around as well.
There are situations where franchisees don't offer other services. These folks tend to be older and for most of the life of the franchise haven't had the need for additional income earlier in the life of the franchise. They don't have the energy and don't want to take on the risk of expanding now. When they retire, they'll probably close up shop as their children have other jobs.
The rural Post Office where I grew up in the 80s and 90s was accessible to a wide area just off the main road. It served a wider area than the current one. The Postmistress' family also farmed. When that closed the natural place to setup was in the closes village because that was projected to grow in population. That development would result in the old Post Office building being knocked down to make way for a dual carriageway. Eventually a few more Post Office franchises appeared with their shops in that part of the county.
My inlaws ran a rural UK post office for a time (70s, maybe early 80s?). I'm not sure how they got in to it, but seemed to enjoy it while they did it. Small village, low volume of foot traffic, etc. I got a sense it almost felt like a civic duty, but I may be reading too much in to the earlier conversations.
Nevermind sibling comment about money-losing businesses, there are many small business operations like this where a substantial amount of capital buys a relatively moderate paying retail job. Think things like Subway franchises, or gas stations.
Running a pub is a time-honoured way to lose money in the UK. They're essentially scams to steer the life savings of the working class into the accounts of large breweries.
> And yes, a lot of people are willing to go into debt to effectively pay to have a job.
That's the same _class_ element that OP was talking about, no?
I guess most of the people on HN don't see issue with people going into debt to get a degree, which is supposed to get them a job.
So how is it different to people going into debt to buy a franchise?
It's even a more straightforward way to actually get a job, while a degree, if it goes out of fashion on the job market, would have absolutely no use, and you'll have to flip the same burgers as the lad with no degree and no student debt.
It's not much different from going into debt to get a degree to get a job. Especially if your chosen field has only a single employer. In fact the college degree is often more speculative and risky, and a worse deal.
Historically it wasnt a bad thing since it was an add on to an existing shop.
The general idea being that I would come in to pick up my pension/tv licence or various other things the PO used to be the source for and then spend it in the other part of the shop.
> a retail position and end up hopefully clearing a middle class salary
Normal retail work is below the poverty line.
Beyond that i think it might be the social/community aspect. I simply can't use the post office in my town as its used as a social club for everyone over 70. Some people are just in to that kinda thing i suppose.
Analyst visits his lumberjack cousin one Christmas at his cabin. Notices the cousin puts an amount of fire in the fireplace, which is correlated with the outside temperature, while the inside temperature remains constant (uncorrelated with firewood or outdoor temperature). Analyst wonders what his cousin is wasting all his wood for.
The thing is if we quiz Friedman's cousin he can justify his actions, we can test his beliefs and then deduce that he is acting in a reasonable way.
Whereas with COVID we don't have that. Particularly since the controls in place were almost all things that people could have done voluntarily so the compulsory aspects are quite hard to justify. Eg, if a fellow want to live as a hermit they can just do that. The government doesn't need to shut down big chunks of the economy for them to go into seclusion.
And then there were all those vaccine mandates where people were just spreading plain misinformation that they would have an impact on transmission numbers. Turns out they didn't. Without that, the justification for a mandate is flimsy even assuming that there is good medical evidence.
The medical establishment should have been championing against these measures and, charitably assuming they were, they really weren't visible enough in their opposition. I can imagine a lot of voters in the US would be asking "why do we fund these people?".
There is a similar justified mechanical model with vaccinations. A toy version is that vaccinated people are X% less likely to get infected and Y% less effective at spreading the disease if they get infected. If compliance with vaccination policies and other mitigation measures is at least Z%, then the outbreak will be contained before most people get infected.
With novel diseases, it's usually impossible to have accurate enough estimates of the numerical parameters in advance to determine if lockdowns and vaccine mandates are going to work. And the compliance rate is fundamentally political. A few key individuals, such as politicians and judges, can have an outsized effect on it. Containment that would have worked otherwise may fail due to the actions of those individuals.
> since the controls in place were almost all things that people could have done voluntarily
The useful part of quarantines was to protect hospital capacity. We don’t have a form one can sign that says you get to take risks but are put at the back of the line for healthcare access under certain circumstances. (I think we should. Particularly with vaccines. Modelled off the Arizona stupid motorist law.)
> vaccine mandates where people were just spreading plain misinformation that they would have an impact on transmission numbers
Do you have a medical source that claimed this? It seemed to mostly be right wingers who didn’t understand the polio vaccine was also non-sterilising. (In some forms, negatively so.)
No, I just observed that everyone I know got vaccinated, then got COVID.
But if you want me to throw a PDF at you, "the impact of vaccination on community transmission of circulating variants of SARS-CoV-2 appeared to be not significantly different from the impact among unvaccinated people" & "Indeed, there is growing evidence that peak viral titres in the upper airways of the lungs and culturable virus are similar in vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals" - https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
Which matches pretty closely what I see in real life. Before vaccinations, everyone was going to get COVID. After vaccinations, everyone ... got COVID. No change in transmission profile.
> We don’t have a form one can sign that says you get to take risks but are put at the back of the line for healthcare access under certain circumstances.
Yes, people should be able to take responsibility for their own health rather than have the economy burned down around their ears. Maybe the CDC should have been pointing that out? Something COVID-like is going to happen in the future, it isn't that unusual an event. A respiratory pandemic is probably a 1:50, 1:20 year style event given how interconnected the world is now.
If it's worth anything, my family and I got vaccinated and boosted and none of us got Covid.
Or at least, we never tested positive, and had no mysterious flu-like ailments that struck us down for days or weeks. Either we were exceptionally lucky, or the vaccine worked.
As you seem to imply, Covid is a new class signifier. The socioeconomic divide in this incidence is my point. (Years ago we saw the same with football concussions. Everyone wanted a college-football intern. Less so someone on the full-time cost roll.)
I don't think AlphaGo was trained on the "largest trove of anthropomorphic training data," and the rest of the remarks are about GPT, but I'm open to having misread.
This sounds like a bad idea. You are very smart to have asked before proceeding.
I work as an MLE at a growth-stage startup with ~20 MLE/MLS folks. I was unemployed for 6 months before getting this job with 4YOE as an MLE and DS. There are too many qualified candidates.
ML research is out of the question. Most of the people who get to do ML research have PhDs, if not the only people. This seems like a racket but it exists for a good reason. It's hard for employers to evaluate the quality of MLS candidates through an interview, they don't know what to ask him. And if they've hired one, it's hard to know whether to fire him, things rarely pan out in research. The whole time, they have to trust this dweeb to run experiments burning tons of $$$ in compute! Employers are wise to be risk-averse, and to defer to costly social signals.
If you're going to take yourself off the job market for a long time, you had better at least get some kind of legible social signal out of it, like a master's degree. Almost all of the MLEs I work with have at least an MS in a relevant subject, the rest have PhDs.
I do have an MS in DS/ML, but thanks for the advice.
Now, if I were to look for ML engineering positions after that hiatus, would that change the answer? I already have some experience in that.
(I should have been clearer that I’m not expecting a research scientist job right away, I’d like to upskill and then take a job I’m qualified for, and try the PhD route later.)
That's extremely pertinent information, why didn't you say so?
An MS probably doesn't have that much more of a causal effect on your ability to do good ML work, as opposed to an equivalent amount of diligent self-directed study, which is what I assumed you were considering. But *the hiring market is dumb*, hence my spiel about social signals.
So now I'm less confident about the hiatus. I still don't think it's a good idea, but certainly not as terrible, and I think the HN consensus would be slightly in favor of it.
If you haven't already, consider posting this question to teamblind. Yes it's an incredibly toxic community, but it attracts people ruthlessly interested in maximizing their compensation. HN is biased towards entrepreneurship.
From the "Medical Evidence" section, it seems I'm not missing much.