Deep breathing: the asthma clinic buried 250 metres into an Armenian salt mine

Patients in the underground clinic are encouraged to undertake activities such as billiards and table tennis. Photograph: Sofia Maria Bergmann/The Guardian

For most people, spending hours deep underground in darkness would seem an odd prescription for better health.

Yet every morning, a handful of Armenians descend 250 metres beneath the earth into an active salt mine where they spend six hours in cavernous chambers carved from rock salt, hoping the air below ground will help them breathe more easily.