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Asthma Overview

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Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease of the airways and lungs. Its impact can be profound because it can interrupt sleep, limit physical activity, and disrupt family routines.

Cases of asthma are rising so fast it is now widely viewed as an epidemic. Asthma affects about 7% of the adult population, and up to 25% of children in big cities like Harlem, NY.[1,2], Asthma is on the rise among every age group all across the county.

Worldwide, the asthma incidence has increased by 45% since the 1970s. The increase is seen mainly in countries which are industrialized. This suggests that some factor in the lifestyle of industrialized nations is causative - although it is difficult to design ethical placebo-controlled double blind studies to prove exactly what might be the primary cause.

Asthma is a “syndrome” or disease characterized by:

Asthma’s symptoms may range from mild shortness of breath to life-threatening airway obstruction. Most commonly, people wheeze when they exhale and experience an increased rate of respiration. Sometimes the wheezing can actually be heard by another person as a whistling sound when the asthmatic breathes out. Sometimes people have ronchi, rattling sounds caused by mucus in the larger airways.

Occasionally asthma sounds like a cough that just won’t stop - no wheezing. If the asthmatic attack is extremely bad, you sometimes do not hear wheezing because the air flow is so low.

Patients are generally anxious during an acute asthma attack. The anxiety subsides as the attack diminishes. If wheezing diminishes but anxiety increases, this indicates worsening of an asthma attack, and strongly suggests need for immediate medical care.

The well-known Cecil Textbook of Medicine states that asthma is a “clinical syndrome of unknown etiology”, meaning that allopathic medicine does not know what causes asthma.[3] Approximately 60% of asthmatics have asthmatic parents, meaning that asthma has both genetic and environmental causes. There may be a predisposition, but there also needs to be some environmental insult to trigger the asthma.

Asthma is seen in association with allergies to foods or chemicals, pollens and molds, cigarette smoke. It is seen in people who have allergies to chemicals in their workplace environments, particularly to molds or to formaldehyde and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs) used in new carpets and glues.

Smoke and environmental chemicals create free radicals. Research suggests asthma is caused in part by increased levels of free radicals. Vitamin E inhibits IgE responses to allergic stimuli in animals. “These findings may explain the beneficial effect of dietary vitamin E on the incidence of asthma,” researchers wrote in The Lancet.[4]

Asthma is seen more frequently in households of smokers, and is found especially in children and grandchildren of smokers, if the smoking continued during pregnancy.[5]

Studies have linked asthma and allergies with the consumption of pasteurized milk. “Fewer and fewer people can tolerate commercial milk,” states Sally Fallon of the Weston A. Price Foundation. “Pasteurization distorts the delicate protein compounds in milk. The body recognizes these warped components as foreign and mounts an energy-sapping immune response.” Many people who are allergic to pasteurized/homogenized milk are not allergic to raw milk.

Asthma may also develop after severe respiratory infection - those people whose colds always go to their chests. Infants with certain respiratory viruses (RSV, for example) develop wheezing and symptoms suggestive of asthma which may be persistent long after the respiratory infection has cleared. Foods, chemicals, pollens, molds, fungi, and certain viruses are well-known to cause wheezing, and may induce chronic asthma in susceptible patients.

Asthma can also be triggered by emotional upset, or by grief. The lungs, in Chinese medicine, are affected by grief. When the grief is dealt with, often the lung problem is improved.

Why does asthma hit children so hard? The National Academy of Sciences has found that, in general, children are more vulnerable than adults to toxic chemicals in the environment.[6] Pound for pound, children eat more food and drink more water and juices than adults, and thus they take in more pesticides and toxic chemicals relative to body weight. Children also have a more rapid respiratory rate and take in a greater volume of air per unit of body weight than adults. At the same time, children’s organ systems are still developing and therefore are more vulnerable and less able to detoxify hazardous chemicals. According to researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, children’s developing organs create “early windows of great vulnerability” during which exposure to toxins can cause great damage.[7] Exposure to chemical irritants can have significant effects on respiratory development.

Tests and Diagnosis Methods

Pulmonary function tests will show decreased maximal expiratory air flow (PEFR, peak expiratory flow rate), increased lung volume, decreased forced expiratory volume (FEV1, how rmuch air can be exhaled in one second). Even after an attack has subsided, we may see continued changes in how rapidly a breath of air can be exhaled from the lungs (called MMEFR, maximal mid-expiratory flow rate). People with chronic asthma may not recover completely between attacks.

Nitric oxide is increased in exhaled air of asthmatics.

Arterial blood gases will show decreased oxygen, and may show decreased carbon dioxide if the attack is mild, and the person is simply working hard for their oxygen. When we see increased carbon dioxide, we know that the attack is very severe. As the person worsens, the oxygen decreases and the carbon dioxide increases.

Chest Xray may be normal, if the person is healthy and the attack is not too severe. It may also show increased lung volume with flattened diaphragms, if the attack is severe. In that case, there may be significant air trapping behind swollen air passages - kind of like a one-way ball valve.

Routine blood work may show a high concentration of eosinophils, cells which are associated with allergic reactions. We may see high levels of IgE, and immunoglobulin directed against substances to which a patient is allergic.

Sputum coughed out from the lungs may be clear, or green, or yellow. Often we see long thin tubules of sputum, called “casts”. This is debris from the lungs molded into the shape of the tubular air passages.

Treatment Options

Allopathic medicine treats asthma with pharmaceutical medication. The drugs are discussed on many websites, and may include:

  • Bronchodilators like albuterol, to cause the airways to get larger and relieve shortness of breath. Patients of a specific genotype (the arginine 16 allele of the ß2 adrenergic receptor) have an abnormally accelerated accommodation reaction to these medications, requiring more and more to get the same response. These people should be treated with other forms of medications for the long term, although they may use the bronchodilators in the short term without danger.
  • Steroids - given by inhalation - to decrease the inflammation in the airways, thereby reducing both the secretion of mucus and the amount of blood traveling in the capillaries around the small airways. Steroids are a preventative or prophylactic treatment, rather than a symptomatic treatment.
  • Steroids - given by mouth - have an effect over the entire system. They may be very effective for a time, to control the symptoms of asthma, but over time they may result in ulcers, osteoporosis, diabetes, increased susceptibility to infection, and loss of the body’s own adaptive mechanisms to increased stress.
  • Long-acting bronchodilators like salmeterol (Severent®) act like the albuterol type bronchodilators, only not as rapidly.
  • Atropine-like agents (ipratropium bromide) are appropriate for those with the above-mentioned arginine 16 allele of the ß2 adrenergic receptor, although the bromide salt in itself is unhealthy for physiologic function of the body.
  • Leukotriene inhibitors like Singulair® inhibit the manufacture of leukotrienes, agents which respond to allergen attack in the body. These agents may cause liver damage, and will inhibit the inflammatory response all over the body, not just in the lungs.
  • Theophylline is an older medication which is seldom used because it has a narrow margin of safety before toxic symptoms occur - nausea, vomiting, heart rhythm abnormalities

Alternative, Complementary, Functional, and Homeopathic Medicine also have treatments and approaches for acute asthma, which are seldom mentioned in the allopathic literature.

  • Immunotherapy - testing with antigens to determine reactivity (just like standard allergy testing, only using preservative-free antigens in multiple dilutions), and then treating with progressively increasing strengths of antigen to help the body develop a tolerance to the substance. [9,10],
  • Acupuncture - tiny needles are inserted into specific places on the body in order to change the flow of energy within the channel where the needle is placed. Specific locations will stop an acute asthma attack within a few minutes. Other locations are geared more at restoring proper lung function for the long term.
  • Intravenous magnesium[8] – because magnesium is a vasodilator and muscle relaxant, it can help to restore blood supply to muscles surrounding the bronchioles, or tiny air passage, and allow those muscles to relax and recover their proper function, thus relieving wheezing.
  • Chelation – to clear out heavy metals known to trigger chronic inflammation that can manifest in many ways.
  • Colonics – to clean out the colon, reducing the inflammation in the intestinal tract and thereby reducing the level of inflammation throughout the body. Abnormal bacteria in the intestinal tract - as is frequently seen in children with multiple ear infections and multiple courses of antibiotics - is another cause of a chronic inflammatory state.
  • Anti-inflammatory diet - to decrease the inflammation of everyone in the household.
  • Homeopathic remedies - certain remedies are specific to relieve wheezing. Different remedies are chosen, depending on whether the wheezing is accompanied by fever, yellow sputum, left-sided or right-sided chest pain, etc. Viruses like the Respiratory Syncitial Virus (RSV) can cause a chronic hyper-reactive state of the small airways of the lungs. These viruses may leave a signature in the body which can predispose the victim to react to any similar virus with similar symptoms. These signatures can be treated bioenergetically, using homeopathic remedies or other methods of manipulating the body’s information systems, to allow healing of the respiratory system.

Sometimes, energetic blockages are the reason we have trouble breathing. We’ll share a memorable case study with you:

CASE STUDY:

A 23 year old man often visited a house where there are 11 cats. He wheezed every time he walked into that house. Acupuncture on his ears successfully relieved the symptoms. But he wanted to use hypnosis with Steven Swerdfeger to get at the root cause so his symptoms would go away on their own. The hypnosis session revealed a surprising energetic block. He saw himself as a young boy on his first lion hunt in Africa. He’d become separated from his uncle, and was eaten by a lion. At this point in the session, he started to shake. Later in the session, he went back to the scene, but this time he was as if looking down on events from above. He saw his uncle searching for him. He realized the awful part of it was not being eaten by the lion, but that his tribe would think he had run away and wasn’t brave. In the hypnosis session, he saw his uncle look up at him and he was able to tell the uncle that he hadn’t run away. Then the man walked along a path to see if there were any obstructions [blockages to healing]. The man found the lion blocking his path. He jumped over the lion and the path was clear. Hypnosis session finished, now for the proof of the pudding. The young man came back to the house with cats many times after that and never had to use his inhaler again.

The Onadmed can also get into these areas. People who cannot give up control sufficiently to allow themselves to enter the hypnotic state can lie on the treatment bed and allow the blockage to be removed energetically.

Prevention Methods

Avoidance of the inciting agents - if they can be identified - is almost always curative. This may include food additives, chemicals, airborne pollutants, household cleaning products, cosmetics - anything that we can eat, breathe or touch. They may also include the toxic body burden to which we have been exposed in the past, now stored in our fatty tissues (including brain) or in our bones - things like lead, mercury, organic solvents, insecticides, other pesticides. Avoidance also relieves the body of the burden of trying to fight on multiple fronts.

Unfortunately some inciting exposures are known to cause such hyper-reactivity in the lungs that the wheezing can then be triggered by almost anything irritating, not just the original irritant. Thus someone with an original exposure to mold antigen in the workplace or in their home may be able to get away from the original mold, but may still be left with chronically hyper-reactive lungs. These means a wheezing attack can be triggered by the smallest whiff of someone’s cologne, or the pesticides outside in the yard.

Diagnosis of other toxicities which may be present in the body - for example heavy metals like aluminum, lead, arsenic or mercury - is important, if allergy treatment does not solve the problem. Heavy metals also set up a chronic inflammatory state which will be predisposed to reactive airway disease.

A diet rich in carbohydrates (sugars, grains) and food additives (preservatives, flavor-enhancers, flavor-dispersing agents, conditioning agents, etc) or food colorings may also be highly inflammatory, and can be a major contributing factor to persistent hyper-reactivity of the airways.

book-childsworldResource:

Is this Your Child’s World? How You Can Fix the Schools and Homes That Are Making Your Children Sick

This best selling book by Dr. Doris Rapp made her beloved by thousands of parents who were finally able to identify allergic substances that changed their child’s behavior. The book tells how to pinpoint specifically the reason why some children and adults are unable to learn in certain rooms, outside the school, or at certain times after specific exposures at school, home or work. It clearly explains ways to verify your suspicions using fast, easy and relatively inexpensive as well as more expensive methods.

  1. Asthma’s Impact on Children and Adolescents, accessed 10/18/08 from http://www.cdc.gov/asthma/children.htm
  2. Richard Perez-Peña, Study Finds Asthma In 25% of Children In Central Harlem, Published in the New York Times, April 19, 2003.
  3. Cecil Textbook of Medicine, 23rd edition, pp 612-619. Accessed online through Merck Medicus at www.merckmedicus.com.
  4. Fogarty, Andrew MRCP, Dietary vitamin E, IgE concentrations, and atopy, The Lancet 2000; 356:1573-1574
  5. Li YF, Langholz B et al. Maternal and grandmaternal smoking patterns are associated with early childhood asthma. Chest. 2005 Apr;127(4):1232-41.
  6. National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences. 1993. Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children, Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 184-185.
  7. Landrigan, PJ, L Claudio, SB Markowitz, et al. 1999. Pesticides and inner-city children: exposures, risks, and prevention. Environmental Health Perspectives 107 (Suppl 3): 431-437.
  8. Rowe BH, Edmonds ML, et al. Evidence-based treatments for acute asthma. Respir Care. 2001 Dec;46(12):1380-90; discussion 1390-1.
  9. See the following link for more complete description of the testing and therapy: http://arizonaadvancedmedicine.com/therapies/allergy_testing.html
  10. See the following link for more complete description of the concept of treating the total toxic load: http://www.aaemonline.org/introduction.html
Asthma Overview

Asthma is seen more frequently in households of smokers, and is found especially in children and grandchildren of smokers, if the smoking continued during pregnancy.[5]

Studies have linked asthma and allergies with the consumption of pasteurized milk. “Fewer and fewer people can tolerate commercial milk,” states Sally Fallon of the Weston A. Price Foundation. “Pasteurization distorts the delicate protein compounds in milk. The body recognizes these warped components as foreign and mounts an energy-sapping immune response.” Many people who are allergic to pasteurized/homogenized milk are not allergic to raw milk.

Asthma may also develop after severe respiratory infection - those people whose colds always go to their chests. Infants with certain respiratory viruses (RSV, for example) develop wheezing and symptoms suggestive of asthma which may be persistent long after the respiratory infection has cleared. Foods, chemicals, pollens, molds, fungi, and certain viruses are well-known to cause wheezing, and may induce chronic asthma in susceptible patients.

Asthma can also be triggered by emotional upset, or by grief. The lungs, in Chinese medicine, are affected by grief. When the grief is dealt with, often the lung problem is improved.

Why does asthma hit children so hard? The National Academy of Sciences has found that, in general, children are more vulnerable than adults to toxic chemicals in the environment.[6] Pound for pound, children eat more food and drink more water and juices than adults, and thus they take in more pesticides and toxic chemicals relative to body weight. Children also have a more rapid respiratory rate and take in a greater volume of air per unit of body weight than adults. At the same time, children’s organ systems are still developing and therefore are more vulnerable and less able to detoxify hazardous chemicals. According to researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, children’s developing organs create “early windows of great vulnerability” during which exposure to toxins can cause great damage.[7] Exposure to chemical irritants can have significant effects on respiratory development.

Tests and Diagnosis Methods

Pulmonary function tests will show decreased maximal expiratory air flow (PEFR, peak expiratory flow rate), increased lung volume, decreased forced expiratory volume (FEV1, how rmuch air can be exhaled in one second). Even after an attack has subsided, we may see continued changes in how rapidly a breath of air can be exhaled from the lungs (called MMEFR, maximal mid-expiratory flow rate). People with chronic asthma may not recover completely between attacks.

Nitric oxide is increased in exhaled air of asthmatics.

Arterial blood gases will show decreased oxygen, and may show decreased carbon dioxide if the attack is mild, and the person is simply working hard for their oxygen. When we see increased carbon dioxide, we know that the attack is very severe. As the person worsens, the oxygen decreases and the carbon dioxide increases.

Chest Xray may be normal, if the person is healthy and the attack is not too severe. It may also show increased lung volume with flattened diaphragms, if the attack is severe. In that case, there may be significant air trapping behind swollen air passages - kind of like a one-way ball valve.

Routine blood work may show a high concentration of eosinophils, cells which are associated with allergic reactions. We may see high levels of IgE, and immunoglobulin directed against substances to which a patient is allergic.

Sputum coughed out from the lungs may be clear, or green, or yellow. Often we see long thin tubules of sputum, called “casts”. This is debris from the lungs molded into the shape of the tubular air passages.

Treatment Options

Allopathic medicine treats asthma with pharmaceutical medication. The drugs are discussed on many websites, and may include:

  • Bronchodilators like albuterol, to cause the airways to get larger and relieve shortness of breath. Patients of a specific genotype (the arginine 16 allele of the ß2 adrenergic receptor) have an abnormally accelerated accommodation reaction to these medications, requiring more and more to get the same response. These people should be treated with other forms of medications for the long term, although they may use the bronchodilators in the short term without danger.
  • Steroids - given by inhalation - to decrease the inflammation in the airways, thereby reducing both the secretion of mucus and the amount of blood traveling in the capillaries around the small airways. Steroids are a preventative or prophylactic treatment, rather than a symptomatic treatment.
  • Steroids - given by mouth - have an effect over the entire system. They may be very effective for a time, to control the symptoms of asthma, but over time they may result in ulcers, osteoporosis, diabetes, increased susceptibility to infection, and loss of the body’s own adaptive mechanisms to increased stress.
  • Long-acting bronchodilators like salmeterol (Severent®) act like the albuterol type bronchodilators, only not as rapidly.
  • Atropine-like agents (ipratropium bromide) are appropriate for those with the above-mentioned arginine 16 allele of the ß2 adrenergic receptor, although the bromide salt in itself is unhealthy for physiologic function of the body.
  • Leukotriene inhibitors like Singulair® inhibit the manufacture of leukotrienes, agents which respond to allergen attack in the body. These agents may cause liver damage, and will inhibit the inflammatory response all over the body, not just in the lungs.
  • Theophylline is an older medication which is seldom used because it has a narrow margin of safety before toxic symptoms occur - nausea, vomiting, heart rhythm abnormalities

Alternative, Complementary, Functional, and Homeopathic Medicine also have treatments and approaches for acute asthma, which are seldom mentioned in the allopathic literature.

  • Immunotherapy - testing with antigens to determine reactivity (just like standard allergy testing, only using preservative-free antigens in multiple dilutions), and then treating with progressively increasing strengths of antigen to help the body develop a tolerance to the substance. [9,10],
  • Acupuncture - tiny needles are inserted into specific places on the body in order to change the flow of energy within the channel where the needle is placed. Specific locations will stop an acute asthma attack within a few minutes. Other locations are geared more at restoring proper lung function for the long term.
  • Intravenous magnesium[8] – because magnesium is a vasodilator and muscle relaxant, it can help to restore blood supply to muscles surrounding the bronchioles, or tiny air passage, and allow those muscles to relax and recover their proper function, thus relieving wheezing.
  • Chelation – to clear out heavy metals known to trigger chronic inflammation that can manifest in many ways.
  • Colonics – to clean out the colon, reducing the inflammation in the intestinal tract and thereby reducing the level of inflammation throughout the body. Abnormal bacteria in the intestinal tract - as is frequently seen in children with multiple ear infections and multiple courses of antibiotics - is another cause of a chronic inflammatory state.
  • Anti-inflammatory diet - to decrease the inflammation of everyone in the household.
  • Homeopathic remedies - certain remedies are specific to relieve wheezing. Different remedies are chosen, depending on whether the wheezing is accompanied by fever, yellow sputum, left-sided or right-sided chest pain, etc. Viruses like the Respiratory Syncitial Virus (RSV) can cause a chronic hyper-reactive state of the small airways of the lungs. These viruses may leave a signature in the body which can predispose the victim to react to any similar virus with similar symptoms. These signatures can be treated bioenergetically, using homeopathic remedies or other methods of manipulating the body’s information systems, to allow healing of the respiratory system.

Sometimes, energetic blockages are the reason we have trouble breathing. We’ll share a memorable case study with you:

CASE STUDY:

A 23 year old man often visited a house where there are 11 cats. He wheezed every time he walked into that house. Acupuncture on his ears successfully relieved the symptoms. But he wanted to use hypnosis with Steven Swerdfeger to get at the root cause so his symptoms would go away on their own. The hypnosis session revealed a surprising energetic block. He saw himself as a young boy on his first lion hunt in Africa. He’d become separated from his uncle, and was eaten by a lion. At this point in the session, he started to shake. Later in the session, he went back to the scene, but this time he was as if looking down on events from above. He saw his uncle searching for him. He realized the awful part of it was not being eaten by the lion, but that his tribe would think he had run away and wasn’t brave. In the hypnosis session, he saw his uncle look up at him and he was able to tell the uncle that he hadn’t run away. Then the man walked along a path to see if there were any obstructions [blockages to healing]. The man found the lion blocking his path. He jumped over the lion and the path was clear. Hypnosis session finished, now for the proof of the pudding. The young man came back to the house with cats many times after that and never had to use his inhaler again.

The Onadmed can also get into these areas. People who cannot give up control sufficiently to allow themselves to enter the hypnotic state can lie on the treatment bed and allow the blockage to be removed energetically.

Prevention Methods

Avoidance of the inciting agents - if they can be identified - is almost always curative. This may include food additives, chemicals, airborne pollutants, household cleaning products, cosmetics - anything that we can eat, breathe or touch. They may also include the toxic body burden to which we have been exposed in the past, now stored in our fatty tissues (including brain) or in our bones - things like lead, mercury, organic solvents, insecticides, other pesticides. Avoidance also relieves the body of the burden of trying to fight on multiple fronts.

Unfortunately some inciting exposures are known to cause such hyper-reactivity in the lungs that the wheezing can then be triggered by almost anything irritating, not just the original irritant. Thus someone with an original exposure to mold antigen in the workplace or in their home may be able to get away from the original mold, but may still be left with chronically hyper-reactive lungs. These means a wheezing attack can be triggered by the smallest whiff of someone’s cologne, or the pesticides outside in the yard.

Diagnosis of other toxicities which may be present in the body - for example heavy metals like aluminum, lead, arsenic or mercury - is important, if allergy treatment does not solve the problem. Heavy metals also set up a chronic inflammatory state which will be predisposed to reactive airway disease.

A diet rich in carbohydrates (sugars, grains) and food additives (preservatives, flavor-enhancers, flavor-dispersing agents, conditioning agents, etc) or food colorings may also be highly inflammatory, and can be a major contributing factor to persistent hyper-reactivity of the airways.

book-childsworldResource:

Is this Your Child’s World? How You Can Fix the Schools and Homes That Are Making Your Children Sick

This best selling book by Dr. Doris Rapp made her beloved by thousands of parents who were finally able to identify allergic substances that changed their child’s behavior. The book tells how to pinpoint specifically the reason why some children and adults are unable to learn in certain rooms, outside the school, or at certain times after specific exposures at school, home or work. It clearly explains ways to verify your suspicions using fast, easy and relatively inexpensive as well as more expensive methods.

  1. Asthma’s Impact on Children and Adolescents, accessed 10/18/08 from http://www.cdc.gov/asthma/children.htm
  2. Richard Perez-Peña, Study Finds Asthma In 25% of Children In Central Harlem, Published in the New York Times, April 19, 2003.
  3. Cecil Textbook of Medicine, 23rd edition, pp 612-619. Accessed online through Merck Medicus at www.merckmedicus.com.
  4. Fogarty, Andrew MRCP, Dietary vitamin E, IgE concentrations, and atopy, The Lancet 2000; 356:1573-1574
  5. Li YF, Langholz B et al. Maternal and grandmaternal smoking patterns are associated with early childhood asthma. Chest. 2005 Apr;127(4):1232-41.
  6. National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences. 1993. Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children, Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 184-185.
  7. Landrigan, PJ, L Claudio, SB Markowitz, et al. 1999. Pesticides and inner-city children: exposures, risks, and prevention. Environmental Health Perspectives 107 (Suppl 3): 431-437.
  8. Rowe BH, Edmonds ML, et al. Evidence-based treatments for acute asthma. Respir Care. 2001 Dec;46(12):1380-90; discussion 1390-1.
  9. See the following link for more complete description of the testing and therapy: http://arizonaadvancedmedicine.com/therapies/allergy_testing.html
  10. See the following link for more complete description of the concept of treating the total toxic load: http://www.aaemonline.org/introduction.html
Asthma Overview

Studies have linked asthma and allergies with the consumption of pasteurized milk. “Fewer and fewer people can tolerate commercial milk,” states Sally Fallon of the Weston A. Price Foundation. “Pasteurization distorts the delicate protein compounds in milk. The body recognizes these warped components as foreign and mounts an energy-sapping immune response.” Many people who are allergic to pasteurized/homogenized milk are not allergic to raw milk.

Asthma may also develop after severe respiratory infection - those people whose colds always go to their chests. Infants with certain respiratory viruses (RSV, for example) develop wheezing and symptoms suggestive of asthma which may be persistent long after the respiratory infection has cleared. Foods, chemicals, pollens, molds, fungi, and certain viruses are well-known to cause wheezing, and may induce chronic asthma in susceptible patients.

Asthma can also be triggered by emotional upset, or by grief. The lungs, in Chinese medicine, are affected by grief. When the grief is dealt with, often the lung problem is improved.

Why does asthma hit children so hard? The National Academy of Sciences has found that, in general, children are more vulnerable than adults to toxic chemicals in the environment.[6] Pound for pound, children eat more food and drink more water and juices than adults, and thus they take in more pesticides and toxic chemicals relative to body weight. Children also have a more rapid respiratory rate and take in a greater volume of air per unit of body weight than adults. At the same time, children’s organ systems are still developing and therefore are more vulnerable and less able to detoxify hazardous chemicals. According to researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, children’s developing organs create “early windows of great vulnerability” during which exposure to toxins can cause great damage.[7] Exposure to chemical irritants can have significant effects on respiratory development.

Pulmonary function tests will show decreased maximal expiratory air flow (PEFR, peak expiratory flow rate), increased lung volume, decreased forced expiratory volume (FEV1, how rmuch air can be exhaled in one second). Even after an attack has subsided, we may see continued changes in how rapidly a breath of air can be exhaled from the lungs (called MMEFR, maximal mid-expiratory flow rate). People with chronic asthma may not recover completely between attacks.

Nitric oxide is increased in exhaled air of asthmatics.

Arterial blood gases will show decreased oxygen, and may show decreased carbon dioxide if the attack is mild, and the person is simply working hard for their oxygen. When we see increased carbon dioxide, we know that the attack is very severe. As the person worsens, the oxygen decreases and the carbon dioxide increases.

Chest Xray may be normal, if the person is healthy and the attack is not too severe. It may also show increased lung volume with flattened diaphragms, if the attack is severe. In that case, there may be significant air trapping behind swollen air passages - kind of like a one-way ball valve.

Routine blood work may show a high concentration of eosinophils, cells which are associated with allergic reactions. We may see high levels of IgE, and immunoglobulin directed against substances to which a patient is allergic.

Sputum coughed out from the lungs may be clear, or green, or yellow. Often we see long thin tubules of sputum, called “casts”. This is debris from the lungs molded into the shape of the tubular air passages.

Allopathic medicine treats asthma with pharmaceutical medication. The drugs are discussed on many websites, and may include:

Alternative, Complementary, Functional, and Homeopathic Medicine also have treatments and approaches for acute asthma, which are seldom mentioned in the allopathic literature.

Sometimes, energetic blockages are the reason we have trouble breathing. We’ll share a memorable case study with you:

A 23 year old man often visited a house where there are 11 cats. He wheezed every time he walked into that house. Acupuncture on his ears successfully relieved the symptoms. But he wanted to use hypnosis with Steven Swerdfeger to get at the root cause so his symptoms would go away on their own. The hypnosis session revealed a surprising energetic block. He saw himself as a young boy on his first lion hunt in Africa. He’d become separated from his uncle, and was eaten by a lion. At this point in the session, he started to shake. Later in the session, he went back to the scene, but this time he was as if looking down on events from above. He saw his uncle searching for him. He realized the awful part of it was not being eaten by the lion, but that his tribe would think he had run away and wasn’t brave. In the hypnosis session, he saw his uncle look up at him and he was able to tell the uncle that he hadn’t run away. Then the man walked along a path to see if there were any obstructions [blockages to healing]. The man found the lion blocking his path. He jumped over the lion and the path was clear. Hypnosis session finished, now for the proof of the pudding. The young man came back to the house with cats many times after that and never had to use his inhaler again.

The Onadmed can also get into these areas. People who cannot give up control sufficiently to allow themselves to enter the hypnotic state can lie on the treatment bed and allow the blockage to be removed energetically.

Avoidance of the inciting agents - if they can be identified - is almost always curative. This may include food additives, chemicals, airborne pollutants, household cleaning products, cosmetics - anything that we can eat, breathe or touch. They may also include the toxic body burden to which we have been exposed in the past, now stored in our fatty tissues (including brain) or in our bones - things like lead, mercury, organic solvents, insecticides, other pesticides. Avoidance also relieves the body of the burden of trying to fight on multiple fronts.

Unfortunately some inciting exposures are known to cause such hyper-reactivity in the lungs that the wheezing can then be triggered by almost anything irritating, not just the original irritant. Thus someone with an original exposure to mold antigen in the workplace or in their home may be able to get away from the original mold, but may still be left with chronically hyper-reactive lungs. These means a wheezing attack can be triggered by the smallest whiff of someone’s cologne, or the pesticides outside in the yard.

Diagnosis of other toxicities which may be present in the body - for example heavy metals like aluminum, lead, arsenic or mercury - is important, if allergy treatment does not solve the problem. Heavy metals also set up a chronic inflammatory state which will be predisposed to reactive airway disease.

A diet rich in carbohydrates (sugars, grains) and food additives (preservatives, flavor-enhancers, flavor-dispersing agents, conditioning agents, etc) or food colorings may also be highly inflammatory, and can be a major contributing factor to persistent hyper-reactivity of the airways.

Is this Your Child’s World? How You Can Fix the Schools and Homes That Are Making Your Children Sick

This best selling book by Dr. Doris Rapp made her beloved by thousands of parents who were finally able to identify allergic substances that changed their child’s behavior. The book tells how to pinpoint specifically the reason why some children and adults are unable to learn in certain rooms, outside the school, or at certain times after specific exposures at school, home or work. It clearly explains ways to verify your suspicions using fast, easy and relatively inexpensive as well as more expensive methods.

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