Lets talk asthma.

[Niamh]

Whats your personal theory/asthma story?

I currently have a friend whose son (5) is struggling with his severe asthma. This year especially has been challenging. Many many doctors apts, specialists, nebulizer treatments, some steroid therapy, inhalers, etc. The mother is a naturally minded intelligent woman - but that doesn't always mean all resources are explored/opened. Everytime a virus hits the poor kid, he ends up in the doctors office or emergency room - his asthma seems to be increasing in severity with age.

Child is partially delayed/selective vaxed. Mother has many allergies, child was child led weaned until age 4 I believe. They follow a traditional foods diet, raw milk, bone stocks and all that goodness. Some probiotics, if I remember correctly.


So MT, throw some studies at me. A few books would be great, anything. What about sodium ascorbate?

[Sandra17]

My heart goes out to your friend Niamh. My six year old son has only had one bout of asthma adn that was very frightening. Part of being here on this board is about my journey to prevent him getting to laying on the floor of our GP's room struggling to breathe (chose to lay there because still wanted to play with the toys despite being too weak to sit up) and taking the steroids gratefully.

I am mostly focused on not getting to that stage again. We saw the effects of the steroids in a big eczema outbreak about a fortnight later but things appear to have balanced out better now.

We are doing the bone broths, probiotics, vitamin supplements, try to eat well generally. I stopped him swimming today as it was cold and I could see all the conditions for another attack if he went swimming in the rain at school. I'm saving to buy a dehumidifier for this winter and am hopeful that that will be a good thing, especially given our very damp climate on the west coast (SI).

I have been reading Paul Pitchford's "Healing with Whole Foods" and finding it a wonderful source of information for healthy healing foods for different body types and needs and weaknesses.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Okay, before we talk turkey, asthma is different for different people.

My first attack of asthma was after my third tetanus shot, and very startling. (I did not know at that time, that as a three year old, I had reacted to a diphtheria vaccine with a series of illnesses; tonsillitis, ear infections, bronchial infections, which "seemingly" came out of the blue, and culminated in having my tonsils removed at 5, which did nothing to sort the issue out.)

Previous vaccines: When I was 7 we came here, and I had a smallpox vaccine. Two actually. I tried to run away with the first one, and the hand holding me down, didn't quite work, so they did a second on top. When I got home about five minutes later, I was so wild, I removed the dressing, and scrubbed the area raw trying to rip out the hurt... perhaps that was a good thing :D

Apart from blood and a large scar 3 cm by 3 cm I had no reaction to that one, so I presume I removed most of it.

My asthma: It tapered away within a year, with only sporadic attacks after hard gymnastic routines, which would now be called exercise induced brochospasm, which they now know can be prevented with vitamin C.

But I didn't know anything about either diet or vitamin C at that time.

From 19 - 24 I controlled it with breathing without the use of ventolin ( there was no such thing as the Butyenko method then) and had my last major attack requiring my outdated almost unused puffer, after running a 1 mile race fully dressed in work clothes and shoes. I won it, but collapsed at the finish and had to be driven 2 ks home to get my inhaler.

Not long after that, I started reading all I could about it, because my list of "allergic to" drugs was growing by the day, and realised that for me, my problems were a combination of immune system provocation, and lousy diet.

At that time, I didn't know I had an immunodeficiency, which might have explained more, but it's probably just as well, because then I might not have really made an effort to solve the issues.

In those days, Adele Davis was "the" author, and I read what she said about asthma, put it into practice, and it worked.

I threw out my inhaler, which had remained unused since the race, and was probably a decade past it's use by date, early in our marriage.

In 2005, for about four months during the lead up to menopause I thought I was getting asthma again, but prayed about it, and was "led" to do a few things differently. After what one might call a sumo wrestle match with God (he won) I woke up the next morning, with my lungs clearer than I can remember them, since the time I can remember back to... :giggle:

I can only attribute that to God, since the only thing I did different was to have a spiritual stoush.

:alien:

[Lexie]

My asthma sounds similar to yours, MT.

As a child, I first was diagnosed with bronchitis which apparently flared up with every single cold I had, so every 2 weeks. Then it got worse and the doctor said I had asthmatic bronchitis. I don't know if I was vaccinated at the time. I was either 9 or 10...and this may have been about the time the yellow fever vaccine was introduced. I did get that in school. I wish my mother had kept track of these things for me. I didn't understand the importance at that age with so much else preoccupying my mind.

I think it was by the time I was 12 that I had asthma. Ventolin...had it. I didn't notice any relief from it. I do remember the doctor saying it made my heart race which was no big deal since I wasn't going to be taking it forever. When he changed my treatment, he suddenly decided a racing heart was dangerous. Always only when there's a replacement are flaws admittedly negative...

Changed doctors. Got inhalers. Ventolin again...yay. She said the inhaler was better cause it got to the problem faster. Again, didn't notice any help from it. We had a 'Sports Day' in school each year and I did the non-strenuous stuff like shot put, javelin, and marching. Then one of the runners didn't show, and my Math teacher came begging for me to fill in. I told him repeatedly that I couldn't because of my asthma. I wasn't even using inhalers anymore. I had thrown them away and decided to just not exert myself. As time went by, it had calmed anyway, but I knew running would be bad. He didn't give in...so I did. Halfway through the race, my chest and throat were so tight, I could hardly squeeze any air through. I was beginning to feel faint. I kept going because I'm stubborn, I guess. I had to stop for a while and then I walked. Finally, I tried to jog. Exerts me less than running at least. I don't even remember hearing anyone. I thought they had all gone silent. I kept going until I finally got to the finish line and collapsed. I lay there on the field, my vision coming and going, and my chest and throat still tight. I could hardly get a breath in still, but I remember seeing a friend when my vision was working, and saying to him, 'I...tried...' A few people helped me up and got me into the ambulance and they took me to the hospital. They gave me two inhalers and had me use them there before I could leave...meh. I think I had to take sixteen puffs of one of them. I don't remember about the other. They almost gave me ventolin, but I told them it never helped. Ha...so they gave me a different drug. Then they gave me instructions to use them I think four times a day. I did it even though I knew I didn't want/need to.

Since then, I've changed my diet a lot, and I've altered the way that I breathe when I'm doing things that easily exert me. It's a lot better, and I would never use an inhaler now. If I have to, I curl up into a ball as tightly as I can on the floor/bed and just try to take the deepest breaths I can. And I have to stay like this until my breathing becomes normal, otherwise I'm back to square one.

Of course, I did receive vaccines as recently as 2 3/4 years ago. So this may only delay it working itself out. I remember my old doctor saying, funny enough, that children with asthma outgrow it with age. Heh!

[Niamh]

You changed your diet... any known food allergies?

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Me, or Lexie?

Me: allergic to all antibiotics; violently allergic to tamarillos.

Have now taken all grains and sugar out of my diet and am pain free for the first time in years....

Not only did I change my diet back then, I started taking vitamin C, and occasionally a few other things, once I found out I had an immunodeficiency.

[Lexie]

Funny how life turns out. I watched an animal cruelty video a few months after I turned 16. I immediately stopped eating everything animal-related except for eggs and dairy. I was doing it for ethical reasons, so I didn't even notice at first that I wasn't getting sick constantly anymore. When I was back out to school for a few months and people around me were getting sick, but I wasn't, I knew something had changed. Then I started reading more and realized there must be a connection. Finally, I realized I was lactose intolerant. Plus, there was the ethical issue, so I dropped eggs and dairy too. The difference was like night and day. I was getting the cold twice a year at most when it was seriously twice a month before I had changed anything.

We never were big on wheat in my family, and I notice that whenever I've had it in more recent times, I get congested after. I don't care for it anyway, so I avoid it.

My diet has had so much removed, I can't pinpoint any one thing apart from the dairy and wheat because I know for a fact that they bother me. Now I pretty much eat legumes, vegetables, and virgin coconut oil, and drink water and diluted juice.

I'm allergic to aspirin and penicillin.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

without cheese and eggs, I'd be very unhappy...

[Niamh]

What is SA's role in asthma?
How can it help? What exactly does it do specifically linked to asthma?

[Niamh]

without cheese and eggs, I'd be very unhappy...

I hear ya.
I'm dairy & gluten mildly intolerant. I really do believe cutting them out would be a big step towards overall improved health. Both affect my asthma.

And yet, because I do not have a major reaction, I believe my husband is doubting the allergy-aspect & without his support, my willpower is overcome by exposure to a house full of wheat products.

I live in the cheese state, and off topic - a few houses up is a couple from NZ who make yummyyummy cheese.

Its got to happen. I just got to push myself there.

[Lexie]

hehe I think it would make almost anyone unhappy. I thought I would miss the dairy much more. I ate and drank tons of it while I was growing up. About 75% of what we ate had cheese in it. We just had a monumental amount of dairy all the time. It's no wonder I always felt like I was born defective. I was sick all the time. Even when I didn't have the cold, I ached so bad, threw up...and worse. I wish a stupid doctor had diagnosed it before it made such a mess of my early life. At first, I missed the taste. I felt so well though... I found that after years, the smell began to seem very off to me. Then one day I tasted it thinking my nose must be wrong. It was disgusting to me. I spit it out and rinsed my mouth. I've searched for a vegan alternative. Part of the problem is they're all made from wheat and soy. The other problem is the ones I have tasted are nothing like cheese as I remember it. But then, even cheese isn't...ha. I guess I lose. Oh well. :(

My husband doubts everything non-mainstream. Let me tell you, it's all an uphill battle with him! He used to tell me when we first met that I was very strange. Now he's gotten used to it, so I'm just a little. :)

[lauradbg]

Just wanted to remind people that there's a huge difference between real milk, raw, unpasteurized and non-homogenized, and the stuff you get at the grocery store, organic or otherwise.

Raw has all sorts of enzymes that help digest it. Pasteurized does not.

Many people who are lacto-intolerant may just be pasteurized intolerant.

I'm sure people here have had real reactions to drinking milk and eating cheese, but was any of it raw? Just curious.

[Lexie]

My grandfather was a farmer among other things. So yes, I have had a lot of raw dairy.

[Damien]

Have any of you tried the Buteyko breathing technique? I took a class with a good instructor and I noticed a dramatic improvement very quickly.

The key problem, though, was being able to keep up with the exercises - it takes upwards of 90 minutes per day to do the exercises properly, which can be a lot of time to devote out of a day. Ultimately the time proved to be a problem with work, I fell behind and stopped doing it.

[TanyaL]

I don't know how helpful this is, because I'm not sure the book is available outside the US--I really don't know anything about book distribution in general.

There's a US doc, Kenneth Bock, who wrote a book, Healing the New Childhood Epidemics: Autism, ADHD, Asthma and Allergies. He makes the argument that these are all different manifestations of underlying health issues, things like toxic load, gut health, inflammation, like that. And how we manifest them is based on our individual constitution.

My kids and I don't have asthma, but we do have toxic load issues, for us heavy metals, and my two kids manifest this in completely different ways. One just has some irritability/inflexibility/overreactions, nothing shockingly out of the norm, but it affected the quality of life we all had, and the other has more expected symptoms, spinning, head-banging, like that, used to get sick a whole lot, some coordination issues, but social interaction isn't affected, and I don't know if he ever would've had enough symptoms for an actual diagnosis. So the variety of ways different people can manifest symptoms for the same underlying problem really speaks to me.

Here's the book on US amazon...
http://www.amazon.com/Healing-New-Childhood-Epidemics-Groundbreaking/dp/0345494512/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233244965&sr=8-1

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

What is SA's role in asthma?
How can it help? What exactly does it do specifically linked to asthma?

Sodium ascorbate has several roles in the immune system. Some of them are dampening down mast cells, and others relate to reducing histamine in the body....

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Just wanted to remind people that there's a huge difference between real milk, raw, unpasteurized and non-homogenized, and the stuff you get at the grocery store, organic or otherwise.

Raw has all sorts of enzymes that help digest it. Pasteurized does not.

Many people who are lacto-intolerant may just be pasteurized intolerant.

I'm sure people here have had real reactions to drinking milk and eating cheese, but was any of it raw? Just curious.

No, I've no issue with raw milk, and try to get cheese made with raw milk when I can...

[Mr. Beyondtheory]

I'm really interested in this connection between dairy and asthma. NZ is a dairy producing country and has a ton of asthma, one of the highest rates in the world I believe.

I seem to have a lung weakness and am prone to getting bronchitis. I eat a bit of cheese, but no milk. I wonder if I were to cut out the cheese it might improve my lungs? But I am also aware of the importance of vitamin D. I eat butter (organic) for that, but wouldn't cheese have it too. Perhaps I'd be better off just cutting out the cheese altogether and taking vitamin D supplements during winter.

I have certainly noticed that I get all mucusey if I go thru a phase of eating a lot of cheese.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Sunbathe for vitamin D in the summer and cut cheese, and see what happens.

[ema-adama]

My mother died while having an asthma attack, so I don't know how relevant this is.

I know that she cut out wheat and diary, was taking high doses of vit C, was taking probiotics and vit D. These things (as well as eating her morning porridge cooked in seawater) had her asthma under control for a good number of years. Unfortunately she got a bad flu/chest infection and her asthma flared up. She was on ventalin again, and was under treatment with her GP when she died.

I don't know what the answer is for managing asthma. I know my mums QOL was much improved with the lifestyle changes.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Technically, it's not possible to get the flu or any respiratory infection if your vitamin D levels are above 80. And as has been shown recently, even the doses recommended today, are abysmally low. So I'm picking she was taking the right dose, which was probably about one eighth of what she really needed...

I was home help for years to a man with emphysema (which started after he nearly died after a tetanus shot and the treatment they used damaged his lungs) and later developed asthma. They put him on Fenoterol and he died a few months later.

There is now a book written by the scientist who discovered that some asthma drugs kill the users. He was ostracised with bells and whistles for nearly 15 years, until others proved him right.

There is only so much you can do.

[ema-adama]

I sometimes think the medication contributed to her death. Her heart just stopped, which can be a side effect of ventalin. And I can totally imagine her panicking and overdosing on ventalin.

Never going to know just what happened there, and yes, there is only so much you can do. Health is a tricky thing, and there will inevitably always be something that is not being done that should be done, or something being done that shouldn't be done.

I nagged her to sit out in the sunshine every day.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Interestingly enough, when you research the history of asthma, early articles talk about how asthma itself, never resulted in deaths. It's hard to know whether they were telling the truth or not, but I've read that often enough now to think that there might be something in that. It seems that deaths from asthma, only started after broncho-dilators were used.

I had to use one intermittently - I had my first asthma attack after my second tetanus shot. then once I started using vitamin C, and changed my diet, I never used it again, but did still occasionally get what I called "respiratory tightness" . But interestingly, it's only been since I took grains out of my diet, that the old "tightness" which was usually the warning sign of a potential attack of asthma to come, disappeared.

Now, I never get that tightness.

There is a lot we don't know....

[ema-adama]

This is a very shoddy memory, but I am pretty sure my maternal grandmother (who outlived my mum) told me she used to inhale marijuana infusions in the 1930's, as a child. This helped her asthma.

[gilima]

ema-adama, that is so interesting!!!
If it is any comfort to you, I also thought a long time after my father died, if their was something I could have or should have done, but I have come to realize that it is the way of life, that's how we are when we lose someone we love and it is extra hard when we live far from them. may not have had the best relationship over the years and we feel their death was untimely.
My father was 84 and until age 82 exercised every day, took lots of c and other supplemets, drank fresh veggie juice etc; and then at age 82 had hip surgery..........and that was it, his health and stamina just never returned to what it was.
I know your mother was younger and it must have been more of a shock to you. I hope you will find comfort and peace and acceptance. I think that nourishing our families and being the mother we didn't have can be healing for us :)

I have a chidhood memory of my father putting something with a strong smell in a steaming bowl and then having us bend over this bowl with a towel covering us and the bowl to inhale the steam. I don't remember if this was for bronchitis or what , but I know it was for some cough.

One day (years later as a mother ) I bought a diaper cream that had balsam of peru in it and when I opened it and smelled it ........it smelled like that steam medicine from my childhood.!!!!
I also remember that when I was about 6 or 7 years old some of my friends got whooping cough and we wouldn't see them for along time, we knew it was a dreaded cough, but we all used to pretend we had it so that we could stay home from school for 3 months!!!! I don't remember anyone that I knew dying, but I do remember that it was something the adults dreaded. I was born in 1963 (this was in south africa) and at that time I don't know whether we were vaccinated for pertussis yet. No-one in my family got wc.
sorry to go off topic here.....just travelling down memory lane a bit :)

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

I have a chidhood memory of my father putting something with a strong smell in a steaming bowl and then having us bend over this bowl with a towel covering us and the bowl to inhale the steam. I don't remember if this was for bronchitis or what , but I know it was for some cough.

Would it have been Friar's Balsam?