Natural Remedies for Asthma

There are many misconceptions about natural remedies for asthma, which is a pity, because there are real natural remedies that work.

The first step is to understand why wheezing happens – then you can look critically at remedies yourself, and know whether they are likely to work.

The vast majority of asthmatics wheeze because they have sensitive airways. In very simple terms, when they breathe in something they are allergic to, or something that irritates them, the surface of the airways reacts and gets inflamed.

Therefore, there are two main approaches to reducing your asthma symptoms: (a) managing your allergies, and (b)reducing the inflammation – which is what most modern preventive puffers do.

Armed with that information, you can work out that anything which reduces inflammation will reduce your asthma. In fact, many natural remedies sold to reduce inflammation in arthritis will also help asthma. Many of the supplements are based on fish oil, mussel oil, olive oil or flaxseed oil, so you can easily enhance your intake by using olive oil or flaxseed oil in cooking and salads, and eating at least two serves of oily fish a week.

As for avoiding the things that you are allergic/sensitive to – you may need professional help to work out what these are. Don’t make assumptions. You may hear advice such as “asthmatics can’t eat strawberries or peanuts”, or “milk makes congestion worse”. You will even find them in natural therapy books by quite respected authors. But they are a load of rubbish! Every asthmatic is unique. Yes, there are some asthmatics who are allergic to peanuts, or strawberries, or milk – but I, for one, am not allergic to any of them, and neither is any of my asthmatic relatives. So do be careful before cutting good, nutritious foods out of your diet for no reason.

Also, be aware that for an asthmatic, you can’t diagnose a food allergy by a skin test. There are shonky allergy clinics out there who will claim they can – avoid them, they just want your money. Skin tests can identify allergens that you breathe in, but they can’t identify allergens that you eat, because your body deals with them differently.

There’s only one way to tell whether you are allergic to a food. Give it up for a week or so. When the week is up, sit down to eat some of the food. First, check your breathing capacity using your peak flow meter (you do have one, don’t you? – every asthmatic should). Write that number down. Now eat the food. Check your peak flow again half an hour after your meal, and again an hour and two hours later. If you are allergic to the food, you will see your breathing capacity drop noticeably. Remember that it’s normal for your breathing capacity to drop slightly after a meal, because your body is working hard on digesting, so don’t worry too much about small variations.

Photo of Pudge with thanks to Viralbus on Flickr