Asthma and Respiratory Disorders

Asthma and Respiratory Disorders

Asthma is a com­mon lung con­di­tion in the mod­ern world, one that impacts the lives of adults and chil­dren alike. Asthma threat­ens one’s essen­tial abil­ity to breathe, to take in oxy­gen, our most basic and urgent sur­vival need.  Asthma is a con­di­tion marked by recur­rent attacks of breath­ing dif­fi­culty, with wheez­ing due to spas­modic con­trac­tion of the bronchi.

The most sig­nif­i­cant char­ac­ter­is­tic of asthma is a nar­row­ing of the tra­chea (the “wind­pipe”) and bronchial pas­sages in response to some stim­u­lus. In asthma, the air­ways are over-responsive. Things that cause no breath­ing prob­lems for most of us can pro­voke the air­ways to con­strict. These may be exter­nal stim­uli like pollen, dust, and even cold air. Or, the stim­u­lus may be some­thing inter­nal, like a nutri­tional defi­ciency or emo­tional stress. What­ever the trig­ger, all asthma attacks have the same sce­nario in com­mon: the air­ways become extremely irri­tated and over­re­act by going into spasm.

Some cases are aller­gic man­i­fes­ta­tions, oth­ers are pro­voked by a vari­ety of fac­tors includ­ing vig­or­ous exer­cise, irri­tant par­ti­cles, psy­cho­log­i­cal stress, viral ill­ness and food aller­gies. The symp­toms of asthma often reflect a weak­ened or poor immune sys­tem func­tion. Food sen­si­tiv­i­ties often play an impor­tant pre­cip­i­tat­ing or aggra­vat­ing role. Essen­tial fatty acid (EFA) as well as other nutri­ent defi­cien­cies may also play a part.  Vit­a­min A helps pro­tect the lin­ing of the lungs, while vit­a­min C helps to detox­ify envi­ron­men­tal tox­ins. Antiox­i­dant nutri­ents and essen­tial fats are anti-inflammatory.

Over­all, it’s more impor­tant to focus on the root cause and what are the under­ly­ing mech­a­nisms that are caus­ing the asthma rather than just treat­ing it symp­to­mati­cally. Each per­son is encour­aged to seek out a qual­i­fied nutri­tion­ist in order to assess exactly which nutri­ents, herbs, home­o­pathics and nat­ural remedies; in which com­bi­na­tion; in what pro­por­tion are right for the par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­ual and are intended at treat­ing the root cause rather than just a symp­tom.