Asthma

Sharon: Mike,
I have been receiving your newsletters for awhile now. I have a history of asthma, and it is not unusual for me to have bronchitis every winter. I currently have chronic bronchitis, a sinus infection, and fluid in my lungs, which the doctor said he doesn't know where it is from. I am scheduled to see a pulmonary specialist about this.

Mike: Be careful with that.

Sharon: Looking back in my history, I was in choir all through high school. I did not have trouble with asthma then, except if I would try to run very fast in gym class.

Mike: You were probably borderline then.

Sharon: Then each summer, I would have pneumonia.

Mike: Weakened by the bronchitis, I suspect.

Sharon: When I was riding a bike and doing an aerobic workout w/ weights, again I would not have much trouble with asthma.

Mike: You were lucky not to make it worse.

Sharon: Not sure why. Currently I have had major stress in my life, going through a divorce, and losing my job due to the company closing. I know this has an effect on my physical health. I was using Serevent, Flovent, and albuterol inhalers. I stopped the Serevent and Flovent, as they seemed to make it worse, not better, but still use the albuterol, every 6 hours.

Mike: Get our #176 Rapidly Improving Your Breathing Video.

Sharon: I get short of breath with the slightest activity. I have tried changing my diet, and had allergy tests a few years ago for food sensitivities. Waste of money mostly. The food sensitivities change. As soon as you handle one, another appears.

Mike: Rebuild liver and digestion, and eat more raw foods.

Sharon: I have a Champion brand juicer, and have tried juicing too, which hasn't cured it, but I know it hasn't hurt either.

Mike: Good insight.

Sharon: I am interested in the raw foods you talk about.

Mike: Information included in many programs.

Sharon: The allergy testing seemed to help for awhile. I just do not seem to be able to find a balance that works. I have been under chiropractic care for 16 years. I have recently had bio-meridian testing, and have been using homeopathic remedies, along with a mineral supplement "rich in fulvic acid."

Mike: Won't work as well or at all if your breathing mechanics are not at least average.

Sharon: I also have been taking some herbal combinations for sinuses and bronchitis.

Mike: Helpful for bronchitis but not for unbalanced breathing.

Sharon: I am willing to try almost any alternative method. I have done gall bladder flushes in the past and had many stones pass.

Mike: Good choice.

Sharon: The breathing seems to improve some after doing that.

Mike: Makes sense as it takes some of the detox load off the lungs.

Sharon: I am 43 years old, and about 50 pounds overweight, but have lost about 35, through Weight Watcher's. I have had past problems with my digestive system, mainly rapid transit time, and an anal fissure that was bad enough to warrant surgery. I avoid wheat, dairy, and eggs, as these foods REALLY seem to aggravate the asthma.

Mike: Makes sense and points to digestion as well.

Sharon: I have been making the connection, that the activities I have participated in have had an effect, and I must have been breathing differently. I remember being taught to breathe more from the belly in choir. Do your videos teach something similar?

Mike: Yes and more.

Sharon: Do you recommend these techniques be done as exercises? Can it help me?

Mike: Absolutely. Guaranteed.

Sharon: I am very weary of the traditional doctors and their "practice" on me as the guinea pig. I have done 3 antibiotics the last few months, but they do not clear up the bronchitis, or the sinus infection. I said "no more" to the antibiotic merry-go-round. The maddening thing is that these doctors don't even check to see if it is a bacterial infection or not. Well, I am kind of venting and rambling on here. Sorry. I'm just frustrated, and tired of being sick. Thank you for your concern, and I hope to hear of some suggestions from you soon.
Sincerely,
Sharon

Mike: Get our Breathing Development program level 3.
Blessings,
Mike

Furthermore, I believe there is a strong possibility that when our youth is raised with such a preponderance of the idea of drugs for health, this can re-enforce the curiosity of drugs for recreation.

I believe there are three major causes of asthma:

1. Physical/mechanical constriction and poor breathing coordination
2. Airborne allergy or pollutants
3. Food-based allergy

Too much emphasis is on number #2 and #3, none on #1 and very little on #3.

EXAMPLE

• Gather 100 people in a poorly ventilated room with major air pollution and only a few would become wheezing, gasping or "asthmatic."

• Gather another 100 group together with poor diet, and still only a few would become wheezing, gasping or "asthmatic."

• Gather 100 people with poor breathing mechanics and internal coordination, and many more will have shortness of breath symptoms than in the food or air group.

• Gather 100 with poor breathing coordination, poor air and poor diet, and you would have most of the group wheezing gasping or "asthmatic."

The underlying cause is not air or food. It is the way they are breathing in the first place.

The Optimal Natural Breathing System continuously reduces or eliminates the need for asthma medications.

The 1,2,3 punch to knock out asthma in children AND adults.

1. Develop optimal breathing
2. Eliminate allergies
3. Eliminate bad air
4. Prescription drugs at that point will be less interesting

See the lungs below, and notice how they are mostly in the sides and back and not very much on the front.

Because allergies cause inhibited healthy breathing volume and coordination development, the older a person gets, the more the actual breathing function becomes a major factor. Then breathing function becomes the primary source of trouble, and food allergy most often becomes secondary.

Sadly, most health practitioners are presently focusing on the allergenic and environmental aspects and overlooking the mechanical breathing volume and coordination aspects.

It has been my experience that the first five - ten years of life, breathing coordination and volume are mostly senior to food allergy and environment. Almost every time.

I recommend you eliminate the major causes of worsening asthma by finding techniques to clean your breathing air in your home or work area and eliminating dairy products as you retrain yourselves and/or children to breathe without drugs or steroids.

Click here #177 Rapid Breathing Development, Shortness of Breath.

"This is my first progress report. After I started using your program and doing all of the 5 exercises recommended in the video, I started to feel some relief, almost immediately, but this relief didn't hold. In the last two days, however, I have not felt better breath-wise than I have in a nearly 3 to 4 years now. I can walk at my formerly brisk pace and not be unduly short of breath. I realize that even ordinary people get winded with exertion, and that's what I feel now...winded, but not short of breath, because I CAN take a deep breath and, thus, recover. I'm not perfect, yet; but I'm optimistic as all hell. It's so nice just to be able to breathe without being conscious of shortness of breath.

What works best for me, Mike, and I've just cut my exercises down to these few, are the Happy Straps (formerly called the Friendly Python), the Bend Forward (and touch the floor), and the Abdomen Press with the hands. But I believe it is the Friendly Python (Rapid Breathing Improvement video) that is doing me the most good. And to think the doctor's at Kaiser said that there was nothing they could do. And they were right. THEY couldn't do anything, but YOUR program could. So, I'm going to keep working on it. I just plain didn't know HOW to breathe correctly. And now I am getting some idea how that's done.

Thanks, Mike. I am eternally grateful to you. I'm going to recommend your program to my sister who has asthma and is satisfied with living with her inhaler. I'm 72, and I don't take ANY medicines. I think years of sitting in front of a computer at home, writing and doing computer stuff, and, of course, poor posture, really screwed up my lungs and my breathing. Some 3 or 4 years ago, I also developed skin eruptions on my forehead, like pimples and sometimes like small boils. Nothing would help. Doctors were puzzled and recommended cortisone, which I refused. But you know what, Mike? Even that is beginning to clear up in the past few days. Can it be because of better breathing? Wow!"

-- CC

-- M.D. California

I am looking forward to talking at the Breath Conference and meeting you, and that all-star cast, in person. I did think this particular issue to the list needs a little editorial cleaning up. Some sections of the original were dropped, so it reads less well and less clearly than your usual postings. I worked for several years as a drug effects epidemiologist with the Boston Collaborative Drug Research Program, and it's clear to me that the relationship between the patient, the disease condition and the drug used is very complex. Side effects and environmental conditions are routinely undervalued by our medical system, so you do a great service in pointing that out. I'm not sure that listing all side effect w/o reference to specific drugs is very helpful. It creates fear about a whole class of medications that vary greatly in the frequency of prescription and severity of the condition for which they're used, and the particular patients who receive them. I was married to a person with asthma for 20 years and studied all the interactions among all the factors, including alternative therapies, very closely. I am sure breathing is good, and training in breath techniques is useful for most anyone with asthma. Many docs do that now to a degree.

From Mike:
A VERY SMALL DEGREE from my experience.

It is a bit of a mistake, I believe for you to make sweeping generalizations about universal solutions to multifactorial diseases like asthma, which are still not well understood.

From Mike:
(by you)

(A friend told me of reading of a recent asthma study in Mexico that seemed to show that hookworm infestation reduces asthma symptoms in kids, for example). My question is how we can get well funded and valid research into breathing and asthma, as an adjunct to and as a replacement for medication and environmental manipulation? If that research could be funded at a level that got publication on it past the editors at JAMA or NEJM Nature, we'd really change the prevailing paradigm (depending on the results). I think I know what the results will be, but as one of my profs said, "In most fields of research, investigator confidence in a predicted outcome is not highly correlated with the measured outcomes."

-- Peace, DD

From Mike:
Dear Daniel

Thank you so much for your input. Unless you are changing -- expanding -- the definition of asthma from what it began as, upper chest constriction associated with anxiety & shortness of breath, I simply do not believe that properly assessed asthma, is AT ITS CORE, anything but poor un-balanced breathing. That is because every asthma case I have worked with has drastically cut back the drug usage and gone on to a drugless state.

Toxins, cleansing, herbs, nutrition, bad air, unresolved emotions and the triggers mentioned above all play a possible part. Shortness of breath can be compounded by other things, but if it were only the environment or the food, or anxiety, or hookworms, or extreme emotions, one's abusive parents, or combinations of all of them, then EVERYONE in the same environment, or eating the same food or being anxious etc. would have asthma, and that is not even close to the case. I believe wholeheartedly that the common denominator, the deepest core of asthma is dysfunctional breathing.

"Anything you can breathe through will lose its grip on you" is one of my favorite quotes from Gay Hendricks. It has served me well. Clearly asthma is also an emotional issue, but underneath the emotions is the breathing. The emotions are driven by our thoughts, postures, and the way we breathe. This is largely why some transformational breath sessions can reduce or eliminate some forms of asthma. But that is still missing the core issue, which is mechanical breathing function. Change the mechanics and you change the asthma...period. That should come first, not "maybe" or "last."

My friend, I am a health educator, not a drug educator. I counsel people to keep their asthma drugs handy and to carefully but systematically learn to live without them.

Perhaps my articles would be better clarified if I referred to Sheldon Hendler, MD Ph.D when he says, "Breathing is the first place, not the last, one would investigate when any evidence of disordered energy presents itself." From my experience, the approach to the breath by the general allopathic medical community is invaluable as an emergency approach but sorely lacking in insight and depth. Just ask a health professional "what is healthy breathing," and see what you get.

Hookworms and other parasites may exacerbate shortness of breath, but to my knowledge they do not routinely cause the classical form of asthma. Is the definition of asthma being slowly changed to fit the needs of the drug industry?

Breathing needs to be looked at much closer than it has. As Dr. Len Saputo reminds us: "It seems prudent to me to explore this safe, non-invasive, and easily taught approach, to patients who are willing to invest a minimum of money and time especially when the potential for a negative effect with selected approaches is zero. When conventional therapies have little or nothing to offer, searching for additional possibilities becomes our responsibility."

I am addressing mechanical breathing function. Nothing else. I often add nutrition, cleansing and environmental controls to my suggestions or refer them out to other health practitioners. Bring the woman to the conference, and I will show you what I am talking about. Her breathing will improve dramatically. Right then.

Daniel, we are looking for enlightened people such as yourself to join us in our quest for worldwide breathing consciousness. I encourage you to take our self-help courses sold on the Net, and classes in North Carolina, Hawaii and California and begin to support us in teaching healthy optimal conscious breathing.

Asthma is not just a physical condition. Not being able to breathe elicits feelings of anxiety, fear and panic. Inability to alleviate these feelings leads to more severe asthma symptoms. Besides taking responsibility for the physical care necessary to manage asthma, the patient must seek psychosocial support through professional and community resources. The physician may recommend a stress reduction program or seek the assistance of a mental health provider. Careful attention to the patient's feelings will lead to better overall asthma care and avoidance of complications like depression.

Signs of an Asthma Attack

• Tight, Dry Cough
• Wheezing
• Shortness of Breath
• Fast Breathing
• Anxious, Scared Look
• Flaring Nostrils
• Read on for more signals

14 million people?

It is estimated that asthma affects 14 million people in the United States, and it is responsible for nearly 200,000 hospitalizations yearly. Moreover, the death rate from asthma is increasing from 13.4 deaths per million population in 1982 to 18.8 deaths per million in 1992. In addition to the human cost, the economic impact of asthma in the United States has been estimated to be approximately 5.8 billion dollars.

The key to the treatment of asthma is prevention of an acute attack which may lead to an Emergency department visit, or worse yet, to hospitalization. Have you ever wondered much it costs to treat an asthmatic attack?

In the July 1999 issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Dr. Richard Stanford and colleagues report the results of a study conducted between October 1, 1996 and September 30, 1997 in 27 hospitals across the United States. A total of 3,223 adult patients with asthma were identified, of which 1,074 required hospitalization (33%). For those successfully treated in the Emergency department, the visit cost was $234. For hospitalized patients, the average length of stay in the hospital was 3.8 days, and the cost of treatment was $3,103.

Triggers of Asthma Attacks

Do not sleep on upholstered furniture.

Remove carpets from bedrooms. If this is not possible, do not sit on the carpet, but rather put a sheet or quilt over the carpet.

Use a dehumidifier for humid places in the home and make sure the filter is clean.

When traveling and staying in hotels, it may be advisable to bring your own linens, particularly your own pillow.

Mildew (indoors)

Use a dehumidifier.

Make sure ventilation is adequate, especially in bathrooms and the laundry room.

Be sure that the clothes dryer is vented properly.

Make sure that all dehumidifiers, air conditioners, furnaces, freezers, refrigerators and ducts are clean.

• Cats
• Dogs
• Mice
• Hamster
• Guinea pigs
• Birds

Pets should never be allowed in the bedroom.

Check with a physician about using a three percent solution of tannic acid to help neutralize the remaining allergens.

Use a reputable exterminator and be sure to eliminate the patient's exposure to the insecticide.

Seal up areas around pipes under the sink where roaches might enter.

Asthmatics must always avoid tobacco smoke.

Inform friends and family that the home must be smoke-free and that even the scent of smoke on clothing can trigger an attack in some sensitive individuals.

Extremes or sudden changes in temperature

Barometric pressure or humidity

Avoid cold, dry air.

Wear a mask and breathe through the nose rather than the mouth.

Fragrances

Fumes

People

Avoid exercise on busy streets with a lot of traffic.

Car and truck exhaust should be avoided, particularly in enclosed areas like garages.

Avoid heavy scents, such as perfumes, especially in enclosed areas (elevators, buses or offices).

Anxiety. Notice when your breath goes shallow or heads up into your chest in the presence of someone.

Ear

Throat

Bacterial infections such as strep throat, sinus infections, pneumonia and bronchitis must be treated for the prescribed duration.

Use good hand-washing techniques.

Avoid crowded public places, particularly during flu season.

Yearly flu immunization is recommended by some but warned against as being the cause of the flu in the first place for many.

• Anxiety
• Fear
• Panic
• Depression

Gasping from overexertion due to fast, intense, running

Breath heaving due to over-exertion

Gasping and breath heaving lock up the rib muscles and inhibit easy chest expansion.

Read more about Exercise-Induced Asthma.

• Aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid)
• Voltaren
• Ibuprofen/Advil
• Motrin/Nuprin/Aleve
• Ketoprofen / Orudis
• Indomethacin
• Indocin
• Keterolac/Toradal

See also Prescription Drugs

Patients with nasal polyps or chronic sinusitis are more likely to be sensitive to anti-inflammatory medications.

If the physician orders medication for pain that is similar to arthritis or a headache, patients need to check if the product contains aspirin.

• Atenolol/Tenormin
• Betaxolol/Betopic
• Labetolol/Trandate
• Metoprolol
• Lopressor
• Tropol XL
• Nadolol/Corgard
• Proprandolo/Inderal
• Timolol/Blocadren