My daughter is 15 and has been suffering from asthma now for the last 2 years, can you offer any help?

In spite of the introduction of several new drugs for the treatment of asthma, severe asthma is still by far the most chroni

c debilitating disease in childhood and its mortality rate has not declined. Indeed, some researchers are investigating the possibility that the long term use of some anti-asthma drugs such as bronchodilators may be detrimental and may even have increased the death rate from this disease.

Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease characterized by reversible airway narrowing.Asthma is characterized by wheezing attacks with shortness of breath, which are usually worse at night Sometimes there is a dry cough. The onset of attack is sudden and is followed by tightness of the chest. Acupuncture can have a remarkable effect in stopping an acute asthma attack and treatment in between attacks can get to the root cause, which is usually a deficiency of the lungs and kidney. Many patients experience immediate relief after an acupuncture treatment, feeling that the airway blockage was simply removed. Stimulation of acupuncture points can relieve both physical and emotional stress, possibly because they trigger the release of neurotransmitters in the brain. The patient can therefore experience both a physical release from his bronchial constriction, and also an emotional or psychological release from the fear of constriction and suffocation

The treatment of allergic asthma may take many months to produce lasting results. Both Acupuncture and Chinese Herbs are equally effective in combination or independently. If children can be treated fairly early after the development of the disease, the course of treatment will be much shorter. If the patient is on inhalers such as Ventolin it is not necessary to stop them, as the need to use them will automatically decrease as the Acupuncture/Herbal treatment progresses. As for oral steroids, it is much better if the patient can reduce them very gradually as soon as possible as they have many side-effects, the main one being that of inducing a deficiency of the Kidneys in the long run. As allergic asthma is based on a deficiency of the Kidney’s Defensive-Qi system, oral steroids, although affording relief in the short run, can only make it worse in the long run.