Asthma Remedy
Your Personal Asthma Remedy
If you have troubles breathing, all you want is an asthma remedy so that you can breathe again. Nothing can unnerve someone quite like an asthma attack. Suddenly being unable to breathe in the middle of an otherwise normal day, even as your throat seems to clinch up, really makes you feel as if you have built your house in the sand. That is what it is like living with asthma.
What is asthma?
Typically, those who suffer from asthma are actually experiencing an allergic reaction to certain types of irritants in their environment.
What causes asthma?
Asthma can have multiple causes. Typically, those who suffer from asthma have a particular disposition to certain types of foreign agents in their environment. For some reason, the person’s body reads this foreign agent as a threat and goes into allergic overdrive in order to deal with it. For example, an asthma sufferer might find themselves more vulnerable to attack when they are in a smoke filled room or when, during house cleaning, when the harsh chemicals to which they expose themselves may bring on an attack.
People in certain professions, or who are active in certain types of activities, are more likely to develop asthma than the population in general. For example, if you work at a factory where chemical reactions in the manufacturing process hurl fine particles into the air, then you might be more prone to having asthma than your average person with a desk job.
Finally, studies have shown that we can also inherit our predisposition to asthma. Therefore, if you have asthma sufferers in your family, you are more likely to develop asthma yourself.
The Traditional Asthma Remedy
Typically, once a doctor has diagnosed you with asthma, he or she will prescribe you an inhaler. When a person feels an attack coming on they turn to the inhaler for relief.
This is only part of the traditional asthma remedy. Often asthma sufferers will attempt to determine what the central trigger for their attacks is so that they can try to avoid coming into contact with this trigger. Of course, this is often not possible since many causes of asthma attacks may be present in their natural environments.
Another aspect of the traditional asthma remedy is changes to diet and health habits. If a person smokes or drinks excessively, physicians will recommend that their patients give up these unhealthy habits not only for the typical reasons, but also because they may be factors in exacerbating their attacks.
Studies have also shown a link between stress and asthma attacks. The reasoning behind this connection seems to be that when your stress levels rise, your immune system becomes highly sensitive to outside irritants. This gives an asthma sufferer a much lower threshold for his or her attacks.
The main goal of most asthma treatments is not on curing but on managing the symptoms.
Non-Traditional Treatments
Any search through the internet will reveal a plethora of non-traditional herbal treatments for asthma. Herbal purveyors market each asthma remedy as if it were the latest, greatest answer to your asthma problems. Most of the evidence for the efficacy of these herbal remedies, however, is shoddy at best. The studies cited in the advertisements and promotions for these alternative remedies simply do not stand up to the scientific rigor of studies done on traditional medicines.
Although this does not necessarily mean that an herbal asthma remedy will have no effect on a sufferer’s condition, it does mean that the effect may not have been properly tested to insure the safety of such a supplement. In other words, the herbal supplement may lead to unforeseen complications when used in combination with traditional over the counter remedies. Buyers beware.