Asthma

There’s an epi­demic of asthma going on.  Seven per­cent (7%) of adults, and nine per­cent (9%) of chil­dren are thought to have the dis­ease – and the inci­dence is ris­ing.

Why?

There could be many rea­sons for the epidemic:

• The increase in air pollution
• Expo­sure to pes­ti­cides and other neurotoxins
• Our ger­mo­pho­bic, overly-clean cul­ture that under-stimulates our immune system
• Per­va­sive atti­tude of anx­i­ety that leads to shal­low breathing
• Seden­tary lifestyle – never chal­leng­ing your lungs to their full capacity
• Pro-inflammatory diet packed with sugar and omega-6 fatty acids

These fac­tors, as well as oth­ers, may all play a role in the grow­ing asthma crisis.

Unfor­tu­nately, I can’t offer you a new the­ory or a com­pre­hen­sive overview of asthma.  There are plenty of experts out there who have far more of this spe­cific infor­ma­tion than I have.

Nor do I offer a com­pre­hen­sive treat­ment approach to asthma.

But I do have a method of work­ing with asthma suf­fer­ers that is effec­tive to some degree for many (though not all) people.

It’s based on a sim­ple model.

Isn’t breath­ing great?

I mean, with­out hardly think­ing about it, your lungs fill up with all the oxy­gen you need.  And while they’re at it, they purge your blood of the extra car­bon diox­ide your metab­o­lism is pump­ing out.

And that isn’t all.  Your breath­ing appa­ra­tus auto­mat­i­cally adjusts whether the air is hot, cold, dry or humid.  It auto­mat­i­cally clears your res­pi­ra­tory pas­sages of dust that clogs up the works.  It ramps up its rate and depth when you exercise.

You don’t have to pay your lungs a dime for all this great ser­vice.  It all comes for free.

Still – no one’s lungs work per­fectly under all cir­cum­stances.

For exam­ple

• Even top ath­letes even­tu­ally hit their limit.  There’s an ulti­mate level of exer­tion at which their lungs can’t suck up oxy­gen fast enough.
• A fire­fighter can’t run into a burn­ing build­ing with­out breath­ing equip­ment.  The lungs can’t fil­ter the smoke fast enough.
• If you’re anx­ious and upset, your breath­ing is going to be shal­lower.  In fact, if you have an extreme type of anx­i­ety reac­tion – a panic attack, for instance – you might even find your­self gasp­ing for your next breath.

In other words, everyone’s lungs work just fine within a cer­tain range of con­di­tions.

If you’re an asthma suf­ferer, you’re no dif­fer­ent than any­one else.

Most of the day, your brain can reg­u­late lung func­tion ade­quately and you can breathe just fine.  Unfor­tu­nately for you, though, it’s eas­ier than it should be to throw your lungs into an unac­cept­able func­tional pattern.

I don’t have a cure for asthma.

Tech­ni­cally, I don’t even have a treat­ment for asthma.  I don’t know what’s caus­ing your asthma, or what all your spe­cific trig­gers are, or how your inter­nal chem­istry works.

But what if there were a way to improve your lung function?

It wouldn’t make your asthma go away.  But it might give you an expanded func­tional range.  It might make it less likely that you’ll have an asthma attack.

(I’ve empha­sized the word “might” because there are no guar­an­tees here.  There are reports of the effec­tive­ness of these meth­ods for asthma and other breath­ing dif­fi­cul­ties.  But a lot of research would still need to be done.)

For asthma suf­fer­ers I use a com­bi­na­tion of man­ual ther­apy and ther­a­peu­tic exer­cise meth­ods that

• Make it eas­ier for the ribcage to open for inhala­tion and then spring back dur­ing the exhale
• Allow the entire trunk to expand equally and freely in response to your breathing
• Help the brain coor­di­nate the dif­fer­ent aspects of breath­ing – the rate and rhythm, the cal­iber of your bronchial tubes, and the blood flow to the lungs.

Here are the first two steps.

First, keep a diary for 3–5 days.  For each entry, record the asthma symp­toms you expe­ri­ence that day.  Use a num­ber scale of 1–10 to grade the sever­ity.  This will give us a base­line to gauge your progress.

Sec­ond, call or e-mail my office to sched­ule an appoint­ment for an eval­u­a­tion and ini­tial treat­ment aimed at improv­ing your lung func­tion.  Here are the phone num­bers : 212–400-9663 or 609–497-1944.

If you’re not in the area of New York City or Prince­ton, NJ, call my office any­way.  That way I can help you find the right prac­ti­tioner in your community.

You’ll soon begin to expe­ri­ence for your­self the poten­tial that multi-dimensional man­ual ther­apy might have for improv­ing your breath­ing and your life.

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