Bronchial Asthma

3. Bronchial Asthma

Bronchial asthma is defined as “a disease marked by difficulty in breathing, coughing, and a sense of constriction, due to bronchial spasm and a swelling of the bronchial mucous membrane.” Asthma can occur secondarily to a variety of stimuli. Mechanisms responsible for attacks of wheezing may be an imbalance of adrenal hormones or poor nerve control of airway diameter. These imbalances do not occur in a healthy individual but usually occur after drug therapy or other unhealthful practices.

Persons whose asthma is preceded by exposure to airborne pollens and molds, house dust or animal danders are said to have allergic asthma.

3.1 Symptoms

Individuals with asthma differ greatly in the frequency and degree of their symptoms. Some have only an occasional episode, mild in degree and of brief duration. Others have mild coughing and wheezing much of the time punctuated by severe increase of symptoms following exposure to known allergens, exercise or other irritants.

An asthma attack may begin suddenly with episodes of wheezing, coughing, and shortness of breath, or slowly with increasing symptoms and signs of respiratory distress. In either case, the patient usually first notices the onset of lack of breath, rapid breathing, coughing, and tightness or pressure in the chest, and may even notice audible wheezes. All of this may subside quickly or persist for hours to days.

3.2 Treatment

The usual medical approach for the treatment of bronchial asthma is to attempt to identify and control the environmental irritants. This is followed by drug therapy. Frequently used drugs include epinephrine, isoproterenol, ephedrine and corticosteroids, among others.

These drugs should never be used; they result in enervation and poisoning of all the organs, especially the central nervous system, and result in some measure of damage and disorder to every organ of the body. Among all the deadly drugs, some of the worst include the above named hormone-derived drugs. The notion of “cures” is an illusion. The only healing that can be experienced comes from within. Only the body possesses this capability. To realize healing the body merely has to be given a chance to perform its normal functions without interference.

Little good will be achieved by searching for the various irritating environmental agents if the source of the sensitivity is not eliminated. If we continue to build a state of toxicosis, the need for disease will always remain with us.

3.3 Cause of Asthma

According to medical writers, the cause of asthma is “hypersensitivity,” and they divide this sensitivity into two classes: (1) Those sensitive to ingested substances such as oysters, meat, eggs, etc., and (2) Those sensitive to air-carried irritants—pollens, emanations from horses, cats, dogs, feathers, dust, etc.

According to Dr. Shelton, this protein hypersensitivity or allergy is merely another name for protein poisoning, that is, overconsumption of protein foods in those of a neurotic diathesis.

The immediate cause of the bronchial spasm, according to Dr. Shelton, is an irritation of the nerve endings of the vagus nerve which supplies the bronchi. Drugs, some foods, gas and indigestion, occasion reflex irritation of the nerve endings in the bronchi and bring on a paroxysm of asthma.

Breathing cold air, dust, pollens, gasses, foul odors, and other such things, produces a direct irritation of nerve endings in the lungs and brings on the symptoms.

If water, irritating foods, drugs, pollens and other things which are in our normal environment were the primary or direct causes of asthma, everyone would be afflicted with this condition. The underlying cause of asthma is that which sensitizes the nerves and the bronchial membranes.

The underlying cause of bronchial asthma is a state of toxicosis. If asthmatics were not enervated and their tissues were not saturated with toxins, there would be no hypersensitivity. All asthmatics have a chronic catarrhal condition. Those individuals with a neurotic diathesis will have asthma, while other individuals may develop colds or flu or other eliminative symptoms.

Asthma is brought on by overeating wrong foods or wrong combinations of foods or by other enervating indulgences which are wrong. The body’s eliminative abilities are taxed beyond its capacities, and toxins build up in the blood and tissues.

In asthmatics, the finer bronchial tubes and the air cells of the lungs contract, and air entry into the lungs is severely reduced. The entire volume of blood cannot be sufficiently oxygenated and purified. Palliative treatment in the form of drugs only adds to the enervation and toxicosis while the underlying cause is not corrected.

When the underlying toxic condition is eliminated, all forms of sensitization disappear. When the asthmatic gets rid of toxemia, he automatically rids himself of all sensitivity to dogs, cats, horses, pollen, dust, etc.