Getting Better Understanding On Asthma
Asthma is an inflammatory disease characterized by recurring attacks of narrowed, swollen airways, causing shortness of breath, wheezing, and coughing. Asthma can start at any age, but it usually emerges during childhood. One of the most common chronic diseases in kids, asthma’s prevalence has been increasing year after year. In the United States, twenty five million people suffer from asthma, and seven million of them are children.
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A groundbreaking study recently demonstrated that the rates of asthma vary dramatically around the world. The International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood followed more than a million children in nearly one hundred countries, making it the most comprehensive survey ever undertaken of this disease. The study found a twentyfold to sixtyfold difference in the prevalence of asthma, allergies, and eczema.Why does the prevalence of rhinoconjunctivitis (itchy eyes and runny nose) range from 1 percent of children in parts of India,for instance, to as much as 45 percent elsewhere? While such factors as air pollution and smoking rates may play a role, the most significant associations were not with what was going into their lungs but what was going into their stomachs.
Adolescents living in areas where more starchy foods, grains, vegetables, and nuts were consumed were significantly less likely to exhibit chronic symptoms of wheezing, allergic rhinoconjunctivitis, and allergic eczema. Boys and girls eating two or more servings of vegetables a day appear to have only half the odds of suffering from allergic asthma. In general, the prevalence of asthma and respiratory symptoms reportedly appears to be lower among populations eating more foods of plant origin.
Foods of animal origin have been associated with increased asthma risk. A study of more than one hundred thousand adults in India found that those who consumed meat daily, or even occasionally, were significantly more likely to suffer from asthma than those who excluded meat and eggs from their diets altogether.Eggs (along with soda) have also been associated with asthma attacks in children, along with respiratory symptoms, such as wheezing, shortness of breath, and exercise-induced coughing. Removing eggs and dairy from the diet has been shown to improve asthmatic children’s lung function in as few as eight weeks.
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The mechanism by which diet affects airway inflammation may lie with the thin coating of fluid that forms the interface between your respiratory-tract lining and the outside air. Using the antioxidants obtained from the fruits and vegetables you eat, this fluid acts as your first line of defense against the free radicals that contribute to asthmatic airway hypersensitivity, contraction, and mucus production. Oxidation by-products can be measured in exhaled breath and are significantly lowered by shifting toward a more plant-based diet.
So if asthmatics eat fewer fruits and vegetables, does their lung function decline? Researchers out of Australia tried removing fruits and vegetables from asthma patients’ diets to see what would happen. Within two weeks, asthma symptoms grew significantly worse. Interestingly, the low-fruit, low-vegetable
diet used in the study—a restriction to no more than one serving of fruit and two servings of vegetables per day—is typical of Western diets. In other words, the diet they used experimentally to impair people’s lung function and worsen their asthma was effectively the standard American diet.
What about improving asthma by adding fruits and vegetables? Researchers repeated the experiment, but this time increased fruit and vegetable consumption to seven servings a day. This simple act of adding a few more fruits and vegetables to their daily diet ended up successfully cutting the study subjects’ exacerbation rate in half. That’s the power of eating healthfully.
If it’s the antioxidants, why not just take an antioxidant supplement? After all, popping a pill is easier than eating an apple. The reason is simple:
Supplements don’t appear to work
Studies have repeatedly shown that antioxidant supplements have no beneficial effects on respiratory or allergic diseases, underscoring the importance of eating whole foods rather than trying to take isolated components or extracts in pill form. For example, the Harvard Nurses’ Health Study found that women who obtained high levels of vitamin E from a nut-rich diet appeared to have nearly half the risk of asthma of those who didn’t, but those who took vitamin E supplements saw no benefit at all.
Who do you think did better?
Who do you think did better?
A group of asthma patients who ate seven servings a day of fruits and vegetables, or a group who ate three servings plus fifteen “serving equivalents” in pill form? Sure enough, the pills didn’t seem to help at all. Improvements in lung function and asthma control were evident only after subjects increased their actual fruit and vegetable intake, strongly suggesting that consuming whole foods is paramount. If adding a few daily servings of fruits and vegetables can have such a significant effect, what if asthma sufferers were put on a diet composed entirely of plant foods?
Researchers in Sweden decided to test out a strictly plant-based diet on a group of severe asthmatics who weren’t getting better despite the best medical therapies—thirty-five patients with long-established, physician-verified asthma, twenty of whom had been admitted to hospitals for acute attacks during the previous two years. One patient had received emergency intravenous infusions a total of twenty-three times, another reported he’d been hospitalized more than a hundred times, and one subject had even suffered a cardiac arrest after an attack and had to be revived and placed on a ventilator. These were some pretty serious cases.
Of the twenty-four patients who stuck with the plant-based diet, 70 percent improved after four months, and 90 percent improved within one year. And these were all people who had experienced no improvement in their conditions at all in the year prior to switching to a plant-based diet.
Within just one year of eating healthier, all but two patients were able to drop their dose of asthma medication or get off their steroids and other drugs altogether. Objective measures like lung function and physical working capacity improved; meanwhile, subjectively, some patients said their improvement was so considerable that they felt like “they had a new life.”There was no control group, so the placebo effect may have accounted for some of the improvement, but the nice thing about a healthier diet is that there are only good side effects. In addition to improvements in their asthma control, the study subjects lost an average of eighteen pounds, and their cholesterol and blood pressures got better. From a risk-benefit standpoint, then, it’s definitely worth giving a plant-based diet a try.
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DR. APPIAH
Dr. Appiah is a Natural Health Therapist (Naturopath) who engages the natural healing agents given by God to save lives. EAT FOOD AS MEDICINE! EAT TO LIVE, DON'T LIVE TO EAT!! FOR BOOKINGS AND MORE: WANT TO ADVERTISE YOUR PRODUCTS? WANT A PERSONAL(CERTIFIED) NATURAL MEDICINE PRACTITIONER? REACH ME DIRECTLY ON WHATSAPP +233245643615 appiahinok@gmail.com
