Asthma & Coughs

The lungs function to heat, moisten, filter and bring air to the membranes of the lungs, here oxygen is transferred to the blood in exchange for waste products from the blood. In cold dry climates the lungs are under greater pressure to perform, and in the cold darker winter months where there is less sunshine, lowered vitamin D levels also increase our susceptibility to illness. Added pollutants from the environment in which we breathe can also create additional stress, and some poisons can be eliminated through the lungs from the blood, that may have entered through other membranes of the body in particular from the digestion.

The membranes of the lungs are also correlated to certain emotional stresses, the tubes of the lungs (bronchioles) are part of our ectodermal tissue and relate to separation and or loss of territory, and the membranes at the ends of the lungs (alveolar membranes) relate to a sense of having enough to survive, air hunger, food hunger, poverty etc.

Acute coughs and colds are common occurrences relating to the above issues and the coughing reflex is a highly coordinated response to eliminate debris from the lungs. The first signs of a cough is usually dryness and heat and can involve a fever, to understand the importance of a fever read the extract article from the book ‘The Science of Health & Healing’ click here. Often bacterial involvement in a cough, with more mucus and green phlegm, can actually signify the resolution of a cough, although it is often at this point that patients and doctors unnecessarily worry and prescribe antibiotics which can actually slow down the healing process.

Asthma is a chronic lung condition where the lung tubes are persistently inflamed with relapsing states of acute tightness and coughing with shortness of breath. The condition can be severe and in fact approximately 4 people across all age groups die of asthma every day in the UK.

From a homeopathic perspective it is commonly part of an inherited group of illnesses called the tubercular miasm, with lung, tonsil and appendix disorders in the family, sensitivity to dairy, and allergies to animal fur, pollen, dust etc. In addition studies confirm that some vaccines create a susceptibility to asthma, notably whooping cough vaccine. So in trying to avoid an acute cough (whooping cough) by the use of vaccines we have inadvertently traded a short lived issue for a long term and potentially more dangerous issue.

Research by Michel Odent reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association (1994; 272:592-3) showed that the use of whooping cough vaccine increased the incidence of asthma by 5-6 times as compared to non-vaccinated children. This was later confirmed by research atChurchill Hospital in Oxford UK and presented to the British Thoracic Society by Chest Consultant, Dr Julian Hopkin.

With the tightness experienced with asthma, there are persistent issue that need to be resolved, either as a result of a persistent stress (allergen, toxin, emotion) or unresolved issues that remain from the patient or inherited from their parents, for more information about the relationship between acute and chronic disease please read the extract from ‘The Science of Health & Healing’ click here.

Suppressing the symptoms through the use of medication that artificially widen the lung tubes may again relieve but actually make it harder for the body to cough up debris from the lungs which in itself can eventually create more of a danger for the patient, read this article from two doctors on the impact of suppressive medication on asthma click here

Similarly steroids, antihistamines and other immune suppressive medication have the effect of relieving the immediate symptoms but make it harder for the body to resolve the underlying issues and increase the patients overall sensitivity which partly explains the increase in life-threatening allergies that is occurring among children and adults.

From a more holistic perspective, it is important to understand where the lung issue originates; inherited patterns from unresolved issues of the parents, acquired patterns through, for example, a vaccine, steroid suppressed eczema etc, additionally emotional issues that need to be resolved, allergens involved, and/or nutritional deficiencies to redress e.g. vitamin D3. These can be helped through supplementation, homeopathic remedies and appropriate facilitation through acute disease reactions and emotional reactions, leaving the patient with stronger lung function and reduced sensitivity to the environment.