Treating asthma is a great challenge. But a homeopath never thinks that it cannot be cured. For treating asthma with homeopathy we have to pay attention to lots of issues. In this article it will be discussed basically how homeopathy or homeopathic treatment is effective in treating asthma which is now a days a very common and chronic ailment all over the world. The orthodox medicine has already declared asthma as incurable. But experience and research shows that there are lots of possibilities in treating asthma with homeopathy. In all the cases we must have to proceed with a holistic approach. We have to consider the physical, emotional, mental and the spiritual aspect of every patient. We must consider that we have to treat the patient as a whole; we have to treat the whole human organism.
What is Asthma?
Asthma is a chronic illness relating the airways in the lungs. These airways, or bronchial tubes, allow air to come in and out of the lungs. The airways of an asthma patient are always inflamed. They become even more swollen and the muscles around the airways can tighten when something triggers the patient’s symptoms. This makes it difficult for air to move in and out of the lungs, causing symptoms such as coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath and/or chest tightness.
Major Asthma Symptoms
According to the leading experts in asthma, the symptoms of asthma and the best treatment for asthma patients especially for the children may be quite different than for someone else with asthma. The most common symptom of asthma is wheezing. This is a scratchy or whistling sound when the patient breathes. Major symptoms include:
• Shortness of breath
• Chest tightness or pain
• Chronic coughing
• Trouble sleeping due to coughing or wheezing
Other symptoms of asthma are the following
• Coughing that is constant or that is made worse by viral infections, happens while the patient especially the child is asleep, or is triggered by exercise and cold air
• Wheezing or whistling sound when the patient exhales
• Shortness of breath or rapid breathing, which may be associated with exercise
• Chest tightness (young child may say that his chest “hurts” or “feels funny”)
• Fatigue (child may slow down or stop playing)
• Problems feeding or grunting during feeding (infants)
• Avoiding sports or social activities
• Problems sleeping due to coughing or difficulty breathing
Allopathic Treatment of Asthma
There is no cure for asthma, but symptoms can be controlled with effective asthma treatment and management. This involves taking medications as directed and learning to avoid triggers that cause the patient’s asthma symptoms. An allergist will prescribe the best medications for the asthmatic condition and provide the patient with specific instructions for using them.
Controller medications are taken daily and include inhaled corticosteroids (fluticasone (Flovent Diskus, Flovent HFA), budesonide (Pulmicort Flexhaler), mometasone (Asmanex), ciclesonide (Alvesco), flunisolide (Aerobid), beclomethasone (Qvar) and others).
Combination inhalers contain an inhaled corticosteroid plus a long-acting beta-agonist (LABA). LABAs are symptom-controllers that are helpful in opening the airways. However, in certain people they may carry some risks.
Homeopathic Treatment of Asthma Patient
From the above discussion, we can conclude that asthma is not curable in allopathic medicine. But Homeopathic medicine has so many things to do. Homeopathy considers lots of related issues. Genetic predisposition, family or personal history of some diseased conditions is very important. If there is family or personal history of recurrent asthma, bronchitis, tuberculosis then we have to pay special attention to the patients. Further, we see lots of asthma cases where mental and emotional conditions affect asthma patients seriously. We do not need to analyze only the allergic triggers as an allergist does. We have seen that emotional conditions like silent grief, disappointed love etc. create a sort of suffocation in the emotional level which later on acts as a trigger to asthma.
In homeopathy, the homeopath always individualizes the patient and does not treat only the asthma. He must have to adopt the holistic approach. He will always consider the accompanying or the concomitant symptoms of the patient. There are so many things in the mental and emotional levels.
The following symptoms may play significant role in treating asthma, we should say the asthma patient.
Generally, the asthma patients have the following symptoms which are directly associated with asthma, cough and some general symptoms. The general symptoms are different in every patient. Most of the patients are affected by dust.
One of the peculiar mental/emotional symptoms is asthmatic respiration after anger, mortification or fright, grief, disappointed love.
There is a tendency that if the patients’ skin eruptions are suppressed earlier, most of the time they get asthma in the long run. These patients have the history of suppressing the skin eruptions by allopathic treatment. Sometime we see the asthma is associated with eruptive diseases.
The time modalities are a significant factor in treating asthma. Asthmatic respiration may take place in the daytime, morning, early in the morning, forenoon, noon, afternoon, evening, evening in bed, night, particular hours after midnight or any particular hours of day and night. The treatment will be different as the time modalities are different for every patients.
The asthma may have the weather modalities. Again, for every patient it is different. It may be aggravated or ameliorated by cold air, open air, change of weather, cold or hot weather, cold or hot room, damp weather, windy weather and cold wet weather. Some patients may want to open the windows; some must sit by the window to feel better, some cannot tolerate open air. The patient may feel warm in a warm room and becomes deathly pale and must remain quiet. Entering a warm room from open air can change the condition some patients. A few patients may want to be fanned to feel better.
Asthmatic symptoms may develop when the patient has particular movement of the body for example- bends his body or his arm backward/forward, but it may also be ameliorated by the same activity. Sometimes patient has to bend his head backward and must rise up and bend his head backwards to get a short relief. Ascending or descending also aggravates or ameliorates the symptoms.
Motion especially slow or rapid motion is also a factor. Motion of arms or any sort of physical exertion or exercise may trigger the symptoms.
In the same way standing positions like normal standing, standing in water may aggravate the symptoms. Walking may make the symptoms better or worse. Sometimes walking rapidly may make the patients better or worse.
Symptoms of asthma may arise if expectoration is checked and the patient may feel better if there is expectoration or coryza or discharges. Coryza should never be checked by allopathic medicine.
Positions of the body also influence the symptoms. For example, sitting, standing, and walking. These also make the symptoms better and worse in particular patients. The posture include sitting, sitting bent backwards, sitting bent forwards, half sitting, sitting upright, sitting with head bent forward on knees etc.
Position of lying of the patient plays an important role. The patient’s conditions may be better or worse if he is lying on the back or abdomen, lying on the back with arms outstretched, lying on the back with shoulders elevated, lying on right or left side.
Symptoms may occur before sleep, when falling asleep, after short sleep, during and after sleep. The patient can also be awakened from sleep to avoid suffocation. Sometimes we see that if the patient’s head touch the pillow, difficulty in respiration starts. So he has to jump from bed.
Female patient may get asthma during pregnancy or delivery or with every labor pain. Some patients experience difficult respiration along with pain in heart.
The patient may experience panting, rattling or wheezing respiration. These may be associated with cough which may be choking, suffocative in nature. Patient may vomit on coughing.
Asthma patients most of the time have a tendency to take cold from the childhood. There is a history of tuberculosis or recurrent bronchitis in the family and personal life of the patient. These conditions are controlled by allopathic drugs which in the long run cause asthma.
So we can see that there are lot of issues a homeopath needs to consider in asthma patient.
Following are the most used medicine
Any homeopathic medicine if prescribed correctly will help the patient to cure. Depending on the previous treatment and suppressing factors, family history some patients need long time comparing to others to reach a final cure. Some important medicines are:
Aconite, Apis mel, Antim tart, Arsenicum album, Bryonia alb, Carbo veg, Cuprum, Drosera, Hydrocyanic acid, Ipecacuanha, Kali bichromicum, Kali carb, Lachesis, Lobelia, Lycopodium, Moschus, Natrum Sulph, Nux vomica, Sambucus, Spongia, Sulpher, Viscum Alb, Zingiber.
Dr. BM Benojir Ahmed
Consultant Homeopoath
email: drbenojir@gmail.com
Tags: Treating Asthma with Homeopathy
DR. BENOJIR, CONSULTANT HOMEOPATH 