Asthma IS a physical condition, but psychological factors plays probably the most important part. the physical symptoms can be treated with medication, but if there are emotional factors involved, those need to be addressed, as well.
asthma can be triggered by many things, as others have listed, but can be made much worse by emotions. first, from a physical perspective, if you are emotionally upset, your immune system doesn’t work as well as it should, your resitance is lower, so your body will react quicker to triggers such as pollen, animal dander, pollution, etc.
second, having an asthma attack is scary!! when you feel you can’t breathe, the anxiety makes it worse. the airways constrict making it harder to breathe..it becomes a vicious cycle. one of the things i tell my patients in an attack is to lower their shoulders and take slow, deep breaths, in thru the nose and slowly out thru their mouths with their lips pressed together like they are going to whistle.
this does several things. it calms one of the major nerves that has to do with breathing (vagus nerve), it gives the body nitrous oxide created in the back of the nasal passages that helps to calm the body as a whole, and it holds the air in the lungs longer allowing better oxygenation, and it slows the movement of the air thru the airways which helps with the constriction.
sorry.. don’t mean to be so long winded (no pun intended lol) but thought the extra info might help. good luck!
Source(s):
Registered Respiratory Therapist

The Simplest Asthma Solution
By Ralph DeAmicis

During the Democratic convention the Reverend Al Sharpton quoted a shocking statistic: One third of the children in Harlem suffer from asthma. This shouldn’t be completely surprising since asthma cases have been consistently increasing over the years, especially in the cities, escalating recently during the rollback of some key environmental laws, but it is a trend we must turn back.

While parents have only limited control over the environment
where they raise their children, there is a personal environmental decision they can make that may dramatically reduce the symptoms their children experience. It all comes down to detergent, and not just any detergent. It is the detergent that they use to wash their children’s clothes and sheets. The biggest selling detergents in the United States contain large amounts of irritating phosphates, which are not only a major irritant to the skin and respiratory system, but a source of serious pollution, and a component in global warming.

If you are wondering if your laundry detergent contains phosphates just read the label, it is listed there. In most industrialized countries phosphate detergents are outlawed for good reason, but in the United States the chemical industry has a strong lobby and cheap phosphates help manufacturers keep their costs low, so their use continues.
The next time you walk though the laundry detergent section of your supermarket, take a deep breath and notice how much the smell irritates your nose and lungs.

What kinds of detergent contain low, or no phosphates? Baby detergent! No mother would dream of washing their newborn’s clothes and sheets in the family’s powdered detergent! That would give their baby’s delicate skin rashes, not to mention an increase in crying and crankiness. There are many readily available natural detergents that are phosphate-free and it’s worth the time to find them.

We have noticed tremendous improvements for both children and adults when their clothes and sheets are consistently washed in a phosphate-free detergent. By itself this change may not alleviate all of the symptoms of asthma and those related skin rashes, but it clearly removes an insidious irritant from
the equation.

It might be helpful to explain why this simple change is so effective. Testing in Europe shows that, while sleeping, people are between two thousand and ten thousand times more sensitive to chemical and electromagnetic pollution than while they are awake. When a child’s pajamas are washed with a chemical irritant and they sleep on bedclothes containing those same toxins, their immune system is challenged nightly, during a time when they are most vulnerable. Their body’s nutritional reserves are consumed in that battle and they are less able to defend themselves from the pollutants they encounter during their day. Asthma and allergies are not produced by a single irritant, but by an accumulation of minor irritants that eventually overwhelm the body’s ability to adapt. It is not a huge leap to imagine that removing a respiratory irritant from the sleeping environment, where a person spends one third of their time, is going to produce an improvement in a child’s ability to breathe.

Drs. Ralph & Lahni DeAmicis are Naturopathic Physicians. Their educational program, The 10 Minute Herbalist, seeks to put the knowledge of everyday good health into everyone’s hands. Information about their program and publications is available at http://www.SpaceAndTime.com.

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Asthma Control – Three Tips For Controlling an Asthma Attack
By Tom Shephard

I use to have asthma and I can tell you from first hand experience that having an attack is probably one of the most frightening things that a kid or adult can ever have. It’s the feeling of suffocating without having anything over your face. You can’t grab at the object in front of you, and you can’t seem to get control of the lungs in your body. Here are three tips for you to use when you are getting an attack to help you get through each one of them easier, and without as much panic.

Three Tips of Asthma Control: Getting a Handle On An Attack

When you’re having an attack, the last thing you are wanting to do is go through a list of things that should be done in order to comfort your mind while you suffocate. Here are just three very easy exercises that you can do in the instance of an attack.

1. Coffee

If you can feel an attack starting, try brewing a cup of coffee and drinking it. This will open your lungs up, and help stave off any of the potential heaves or difficult breathing that you might have. This is not something to do during an attack unless you are under control enough to breathe semi-regularly.

2. Calm Down

Your lungs are physically closed and inflamed, but the mind can play tricks on you and make it seem worse than it is. When you panic, your heart rate rises, and your body registers it as needing more oxygen. As this happens, you’re going to want to breathe even more! Your lungs will FEEL (although, may not be any) more constricted than before. So it is very important that you just calm down, and take deep breaths.

3. Breathe Through Your Nose

In conjunction with number 2, breathe through you nose. This will help you slow your breathing down, and control your fear. Try and breathe as deeply as you can, and then release. This will allow you to open up the inflamed lung passages and will help you keep cool through the attack until medicine, or other help can be administered.

Growing up, I had asthma, and bad. It began to rule my life! I couldn’t run, I couldn’t swim, I couldn’t do anything that I wanted!

If you’re in the same boat I was, or feel like you could be getting to that point, you need to go to my Asthma Control blog.

There, I teach you methods, tips, and tricks to help you control your asthma so that you can go out, and take on the world in the way you were meant to: freely.

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Asthma Treatment – The Importance of Giving Up Smoking to Avoid Asthma Triggers
By Ian Hafiz

The most effective way of treating your child’s asthma would be to keep him away from the causes or triggers. In practice being able to do this depends largely on what exactly the triggers are in his case, and the compromises you have to make to let him live as normal a life as possible.

However, there are a number of simple, inexpensive steps that you can take to stop your child having preventable asthma attacks.

Cigarette smoke

It cannot be too highly stressed that when your child is already coping with restricted airways it is dangerous to smoke anywhere near him. It is important to make this clear to all other adults in contact with your child and, if you smoke, to get the help and advice you need to give up.

Of course all children should be discouraged from taking up smoking, especially those who have asthma.

The importance of giving up smoking

If you smoke and your child has asthma, you must give up. Breathing in your exhaled smoke makes an asthma attack far more likely. There are a number of products that can help, including nicotine patches, inhalers and nicotine chewing gum. Discuss the best method for you with your doctor.

Thorough and frequent house cleaning can limit the number of dust mites. Do not let your child be exposed to cigarette, cigar or pipe smoke. Do not be tempted to improve your house with double glazing as this will reduce the amount of air circulating, which may in turn affect your child’s asthma.

Studies have shown that wool carpets release house dust mites into the atmosphere more readily than synthetic carpets. Soft furnishings, such as curtains, chairs, sofas and cushions, also harbor dust mites. Antique furniture may be stuffed with horsehair, a very common asthma trigger in the past.

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Asthma Signs and Symptoms of Asthma – When to Consult Asthma Doctor?
By Andy Kahn

Some persons may have asthma only when they exercise or have a viral infection. The doctor can help you identify which things affect your disease and ways to avoid them. Different people have different signs and symptoms of asthma People with this ailment often have one or more the symptoms like wheezing, chest tightness, coughing, feeling short of breath etc. If you have these signs and symptoms of asthma consult with your doctor immediately.

A person who is middle-aged or older can sometimes develop asthma In some cases, the ailment continues into adulthood. In others, the childhood ailment clears up, only to reappear later in life as adult onset asthma If you weren’t diagnosed with this disease in your childhood, perhaps your symptoms were misdiagnosed as bronchitis or some other illness. It is often hard to tell whether someone has adult onset asthma or some other kind of smoking-related illness because the symptoms can be similar. People with adult onset asthma are sensitive to the same kinds of triggers that bring on symptoms in younger people. Managing adult onset asthma means limiting the amount of exposure to your particular triggers.

Adult onset asthma in a person of middle-age or older can speed up the deterioration of lung functioning. Once lung functioning has deteriorated, it never recovers, so it is important that adult onset asthma be properly managed. People with adult onset asthma often need to take preventive medication to protect their lung function.When you have asthma you always have inflammation or swelling in the airways of your lungs. Uncontrolled inflammation makes your airways more sensitive to triggers like pollen, dust, and smoke. If you use asthma rescue medication more than twice a week, then you may not be in control of your asthma. The treatment does not aim to curea the disease but it is about managing the disease so you have few or no symptoms and signs of asthma in the first place.

Natural Remedy For Asthma

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