Childhood Asthma

The word "Asthma" comes from the Greek, meaning, "to breathe hard." "Breath is life and life is breath". Breathing is such an accepted reality of life that we do not give much significance to it until we are deprived of it. Ask an asthma patient the agony and distress of waking up in the middle of the night, with a feeling of suffocation, short ineffectual cough, labored breathing, and wheezing.

What is Asthma?

Asthma is not just a disease of the lungs. Asthma is a multi-factorial, deep level disorder involving the immunological system of the body, having symptomatic expressions at the level of the lungs. With this understanding of the disease, it may be clearly perceived that the any treatment targeted simply at the level of lung symptoms will have little help. Just to relieve the symptoms of breathlessness and cough will prove too superficial an approach, when we are looking at the long term goal of treating the disease at a root level.

What Causes Asthma?

The actual cause of asthma is complex, certain subsctances or situations can "triggers" asthma, such as:

Pollens, dust mites, pets.
Foods such as fish, eggs, peanuts, nuts, cow’s milk.
Respiratory infections, like colds, bronchitis, and sinusitis.
Certain drug sensitivity.
Tobacco, smoke, weather changes, diesel fumes, paint, detergents, deodorants, chemicals, dust, gases, and perfumes.
Exercise.
Emotional stress.
Hormonal factors, such as in premenstrual syndrome.
Genetic tendency in children with a family history of asthma, allergy or eczema are more prone to this disease.

Treating Childhood Asthma, a Homeopathic Approach

Homeopathy is a scientific medical alternative for treating a wide range of chronic ailments. The basic approach in homeopathy is to evaluate the disease of childhood asthma in its whole extent, whereby a lot of emphasis is given to the patient as a whole besides minutely studying various aspects of the childhood Asthma.

Homeopathy firmly believes in enhancing body's own defense mechanism to maintain the healthy status. The homeopathic treatment is aimed at enhancing body's own healing capacity so that the human system does not react adversely to the allergens which are considered external factors affecting asthma.

A homeopath will not look at childhood Asthma as a local disease. Asthma in children (asthmatic bronchitis) has been considered as a local expression of a system disturbance. As per the classical homeopathy, we believe in constitutional prescribing. This calls for individual case study in every case of asthma. There is no single specific remedy for all the cases of asthma. The exact treatment is determined only on in-depth evaluation of individual case.

Can Homeopathy Treat Asthma

Yes! When we hear the medical fraternity declaring childhood asthma as a incurable entity, we homeopaths feel sad and upset because this disorder is absolutely curable. At our center, we have had a statistics of having treated over 500 cases with a long-term follow up for three years. The results have been promisingly encouraging. Over 80% of the children have shown reduction in frequency of attacks within four months. Over 80% of the sufferers have settled with one attack of asthma once in a year or less within one year of treatment. The success rate could be put close to 85%.

It may be emphasised that homeopathic treatment has been found effective not only at our center but at the hands of thousands of practitioners in different parts of the world during last 200 years.

Children suffering from asthma, when treated with homeopathy, not only their asthma is cured or well controlled, but also they become stronger individuals with enhanced resistance power. This is because homeopathy does not treat asthma per se, but treats the patient as a whole.

Acute attacks of Asthma

It is possible to treat an acute attack of asthma in children with correctly chosen homeopathic medicine. However, it requires careful study of every episode as one requires to evaluate the factors which may have precipitated the attack, the exact symptoms, the factors which make the attack worse or better, etc. However, in some cases, if modern medicines ( such as broncho-dilators or antiallergenic drugs) are administered during the severe attack, when the child is on homeopathic medication, it does not interfere with the homeopathic treatment.