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Pediatrics Wellness

Asthma | A Naturopathic Approach

Asthma is a nightmare. There is nothing scarier than not being able to breathe or watching the ones you love not being able to breathe. It is important to treat asthma seriously and seek out the appropriate care. The care we get at a hospital or with asthma medications is meant to open up the airway by decreasing inflammation and making our airway bigger/dilated, which is necessary and life saving in an acute attack. But what would be even better than taking life-saving medications during an acute attack is to prevent the attack in the first place. And that is where naturopathic medicine shines, but more on that later!

What is Asthma?

Let’s start with what actually happens in asthma. When someone experiences difficulty breathing due to asthma, it is because their airway has less of a pathway for air to travel through. This happens for a multitude of reasons. 1. The smooth muscle surrounding your airway contract and spasm in response to something our body has recognized as a “threat” making the airway a smaller passageway for air. 2. The already small airway is filled with immune cells, inflammation, and mucous that prevent the “threat” from entering the lungs and causing further damage. Basically, the symptoms that we get in asthma are due to our body trying to protect us from further damage by the “threat” getting deeper into the body.

What triggers asthma?

Environmental toxins, environmental allergens, smoking, strong odors, weather changes, viruses, exercise, emotions, heartburn/GERD, and some medications are all potential triggers of asthma. When a person who has asthma is exposed to these triggers or “threats”, their airway becomes smaller leading to the difficulty breathing.

Why do some people have asthma and others don’t?

So why is it that some people can be exposed to these same triggers and not get asthma while others get exposed and they create an asthma response? This has to do with how many toxins the body is exposed to on a daily basis, how much inflammation the body has in it already, the body’s ability to detoxify, and how healthy the respiratory microbiome is. Unfortunately, in the toxic world we live in, we are exposed to environmental toxins every single day. Our body responds to these environmental toxins by creating some level of inflammation and either storing the toxins or removing them from the body. The more toxins we are exposed to, the greater toxic load/burden our body has which leads to more inflammation. The greater the toxic load and the greater inflammation the body has, the easier it is for a trigger or “threat” to create an asthma attack.

What are the long-term consequences of asthma?

Unfortunately, the more asthma episodes a person has, the more their airway becomes damaged and begins to undergo fibrosis. Fibrosis basically means hardening of the walls of the airway which decreases their functionality. There is so much we can do with naturopathic medicine to prevent these long-term consequences and have a healthy respiratory system for the rest of your life.

How Naturopathic Medicine targets the root cause of asthma?

Now that we know more about asthma, let’s talk about a naturopathic approach to helping someone with asthma. As a naturopathic doctor, my goal is to treat the ROOT CAUSE of asthma and HEAL the WHOLE BODY. This means taking measures to decrease the toxic load and inflammation in our body. Here are the fundamentals of how a naturopathic doctor would help a person who experiences asthma.

  1. Heal the gut. When we heal the gut, we focus on eating a healthy diet, decreasing inflammation, restoring our gut microbiome, and allowing out gut to heal from any damage that has incurred during the lifestyle we currently have.
  2. Decrease environmental toxin exposure. This means addressing what we put in our body, what we put on our body, what we breathe in, what we listen to, and what thoughts we have. Since our home is where we spend the majority of our time (including our precious sleep), this especially includes education on making the home environment as free of environmental toxins as possible.
  3. Supporting our organs of elimination. Our body is designed to remove toxins and waste. Our liver, skin, lungs, kidneys, digestive system, lymphatic system, and circulatory system all work together to eliminate toxins and wastes from our body. By supporting these organs, we can decrease our toxin burden, decrease inflammation, and prevent asthma attacks.
  4. Eat a healthful diet. By eating an organic, plant-based, whole foods diet, we are healing our gut, decreasing environmental toxin exposure, supporting our organs of elimination, and giving our body the necessary nutrients to function appropriately. Eating a healthy diet, also means not eating foods you are allergic to or sensitive to. We often see food sensitivities/allergies in people who have asthma. Avoiding these food sensitivities/allergies is a main component of treating asthma because it decreases a lot of inflammation in the gut which decreases inflammation throughout our entire body, including our airway.
  5. Decreasing inflammation. Although everything we talked about so far will decrease inflammation, there are so many other things that specifically target decreasing inflammation in the body like eating omega-3 rich foods, adding turmeric into meals, drinking adequate amounts of water, and the list goes on and on.
  6. Botanical medicine and homeopathy are two amazing modalities to help support the respiratory system and entire body in the naturopathic treatment of asthma. There are specific plants that we use in botanical medicine that support your immune system, decrease inflammation, and decrease the contraction of the smooth muscle in your airway to help prevent asthma or help open the airway during an asthma attack. Homeopathy supports the entire body in healing and helps a person respond more appropriately to asthma triggers.
  7. Breathing exercises and movement help exercise the lungs. This helps to clear any mucus and inflammation that is in the lungs. It also helps bring more blood flow to our respiratory system which brings, oxygen and nutrients and everything our lung tissue needs to heal.
  8. Supplementation is not a go-to for me as a naturopathic doctor because there are so many nutrients in supplements that we can get from our diet instead. But there is a time and a place for supplementation in regards to asthma. One supplement I would consider is magnesium because it can become depleted when using an albuterol inhaler, which is a common medication given to those with asthma. Magnesium acts as a smooth muscle relaxant to prevent the spasming and contraction of the smooth muscle surrounding the airway creating less constriction of the airway. There are many other supplements that contain vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and probiotics that help in the prevention/treatment of asthma.
  9. Hydrotherapy is another modality used by naturopathic doctors. Hydrotherapy is the act of using hot and cold water to bring blood flow to the lungs, to detoxify the body, and to stimulate the body’s own healing vital force.
  10. While treating the root cause and healing the body with everything we’ve talked about so far, it is important for a person with asthma to have the appropriate asthma medications/inhaler to use when they experience difficulty breathing. This can be life saving and therefore, something that should be a part of the treatment plan. That being said my goal as a naturopathic doctor is to help you treat the root cause of the asthma and heal the whole body so you can go completely off the pharmaceutical medications in the future. There are side effects to the pharmaceutical medications used in asthma with the most concerning being suppression of immune system and inflammation caused by steroids. In general suppressing symptoms alleviates symptoms for now, but often drives the pathology deeper. Diet, lifestyle changes, and other naturopathic medicine modalities do the opposite of helping to drive the pathology out of the body rather than deeper into the body.

The Triad

In our patients, we often see a triad of asthma, allergies, and eczema either all at one time or in succession. This is because they all have their causes rooted in immune system dysregulation, inflammation, and increased toxic load. Thankfully, the naturopathic approach of treating the root cause and healing the whole body in regard to asthma helps to prevent/treat allergies and eczema as well.

On the path towards health and healing

If you or your child has asthma, there is so much that can be done to help. Do NOT accept the fact that you or your child will have asthma for the rest of your/their life. Making changes in your diet and lifestyle and using other naturopathic modalities can be LIFE CHANGING and completely reverse asthma. If you have asthma, it is time to heal your whole body and get your lungs breathing better!

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Wellness

Inflammation: Healthy or Not?

We often think of inflammation as “bad”, but that’s not always true. Inflammation for a short period of time following an injury or exposure to a toxin/pathogen is our body’s healthy response!

Acute Inflammation = Healthy

Inflammation is the result of our immune system (often thought of as our body’s army) gathering in an area of our body that requires an army to heal damaged tissue and/or defend against a toxin/pathogen. When a part of your body is inflamed, you will likely notice swelling, redness, heat, pain, a stuffy nose, a cough, etc. It may be uncomfortable while your immune system is at work, but having that inflammation is a good sign that your body is mounting an appropriate response to restore your body to health. As your body heals and your immune system eliminates the toxin/pathogen, the inflammation should go away completely as your immune system awaits its next task to keep you healthy.

Chronic Inflammation = Unhealthy

It’s when chronic inflammation takes hold of our body that we start to see the negative impact of inflammation. Chronic inflammation results from the high levels of environmental toxins we are exposed to, eating poorly, living sedentary lives, being under constant stress, etc. Chronic inflammation has consequences in our body. Under states of chronic inflammation, our organs are unable to function appropriately, and our tissues undergo destruction. This results in a plethora of diseases that are now becoming common in America, such as high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, constipation, cramping during menses, autoimmune conditions, and the list goes on and on.

Lost Signals

Normally when a body is exposed to an acute threat, like a pathogen, the body detects the threat and creates signals to bring our immune system to the right area to defend our body. But when we are already in a chronically inflammatory state, that acute signal is lost amongst all the other signals a chronically inflamed body is consistently giving off to our immune system. So our immune system can’t appropriately defend our body against that pathogen because it can’t hear the acute signal over the roar of all the other signals. This is why someone who is experiencing chronic inflammation can easily get sick and be sick for long periods of time because their immune system army is so overburdened and overworked throughout an entire chronically inflamed body.

Supporting our Immune System

So what do you do with this information? First of all, thank your body for creating ACUTE inflammation because this tells you your immune system is at work defending you and healing you. Second of all, do what you can to avoid becoming in a chronically inflamed state. This means treating your body right, eating nourishing foods, drinking water, moving your body every day, engaging in deep breathing exercises, and finding ways to healthfully cope with stressors. And if you are already in a state of chronic inflammation and need more support, I am always here as a naturopathic doctor to help you decrease chronic inflammation in your body and increase your immune system functionality.

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Wellness

Better Mood | Better YOU

Your MOOD isn’t just determined by your emotions and experiences. There are PHYSIOLOGICAL reasons you may be feeling sad or depressed. Your neurotransmitters and hormones have A LOT to do with the way we feel. So why not do all we can to support these happy-giving molecules every single day?

EATING FOR YOUR MOOD

It all starts with how we eat. If you want to feel full of life, then you need to eat foods that are FULL OF LIFE, like sprouts and fresh fruits and veggies. We can’t help but feel more BALANCED and HAPPY when we are eating organic, plant-based whole foods rich in micronutrients, proteins, carbohydrates, and healthy fats.

Our MICRONUTRIENTS are the vitamins and minerals our body soaks up when we eat fruits, vegetables, legumes, beans, nuts, whole grains, and seeds. To the create neurotransmitters and hormones in our body that make us feel oh so good, we NEED micronutrients and lots of them! Furthermore, our body breaks down the PROTEIN we eat into amino acids, which are the building blocks to neurotransmitter synthesis, like norepinephrine and serotonin, which both make us feel happy and energized. And the HEALTHY FATS we eat can be used to create our steroid/sex hormones, which gives up our libido and makes us feel happy, energized, and at peace.

DRINK UP, BUTTER CUP

Our brain is made up of 75% water. It makes sense that in order for your mental health to be supported, you need to be PLENISHING your brain with water! Not only that, but every cell throughout our entire body requires water to perform its appropriate functions. For example, our brain needs water to create SEROTONIN, which is a neurotransmitter that submits signals throughout our entire body of BALANCE and HAPPINESS. We also need water to create energy in our body and who doesn’t feel like they are in a better mood when they have more ENERGY?!

SWEET DREAMS

Sleep is crucial for our mood! Just like water, our whole body functions better when we get a good night’s sleep. The examples are literally endless of how sleep helps our mood! Here is one for you: Your body turns serotonin into melatonin using a process called METHYLATION. Among other things, we are better methylators when we are sleeping and eating our dark, leafy greens. It’s a beautiful CYCLE; the more sleep we get, the more melatonin we create and the more melatonin we create, the better sleep we get.

REGULAR BMs

Did you know having REGULAR bowel movements can make us happier? Having a bowel movement helps to remove hormones that our liver just metabolized for us. Two commonly talked about hormones are estrogen and progesterone. They should be in balance, but frequently estrogen is in excess (making us feel irritable and sad) and progesterone is deficient (making us feel anxious and tired). By having a bowel movement everyday, more excess estrogen can leave the body which allows progesterone to have a greater voice in how you feel, giving you feelings of CALMNESS and HAPPINESS. You can support your body in having bowel movements every day by drinking plenty of water, having an active lifestyle, eating fiber and magnesium rich foods, and engaging in deep breathing exercises.

LIVER LOVE

Along with having regular bowel movements, our liver must METABOLIZE those excess hormones and put them into our gut. We can show our liver some love by drinking water, eating dark, leafy greens and cruciferous veggies, drinking dandelion tea, not drinking alcohol, eating organic, moving our body every day, and the list goes on and on.

BREATH, PAUSE, and DE-STRESS

When we are stressed, we are spending our energy on the stressor which takes away energy from the creation or metabolism of neurotransmitters and hormones creating imbalances. Stress puts our nervous system into a sympathetic sate and when we are in a sympathetic state, we don’t digest well, our muscles tighten, our breathing becomes shallower, our blood doesn’t flow as well, and we certainly aren’t in as good of mood as we could be because we aren’t able to perform the necessary reactions that balance our neurotransmitters and hormones.  Fortunately, there is a lot we can do to manage stress. The most fundamental way to help us cope with the stressors in our life is to take a pause and BREATHE DEEPLY.