http://asthma.bloghi.com/ Allergy asthma treatment, symptoms and attacks Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:05:29 +0000 http://bloghi.com/ http://asthma.bloghi.com/img_ch.hi?id=13331 http://asthma.bloghi.com/ http://asthma.bloghi.com/2008/05/27/asthma-and-the-organic-approach.html http://asthma.bloghi.com/2008/05/27/asthma-and-the-organic-approach.html#comments Tue, 27 May 2008 02:55:03 +0000 http://asthma.bloghi.com/2008/05/27/asthma-and-the-organic-approach.html Hi, I'm back again after yet another month-long ansence! Oh, well, I suppose I don't have as much time for writing a blog as I thought I would. Busy mum and housewife juggling too many skittles at the moment! Anyway, my last post was called Back... Back at Last, and thats the link to it. Well, it looks like this must be back at last version 2 ha!

What have I got to tell you today then?

Well, maybe one reason why I haven't been swriting in here is probably because I've been fairly asthma free for this last month or so. Just the odd mild beginnings of an attck here and there as I have come to expect, but nothing major and so I simply haven't had anything to report on.

I suppose if I had, it would be a report on the total failure of my natural approach to dealing with my asthma, which of course has NOT happened!

So this journal entry is really a reassurance that the natural measures of relaxation exercises, yoga and healthy diet are working to at least keep the rotten disease at bay!  So lets touch upon diet and why I believe it has an important role to play in winning the battle against asthma.

Most of the food most people eat is laden with poisons.

Ouch! That is a broad, wide reaching statement, but sadly one of fact that most people simply don't know about or refuse to acknowledge. Don't sit on your backside waiting for some smarmy government minister to come out of their lair and tell you that, by the way. You can bet money on the fact that politicians are quite happy with the perceived status quo on that score. Don't rock the boat and the voters will keep voting for them!

Well, I can tell you that the fruit and vegetables you buy at the supermarkets, greengrocers and most farm market shops are full of pesticides.

Don't believe me? Take a walk along a country lane in springtime a couple of weeks or so after the farmers have planted their fields and you just might notice the odd tractor or a dozen driving up and down those fields spraying something on the newly sprouting crops. Now what do you think that might be then?

Water?

Its a cocktail of up to one hundred or so chemical pesticides, selective herbicides and fungicides designed to kill everything except the crops that are growing in that depleted soil. Those crops absorb those chemicals through their leaves and the poisons stay in the plants. Fact.

As the plants grow and produce the final vegetable crops which are harvested later in the year, those chemicals remain locked in the cells of the plants, while more is intermittently sprayed on throughout the growing season and taken up by the roots and leaves.

When those fruits and vegetables reach the shelves, they still contain the residue of all those chemicals.

I believe, as many now do that those chemical residues are responsible for a large proportion of diseases like asthma that are rising fast to reach epidemic proportions - in direct proportion to the increase in the use of those chemical pesticides on crops.

Don't believe me if you don't want to. Go to your doctor and keep taking the ever stronger doses of steroids and other equally powerful poisons to combat your diseases. If you aren't prepared to listen to common sense and act for yourself, then there is no sense in reading my blog, because I will tell it as it is, not as the fairy prince in Number 10 tells it.

Now if the moaning minnie types have left with a complaint brewing in their cups of tea, the rest of us who are prepared to do something for ourselves can carry on reading!

The way to beat the relentless onslaught of poison laden produce is to either grow it yourself in your own back garden or allotment (yes, you can still get them) or buy organically produced friut and vegetables. Organic meat too, if you still eat it. I don't any more simply because I was sick of the way I felt after eating a large steak or similar - bloated, sluggish and out of sorts.

I have been sort of vegetarian for nearly a year now and feel tons better for ditching meat in favour of more fish and vegetables. I grow a lot of the veggies that I and my family eats, so I know there are no poisons whatsoever on them. Ok, I get the odd bugs to wash off but hey, how much of a bloody hardship is that to know the food is actually doing my family good rather than killing them slowly? Sure, caterpillars and slugs nibble at the leaves and the veg patch needs constant vigilence to make sure their numbers don't increase. Simply going through it every day is actually an enjoyable pastime, picking off the caterpillars from the leaves and dropping them in the centre of the lawn and then going inside and watching the birds come down for a feast!

Slugs are dealy with by using beer traps. Aphids get squirted with a mixture of water and garlic - yes it kills them!

This short post is turning into a long one and that wasn't my intention! So, there you have a quick organic primer on one way to cut down your chances of having mroe severe asthma attacks - look at your diet and see where you can change things to make it better for you and your family.

You owe it to yourself and to them

Chelsea ]]> http://asthma.bloghi.com/2008/05/27/asthma-and-the-organic-approach.html#comments http://asthma.bloghi.com/2008/04/16/back-at-last.html http://asthma.bloghi.com/2008/04/16/back-at-last.html#comments Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:28:32 +0000 http://asthma.bloghi.com/2008/04/16/back-at-last.html Hi, this is going to be a short post just to let everyone know that this blog was taken off the air for a while because some nice mischief-maker decided to flag it as spam, which is quite absurd. Anyway, that's water under the bridge now as the...
So in the months that has elapsed when I couldn't post anything in here, quite a lot has happened with regards to my condition, most of it good although not all of it. With the coming of Spring, comes the odd still day when the air doesn't get much of a chance to move and pollution from cars etc seems to hang in the air. It was on just such a day a couple of weeks ago that I found myself walking through town and was caught unawares by that sudden tightening of the chest and I wasn't really prepared for it.

Ugh. I had no choice but to stop and use my inhaler as the symptoms were coming on rapidly. I was close at a bus stop on a busy main road , so at least I could sit down and try to calm myself down. The asthma attack that was in its way never really took hold, so I got away with that one.

That just goes to show that no matter what you do, you should still carry that inhaler around with you "just in case." Nine times out of ten, if you can keep yourself calm and not let your self get stressed, you won't need it.

However, you can't control the atmosphere and on such a day when the air is more polluted than normal, it is better not to go out in it and definitely stay away from town or city centres where there is a lot of traffic, because I firmly believe that the fumes play a big part in causing a lot of people's asthma.

Ok, that's my two penn'th for today. See you all soon,

Chelsea
]]> http://asthma.bloghi.com/2008/04/16/back-at-last.html#comments http://asthma.bloghi.com/2008/03/10/asthma-treatments-part-2.html http://asthma.bloghi.com/2008/03/10/asthma-treatments-part-2.html#comments Mon, 10 Mar 2008 04:42:28 +0000 http://asthma.bloghi.com/2008/03/10/asthma-treatments-part-2.html I'm going to follow my last post, which I entitled Asthma Treatments Part 1, for want of a more creative title with a continuation of the kind of perhaps unconventional but effective asthma treatments I've tried with varying amounts of success. The...
Now I'm going to take that one step further and let you know how I also use mental conditioning as well as relaxation techniques to warn off an iminent asthma attack when I feel one coming on.

The signs are very recognisable for me, so I know the instant an asthma attack is about to grip me. Well, I stop whatever it is I'm doing and take a very slow, very deep breath, mentally telling myself that I'm fine and I'm just going to relax. The mental state is very important because as soon as you start to subvocalise that an asthma attack is coming, its going to come no matter what you do and then its a mad scramble for the inhaler. Which is exactly what I try to avoid as much as possible.

So its a state of mind that helps enormously, because I know full well from when I first started using these asthma treatment techniques that if you can feel an asthma attack coming on, then taking a deep breath is absolutely the last thing you want to do, because of the panic that sets in and that breath gets restricted to the point where you start to feel you can't breathe.

So it has to be nipped in the bud.

I do that with positive thought, telling myself that I'm fine, I feel fine and I just want to take a very slow, deep breath to relax a little. Honstly, it works for me now, althouigh at the outset I found it difficult which is understandable, I think.

The mental trick is to tell yourself something positive.

If you tell yourself "I'm not going to have an asthma attack," you'll likely get one. That's because it doesn't matter whether you're thinking I'm having an attack or I'm NOT having an attack, your subconscious only gets the "attack" part and that's what you get.

So you have to trick your mind with positive thought and tell it "I'm fine," or "I feel good," or "I feel calm and relaxed," or something similar. That way, the subconscious gets the "feeling fine," or "feeling good" part and that's what it makes more of.

I know it will take time to master that part of it, as at first your mental thought process will fight with you because even though you say you're fine, your body knows it's a lie. So there will be a bit of mental juggling going on at first, but after a few goes, you'll surprise yourself by staving off the imminent asthma attack.

Really!

I'll write another post soon with some more things that I do as alternative asthma treatments that I know from personal experience work for me.

Chelsea
]]> http://asthma.bloghi.com/2008/03/10/asthma-treatments-part-2.html#comments http://asthma.bloghi.com/2008/03/01/asthma-treatments-part1.html http://asthma.bloghi.com/2008/03/01/asthma-treatments-part1.html#comments Sat, 01 Mar 2008 04:19:34 +0000 http://asthma.bloghi.com/2008/03/01/asthma-treatments-part1.html Well, here we go. This post follows my first introductory "hello" that I called simply Asthma Treatment, so to make the posts a bit different I'll take the kinds of things I do to treat my own asthma and, well, write about those asthma treatments... Asthma Treatment, so to make the posts a bit different I'll take the kinds of things I do to treat my own asthma and, well, write about those asthma treatments here. I don't want to be sitting here writing all day, so I'll just post one asthma treatment I use per post to keep them short and to the point, if that's ok.

So the first asthma treatment I learned to do was the easiest sounding but surprisinglt hard to do at first. That's to relax.

Yep, it might sound like, "oh that's so easy!" and it sounds easy, but if you are like I was, flying about everywhere like a mad woman and never stopping for anything, the thought of sitting still for even five minutes to relax was a shock to the system! But I knew I had to try, so this is how this particular asthma treatment started to work for me.

Learning to relax is not really so hard once you get started.

I had to force myself to set aside 30 minutes of my day (what 30 minutes in my manic day?) where I would take the phone off the hook, switch off the mobile, then sit in a comfortable chair and take a few slow, deep breaths and close my eyes.

The first time I did it, I lasted less than 30 seconds before my eyes flew open to look at the clock beside me to see if the 30 minutes was up yet! Ha! So I closed my eyes again and this time tried harder. I'd heard all about how to meditate and clear your mind but had never tried it myself. Now was a good time to start!

Shutting down all those thoughts was hard at first. The moment I stopped thinking about things, more things would come flying along to fill the void. I really had to concentrate on nothing and after a while, I actually got it! I managed to stay still and quiet like that for 20 minutes and when I opened my eyes I felt really good!

Well, I did that exercise every day and after only three days, I noticed I was becoming less frenetic in my ways. I was actually calming down and with it my asthma attacks didn't come as often as before. This was good stuff!

I'm really good at being still and calm now all thanks to learning to relax and sticking to it. That's where I think a lot of people go wrong - they expect to see results fast and when they don't, they stop doing it, which is a shame. If you're one of those people, try it again and stick with it. You really have to make the effort yourself, not rely on anyone else - because only you can relax YOU!

Well, that's the first asthma treatment that I used and it remains today the most powerful method I know of keeping my asthma at bay for most of the time. There is a lot more to this, but as I said, one asthma treatment per post!

I bet you can't wait to know what my next asthma treatment will be...

Chelsea
]]> http://asthma.bloghi.com/2008/03/01/asthma-treatments-part1.html#comments http://asthma.bloghi.com/2008/02/25/asthma-treatment.html http://asthma.bloghi.com/2008/02/25/asthma-treatment.html#comments Mon, 25 Feb 2008 12:00:52 +0000 http://asthma.bloghi.com/2008/02/25/asthma-treatment.html Welcome to my asthma blog. My name is Chelsea Redman, I live in Colchester, Essex, England and I have been a sufferer of allergy asthma since I was a small child. Now in my late 30s I have discovered a lot more about the illness that has plagued me...
The idea of this asthma treatment blog is that I'd like to share some of the information I've discovered with anyone who is interested as well as let you in on some of the alternative asthma treatment that I've tried. Some have been a waste of time and others have worked wonders!

So I'll post in here whenever I get time (ok, it won't be too often as I'm still a busy mum and my time spent in peace and quiet on this laptop is very limited) and let you in on what I've found out.

Chelsea
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