Asthma Rates Continue To Rise as Mainstream Medicine Offers Chemical “Cures” Worse Than The Disease
Vitality January 2001

by Helke Ferrie

If you would rather avoid drugs with deadly side-effects and limited efficacy and prefer to leave your genes unmodified, explore the other treatment path which has a high chance of leading to recovery - environmental medicine.

Asthma and allergy are new diseases, barely known until 150 years ago when they came to stay and escalate into epidemic proportions, a by-product of the Industrial Revolution. Recent World Health Organization data show that asthma has increased by 83% since 1980, mostly affecting young children in developed countries, and the death rate has risen 40% also.

The highest increase is in Australia, where one quarter of all children are officially diagnosed with asthma. In Canada, two million people have asthma, while in the U.S. the number of sufferers numbers over 15 million (five million of which are children). Statistics for Quebec show that hospitalizations for asthma have doubled in the last 10 years (Medical Post Sept. 28, 1999).

The cost of asthma treatment in Canada has risen from $306 million annually (in 1990) to $648 million (in late’90s). The cost to Canadian society is currently $500 million annually. As such, asthma uses up 14% of our health care dollar; it is the second most expensive illness - cardiovascular diseases being the most expensive.

Pharmaceutical Approach Can Be Dangerous

The aim of standard medicine is twofold: to stop the smooth muscle contractions in the bronchi and/or prevent and reverse the acute inflammation of the airways. This is achieved, almost always dramatically and quickly, with glucocorticoids which stop the mast cells from releasing histamine in response to contact with an allergenic substance or an air-borne toxin. This is also achieved through beta-adrenergic agonists or anticholinergic drugs. Both come as “puffers” and can be used as needed or on a regular regime prescribed by your doctor. In an acute attack, this is no doubt a life-saving measure - rather like sending soldiers in riot gear to stop a rebellion. But these drugs are dangerously abused by the medical profession. In fact the Canadian Medical Association’s 1999 consensus report on asthma reads as if it was written entirely by Novartis, GlaxoWellcome and AstraZeneca, the financial sponsors of the report.

A must-read book, What Doctors Wont Tell You, provides the full story on these drugs, complete with all the medical literature to prove it. A few examples: one of the most prestigious medical journals, the Lancet, reported in 1995 that the death rate from asthma rose suddenly in the early 1980s when these drugs were introduced widely. Canadian studies showed that the use of one puffer canister per month increases your chance of death by heart attack or stroke 90 times within the first year. A national survey in the Netherlands showed that bone density is reduced by 8% after only five months of minimal use of steroids for asthma control. By their very nature they are broad-spectrum drugs and affect every body system. Common side-effects include: muscle wasting, hyperglycemia, water retention, skin atrophy, bruising, insomnia, psychosis, bone-loss, cataracts, glaucoma, impotence, allergic shock, diabetes. In children, long-term steroid use can cause adrenal suppression and interfere with growth and brain development.

The October 12, 2000 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine reported two long-term studies on asthmatic children’s growth rates while taking steroids. It was widely mis-quoted in the Canadian media as proving that long-term use of steroids is harmless. Not so. The studies followed children over 5 and 9 years respectively. The researchers chose only children with mild asthma requiring absolute minimal amounts of steroids on an irregular basis. After initially dropping off in their growth rates, they wound up in the normal range. However, the two editorials devoted to these studies emphasized that so much is known about the adverse effects of steroids that these studies should not be taken as license to use them without caution, especially since these studies cannot yet inform about potentially still developing problems.

In the UK a study of side-effects was conducted on 15,000 asthmatics who were all on steroids and/or beta-adrenergic agonists. It turned out that 70% of these people had many of these serious side-effects and less than half were ever warned by their doctors about such likely problems. Worst of all, these drugs have a saturation effect where no dosage will work.

Of course, death certificates are not going to give steroid-induced fatal asthma as a cause of death, but will register a heart attack, stroke or antibiotic-resistant infection - the end result of the side-effects.

Mysterious Link Between Asthma & Air Quality

Curiously, New Zealand is known to have the cleanest air among developed countries, yet has the highest rate of asthma. Even more curiously, heavily air polluted China, India and Eastern Europe, and poor air-quality cities like Athens and New Delhi, have much lower rates of asthma than nice clean places like Berlin and Zurich.

Truly strange is the following story: When East and West Germany were re-united ten years ago, scientists started an extensive study to see how respiratory diseases would be affected by the massive environmental clean-up initiated then. It was known that the asthma rate in polluted East Germany was paradoxically lower than that in environmentally conscious West Germany. As the East became rapidly cleaner, the already lower asthma rate there declined dramatically and then became stable. So, while cleaning up does reduce asthma, why was it lower in the polluted East to begin with? Similarly, throughout the developed countries asthma rates are increasing exponentially, even where the air is gradually improving. (International Journal of Epidemiology 28, 1999).

To make matters more confusing, consider Harvard’s 1997 “Six Cities Study” linking chronic high levels of fine airborne particles and sulphates to increased mortality rates. This is now confirmed and legislation has been passed to control these air-borne substances in the U.S. Similarly, the US National Institute of Health in September 1999 published results from research into the effect of gasoline byproducts and nitrogen dioxide on asthma - after following nearly 10,000 asthmatic children, the connection is confirmed. It has recently also been confirmed that homes where gas is used for heating and cooking increases the white blood cell count in children dramatically and triggers asthma, while switching to electricity helps these kids greatly (International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health 203, 2000). Also, good studies exist showing that air “tight” homes designed to conserve energy are very bad news for asthmatics of any age and contribute strongly to the development of asthma.

Given that air pollution and toxic chemicals are agreed to bring on asthma, yet asthma incidence doesn’t always correlate with how severely polluted the air is, what is going on?

Of further interest - research also shows a connection between asthma and bacteria and toxic fungi - the increase in the latter being associated with global warming. An interesting New England Journal of Medicine study (August 24, 2000) showed that exposure to other kids and their germs at a very young age appears to jump-start the immune system and protect against asthma and allergy later in life. A Canadian prevention trial undertaken in Vancouver and Winnipeg showed that keeping as many of those triggering substances (listed above) away from children, starting at birth, reduces the risk of asthma later by 34% (Medical Post Sept. 26, 2000).

Most intriguing is the fact that the prevalence of asthma is highest in English-speaking countries (Medical Post, June 9, 1988), Canada placing fifth. This observation and the fact that asthma has increased so dramatically in just 10 years virtually rules out a genetic explanation and makes genetic susceptibility equally uninteresting.

While general agreement on asthma triggers exists, the drug and high-tech approach ignores why polluted East Germany had less asthma - surely a clue to something very important. If you would rather avoid drugs with deadly side-effects and limited efficacy and prefer to leave your genes unmodified, explore the other treatment path which has a high chance of leading to recovery.

Environmental Medicine – Real Solutions

Dr. Theron Randolph, of the University of Chicago, pioneered the concepts of environmental illness and bio-individuality in the late 1940s when he discovered how manmade chemicals, petrochemical combustion products, pesticides, refined foods, and sugar made people sick. He initiated the first organic farming effort after learning from a simple experiment: he gave one group of asthmatic patients peaches to eat which came from a supermarket and had been fumigated with formaldehyde for extend shelf-life; the other group of asthmatics ate peaches plucked from an abandoned orchard.

The first group came down with full blown asthma attacks, the second group didn’t. Recently, Dr. Moira Chan-Yeung, at the University of British Columbia, demonstrated that multiple, chronic low dose exposures to chemicals causes asthma.

Experts ranging from the Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine to environmental medical researchers of all stripes agree that the following can trigger asthma: ozone (in most disinfectants, bleaching agents for waxes and plastic manufacturing processes), nitrogen dioxide (gas kitchen ranges and hot water heaters), sulphur dioxide (in processed foods and a byproduct of fuel combustion), industrial chemicals, antibiotics and other drugs like aspirin, allergenic foods, dust mites, animal dander, agricultural dusts, most laundry detergents, most perfumes, insecticides, pesticides, exposure to heated Teflon pans, smoking and second-hand tobacco smoke, volatile aromatic compounds contained in carpentry and cleaning materials, radon gas, formaldehyde, food dyes (especially yellow dyes in junk food), the food colouring agent tartrazine, wine, latex, certain anesthetics, moving into a newly built home or into a moldy older home, and a diet lacking Vitamins E and C.

Because pesticides and other chemicals have neurotoxic effects, kids not only develop asthma, but also ADHD, gut problems and skin problems. Therefore, treatment methods developed by environmental doctors for asthma focus on detoxification, helping the immune system recover, and teaching people how to avoid future contact with asthma triggers.

Nutritional Medicine – The Missing Link

On September 29, 2000, the Medical Post reported a fascinating research result published in Thorax - World Journal for Thoracic Diseases. University of Aberdeen doctors demonstrated that the development of asthma in children is directly related to diets lacking in vitamins and minerals. They compared the nutrient rich diets of rural, nomadic children in Saudi Arabia with that of affluent kids in the cities on refined, processed American-style diets. Guess which group had all the asthma and which had none!

One of the reasons English-speaking countries have the most asthma seems to be their typically highly refined and processed foods - unlike the fare of continental Europe. Similarly, West Germany’s food was far more processed than that of the poorer East Germans. All refined foods lack the essential vitamins, especially E and C, and magnesium which support the immune system and protect against environmental toxins. The FDA recently estimated that North Americans are receiving at most only 40% of the required daily allowance of magnesium. And food processing kills the essential fatty acids to achieve longer shelf life.

The most excellent results obtained in reversing asthma is available in the two books by Dr. R. Firshein, himself an asthma sufferer. His regime of organic foods, supplementation with magnesium, vitamins C and E, Co-enzyme Q 10, essential fatty acids,and Gingko biloba, as well as environmental control education, are beautifully laid out and backed up by first rate scientific evidence.

C.L. Broadhurst, Natural Relief from Asthma, Alive Books, 2000

U. Erasmus, Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill, Alive Books, fifth edition, 1997

Dr. R. Firshein, Reversing Asthma, Warner Books, 1998

Dr. R. Firshein, The Neutraceutrical Revolution, Riverhead Books, 1998

L. McTaggart, What Doctors Don't Tell You, Avon paperback, 1998

Dr. T. Randolph, An Alternative Approach to Allergies, revised edition, Harper & Row, paperback, 1989

Dr. Sherry Rogers’ newsletter Total Wellness ($40 per year) available through Tel. 315-454-8119, www.prestigepublishing.com, ask for August 2000 issue which is devoted to asthma ($5)

Dr. Z. Rona, Return to the Joy of Health, Alive Books, 1995

Dr. Z. Rona, editor, Encyclopedia of Natural Healing, Alive Books, 1998

For those who want to check the basic science:

Dr. W.J. Rae, Chemical Sensitivity, volumes 3 and 4, CRC, New York, 1995

Dr. T. Randolph, Environmental Medicine, Clinical Ecology Publications, 1987

Dr. A.B. Tarcher, editor, Principles and Practice of Environmental Medicine, Plenum, 1992