Dear Readers,
This week’s question came from a neighbour during a conversation we had. She asked about holistic alternatives for childhood asthma. She was worried about her son’s medications - for good reason.
Many people don’t think anything of using puffers or topical corticosteroid creams. After all, they’re dispensed routinely by physicians without any warnings. But there are a whole host of serious side effects. In my clinical practice I often young people treated with corticosteroid bald prematurely and experience premature growth in muscle tone when young only to struggle with weight very quickly when older. They often have stunted height and ‘explosive’ personalities with a ‘hair trigger’ temper.
I know many people who have used these for childhood rashes, colds, illnesses, etc. without much or any information about side effects apart from the prescription insert that nobody reads. Here are a few links to better understand the impact these medications - both oral and topical - can have on a child’s health:
Kids Info Fact Sheet Corticosteroid Medicine
Adverse psychological effects of corticosteroids in children and adolescents
Systematic Review of the Toxicity of Long-Course Oral Corticosteroids in Children
Psychiatric Adverse Effects of Pediatric Corticosteroid Use
Holistic Asthma Treatment
The good news is there are very effective holistic treatments for childhood asthma. The most essential of these is dietary changes and changes to rebalance the gut biome. I will explain below.
Asthma has become increasingly common today, compared to when I was a child. I, and others in the holistic community, suspect that’s because of several factors:
increased exposure to toxic chemicals in our environment
decreased nutrients in our foods
increased antibiotic exposure, which damages the gut biome
decreased unfiltered sunshine, which builds immunity
Increased Exposure to Toxic Chemicals
There is no doubt we are exposed to ever more chemicals. Cleaning chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides on food, colours and chemicals in food products, chemicals in air fresheners, hygiene products, and detergents, and chemicals from industrial manufacturing processes are just some of the chemicals we are routinely exposed to now.
“Women’s breast milk in many countries now contains chemicals belonging to a class of compounds known as PFAS at levels well above the safety thresholds set by governments, says a report from international environmental group IPEN.” (full 2004 CDC profile here)
These chemicals are unfortunately used in products that are not required to note their presence on the label. Public health protection around these common chemicals has yet to take place.
Toxic chemicals are known to inhibit the development of the gut biome, not only by mechanism of toxicity, but by decreasing environmental bacteria that develop a robust immune system. The abstracts below explain this idea a bit further.
Decreased Nutrients in Our Foods
There is also no question our children are now consuming more processed, nutrient deficient foods. And even when their diet contains abundant whole foods, those whole foods are only as healthy as the farming methods and soil that created them. When big agriculture uses chemical fertilizers and pesticides and mono-cropping vs traditional and more holistic methods like crop rotation, soil resting, and natural soil amendments – the soil produces substandard crops – nutritionally speaking. A crop cannot contain more nutrients than the soil it is grown in.
Similarly, an animal that is sickly does not produce optimally healthy dairy or meat for human consumption. In addition, fruit are often artificially ripened to be firmer to transport for sale. Overall what this means is that even when our diets are all-natural we are not getting the nutrients we would have gotten 50-100 years ago when family gardens and small scale, more holistic farming were the norm. Modern commercially produced foods are just not as nourishing.
And modern processed foods are far more damaging. The number of chemicals in our food supply today is astronomical. If you think everything on the shelf at the grocer’s is healthy to eat, stop and remember trans fats. These were pushed on us as healthier alternatives to natural saturated fats for decades and could be found abundantly in processed foods! Now we have come to discover that they are highly carcinogenic. Ditto BPA in much of our food product packaging. The same is true of sugar and many food preservatives. We need to be mindful of this when we reach to consume processed foods for our families.
Natural, whole foods, produced as holistically as possible, are always best. And certainly, exposure to these chemicals and substandard foods impacts the health of growing bodies and lungs. Foods that are substandard cause deficiency states in the body that impair the body’s ability to detoxify itself when it comes into contact with toxins. They also impede the body’s ability to down regulate inflammation responses. And they damage good gut bacteria and feed pathological gut bacteria. All this to say food has a tremendous impact on asthma clinically.
Increased Antibiotic Exposure
The greatest factor in lung health in youth may be the microbiome and the greatest factor in the health of the microbiome is antibiotic use, which has been prolific for decades now. Studies are discovering the link between asthma and allergies and the health of the microbiome. Clinically asthma and allergies (as well as food intolerances) go hand in hand. As such, we will not separate them herein. Consider these studies that demonstrate a strong link:
The human microbiome, asthma, and allergy (Dec. 2015):
“In contrast to the extensive knowledge of the gut microbiome, information on the lung microbiome is limited. However evidence suggests a distinct microbiome of the lungs of healthy subjects and a difference between the microbiomes of healthy people and those with obstructive lung diseases such as asthma …
The findings of studies … indicate that humans are exposed to fewer microorganisms because of changes in factors such as the use of antibiotics and diet, which are accompanied by increasing susceptibility to asthma and allergies. Moreover, these studies illuminate the differences in the microbiomes of healthy people and those with asthma and allergies…
Increasing evidence suggests that the compositions of the lung and gut microbiomes determine the risk of asthma and allergies:
Influence and Effect of the Human Microbiome in Allergy and Asthma (July 2015)
Microbiota in Allergy and Asthma and the Emerging Relationship With the Gut Microbiome (May 2015)
Increasing Allergy: Are Antibiotics the Elephant in the Room? (May 2020)
The Microbiome in Asthma (Dec. 2016)
The Role of the Microbiome in Asthma: The Gut⁻Lung Axis (Dec. 2018):
“Several studies have confirmed the role of microbiota in the regulation of immune function and the development of atopy and asthma. These clinical conditions have apparent roots in an insufficiency of early life exposure to the diverse environmental microbiota necessary to ensure colonization of the gastrointestinal and/or respiratory tracts. Commensal microbes are necessary for the induction of a balanced, tolerogenic immune system. The identification of commensal bacteria in both the gastroenteric and respiratory tracts could be an innovative and important issue. In conclusion, the function of microbiota in healthy immune response is generally acknowledged, and gut dysbacteriosis might result in chronic inflammatory respiratory disorders, particularly asthma.”
What this means is that the health of the intestinal microbiome is related to the health of lung tissues and where there is chronic lung disease there is frequently gut biome imbalance. The authors all suggest this needs further study. Clinically many holistic physicians have undertaken to do this, with very good results. For a book on just this, you can read Healing the New Childhood Epidemics: Autism, ADHD, Asthma, and Allergies: The Groundbreaking Program for the 4-A Disorders by Kenneth Bock M.D.. Dr. Bock is an integrative physician out of New York, whom I had the pleasure of learning from a few years back. His book and advice have been instrumental in my work with parents addressing asthma in children.
Decreased Unfiltered Sunshine
The sun is the primary mechanism by which we get our vitamin D, and vitamin D informs our immune systems unlike any other nutrient we know of. I’ve written other articles on how important it is to supplement - especially in Canada - as we are too far from the equator to get enough sun to meet our needs at least half of the year. The other half of the year we are slathering on toxic sunscreens and blocking these immune building rays that we have evolved to need.
Just how toxic are sunscreen chemicals? Read here and here to find out. Some spray on sunscreens even trigger asthma! I wonder if it’s really coincidental that all the childhood inflammatory conditions are going up in the countries that don’t get regular, unfiltered sunshine.
What Can I Do?
Some considerations to check for:
Food intolerances
Gut dysbiosis and antibiotic use
Household and personal care chemicals
Cookware chemicals
Possible infections
Parasites
Deficiencies and imbalances in nutrients like vitamins A and D
Toxicity and an impaired ability to detoxify the body, including metal toxicity
Molds in the home
Side effects of drugs used for asthma or other ailment
Anxiety/ stress
Allergies
Too sterile an environment (bacteria inform our gut biome)
Blood sugar dysregulation
As you can see there is a lot that can be done holistically to help children with asthma. Parents can undertake this without professional guidance, from reading books (as above) but I don’t advise it. First of all, no one book captures the interventions required for every child. A good practitioner understands when each therapy and modality is most indicated.
Secondly, parents frequently burn out trying to learn about the therapies rather than focusing on parenting. I have fallen into this trap myself, and it was exhausting. The dietary changes alone are difficult to manage, even when you have good guidance. Food substitutions are not the same for every child with a particular condition. As such, I encourage parents to invest in experienced professionals to help them use holistic therapies integrated with the medical therapies they find of benefit. In this way, the outcomes are much improved with less stress on parents and fewer lasting side effects of drug therapies. I encourage parents to reach out if they need help. The best time to address such issues is as early as possible. Young children respond very well to dietary interventions and I assure you, if I could restrict my son’s diet, with the right help, anyone can!
Namaste!
Nonie Nutritionista