How acupuncture can treat asthma

Asthma is one of the most common chronic diseases in the world, with approximately 300 million asthma patients worldwide. Traditional Chinese Medicine and acupuncture can serve as a wonderful complementary treatment that can help improve symptoms of asthma and lung function and decrease medication dosages.

Causes of asthma

Asthma causes small bronchial airways temporarily to constrict, making it difficult to exhale and leading to breathlessness, coughing and wheezing. Such difficulty is caused by muscle spasms in the bronchi of the lungs.

Most asthma sufferers have a poor immune system. Many asthma attacks are triggered by allergens, such as dust, mould spores, mites, animal hair or feathers but the onset may equally be caused by cold air, or it may be preceded by an infection such as a cold.

Certainly, stress and more specifically acute anxiety are known to be the immediate trigger for many attacks, and this can sometimes give rise to a vicious circle of asthma – anxiety about asthma – further attacks.

Conventional drugs used for treating asthma, particularly steroids, anti-inflammatory, anti-bronchial spasm, asthma, cough and oxygen, can impair immune function and lead to more serious health problems and the long-term effect is not good. 

Acupuncture to treat asthma

Acupuncture will stimulate the central nervous system to release chemicals into the muscles, spinal cord, and brain, which may kickstart the body’s natural healing abilities and can help release muscle tension and promote blood circulation.

In terms of TCM, asthma mainly has three types of deficiencies:

1. Deficiency: Cold Type Asthma

Main symptoms: A feeling of fullness and distress in the chest, dyspnoea with a wheezing sound in the throat, coughing with thin sputum, frequent attacks in cold seasons or caused by cold.

Treatment: ventilate the lungs and expel pathogenic cold, eliminating phlegm to relieve asthma.

2. Deficiency: Heat Type Asthma

Main symptoms: Dyspnoea with wheezing, irritable, oppressed sensation in the chest, even gasping for breath. Yellowish sputum, thirst, a frequent occurrence in hot seasons or onset closely associated with heat, reddened tongue with yellow greasy fur, slippery and rapid pulse.

Treatment: Remove heat phlegm and facilitate the flow of lung Qi to relieve asthma.

3. Deficiency: Type Asthma

Main symptoms: Chronic and recurrent attacks for a long time, constant minor and persistent asthma at ordinary times, the sound of cough being low and weak, palpitations and shortness of breath, spontaneous perspiration and aversion to wind, general debility, pale tongue with a little fur, weak pulse.

Treatment: Tonifying the lungs and spleen and improving inspiration to relieve asthma.

How Traditional Chinese Medicine can treat asthma

There is a wide range of Chinese herbal remedies to treat asthma depending on what type of asthma. A combination of acupuncture and Chinese herbs can work even fast and better.

The main herbal products are CHUANG BEI PI PA GAO, ZHI KE JU HONG KOU FU YE, QI GUAN YAN KE SOU TAN CHUAN WAN, DO CHONG XIAN CAO (improve the immune system).

Dietary advice for asthma

In Britain, most asthmatics suffer because of high pollen, lack of fresh air, eating and drinking too much high energy, high heat, and rich food. This causes excessive heat in the lung. So we recommend that our patients avoid ‘hot’ foods such as chocolate, hot spices, alcohol and smoking.

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