What Part Does Nutrition Play?
There are many good sources for information on building health and overcoming diseases through nutrition and supplements, but there is also much information that is not very helpful at all. The purpose of this website is to give you enough information that you will be able to sort it out.
But where to start? Often the first place we think to go is to our medical resources. I went onto the website of one of the most prestigious asthma and allergy research and treatment hospitals in the nation and was dismayed by what I found there. The entire asthma section of the website was geared towards only managing the condition rather than healing it. And what little they have on nutrition definitely was not the type of information that even suggested the possibility of overcoming asthma through nutrition. For example, they suggest using prepared foods, the very antithesis to good health, "to save time and energy"! Some of the other information is just as misleading, according to scientific research on nutrition and asthma/allergies.
While the Food Guide Pyramid shown on their site under the section "Nutrition and Asthma" (once on the site, under "Living With Asthma," click "Healthy Lifestyles," then "Nutrition and Asthma.") is referred to as a guide for a normal, healthy diet, they don't talk about requirements for a body so unhealthy that it's suffering from asthma or allergies. They don't mention that unhealthy bodies, particularly those on medication, have sky-rocketing nutritional requirements that go far beyond those of a healthy person's. They do say, however, to "talk with your doctor or dietitian about your specific nutritional needs," but unless those professionals are also nutritional biochemists, it's unlikely they know how to help your child overcome asthma with nutrition. This isn't their fault, of course, because their field of study is entirely different than that of a biochemist.
Only 20% of U.S. medical schools teach nutrition as a separate, required course, and these courses are only basic, ranging in duration from less than 4 weeks to 10 weeks. 80% of the schools teach less than 10 hours to less than 20 hours. There is also considerable variation in the scope of nutritional topics taught---energy balance and obesity are covered in most schools, while others such as the role of nutrition in health promotion and disease prevention, in only a few schools. It seems also that nutrition research per se in medical schools does not guarantee that nutrition will be taught. Also, of approximately 6,000 exam questions by the National Board of Medical Examiners, only 3 to 4% had some relation to nutrition. These are results of a study performed by the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council and documents the need for medical schools to raise the level of nutrition education. There are few changes in the curriculum of medical schools that might contribute more to the health of the American people. The report serves as a virtual mandate for physicians to question patients carefully on their food habits as possible clues to illness, as well as to regard nutrition, and not just medication, as a vital aspect of treatment.
I continued to search the website of this prestigious asthma hospital and found only one little paragraph regarding the nutrition of asthmatic children, and everything in it is completely false. It reads: "Asthmatic children have the same nutritional requirements as other children. Aside from avoiding specific foods that you know trigger symptoms, no special kind of diet has been shown to be beneficial for asthma. Extra vitamins, over and above normal daily requirements, typically are not needed. Some children need extra calcium and vitamin D because of long-term steroid therapy, as mentioned above." (referring to a paragraph mentioning the negative nutritional side effects of steroid medication.)
In answer to this medical hospital's view in their website's section of Nutrition and Asthma, I submit to you that asthmatic children have VERY different nutritional requirements as other children, not "the same nutritional requirements as other children", as the medical establishment claims.
I submit to you that there is very much evidence and research to show that "special kinds of diet" HAVE been shown to be beneficial for asthma.
I submit to you that extra vitamins typically are DESPERATELY needed by asthmatic/allergic children.
I submit to you that ALL, not "some children" need far MORE than even extra calcium and vitamin D because of steroid therapy, whether long-term OR short-term, or even with having no steroid therapy at all.
Above all, I will show you how nutrition plays the major role in whether your child gets well or not, and that you're going to have to take the responsibility for this, not your doctor.
Finally, I really do not desire to simply criticize the medical establishment and the website I've mentioned. Our medical system is invaluable for so many conditions; however, I must point out and stress the fact that nutrition is just not their field---medicine is. We have DOCTORS OF MEDICINE, and that's what they should stick to---medicine. That's what they're trained in, and that's what they do, and that's what they do best. The public needs to be educated to not assume that doctors are nutritionists. Doctors are not nutritionists. Doctors have their own opinions, just like we all do, on what constitutes good nutrition; they deal with illness and how to treat symptoms, not health and how to create better health. Doesn't it make sense that their opinions should not be taken any more seriously than the opinion of any other non-expert in nutrition? (Click here for more on this, written by a medical doctor.) Unfortunately, in all my years of research, I have had a hard time finding real experts because nutritional products are such $$$ big business $$$ these days that everyone jumps on the bandwagon and money is the bottom line. Then the public, understandably, gets confused and doesn't know who or what to believe. My heart goes out to everyone in this situation.
I've made it my life's work to do what I can to help people understand what good nutrition is, how to recognize it, and what to believe in being able to use it to eliminate allergies & asthma. After I had collected material I had researched and continued to add to for about 10 years, I started MAAA while we were living in Hawaii, and I organized several support groups around the Island of Oahu in order to present my material and help the mothers there with their asthmatic children. Hawaii has one of the highest death rates from asthma in the nation and I felt I just had to share what I knew. I began by making public presentations and using visual aids and a 70-page handout! (The handout was all my research condensed down as much as I could, which I guess wasn't really all that condensed, as there was so much to it and so much I wanted them to learn!) After moving to Colorado, I still had the desire to share everything, but when people would ask me, I couldn't say much that was very helpful because there's so much to it that it would take several hours to tell them everything they needed to know. I mean, if it was that easy to get over asthma, no one would have it, right? So I thought I would put it all in a book, publish it, and just hand it out to anyone who asked me how to get over allergies & asthma. Well, maybe I'll still publish one someday, but meanwhile I can get it on the web very easily now and, hopefully, reach a lot of people.
My desire is that by the time you finish reading everything on this, the MAAA site, you will have a better understanding of asthma/allergies and how to get over them. You will know how food and supplements work in the body to get and to keep health. I offer this information, years of my own research, free of charge, because I care. I'm not a salesperson. I don't sell any vitamins or herbs; but I can give you the names of some I'm personally familiar with that I know work (because most don't), but I don't sell them. I just care about the children---or anyone suffering from this horrible disease, and I want to help.
The first thing you'll have to change in your thinking if you want your child, yourself, or anyone to get over asthma, is the "quick fix" mentality that pervades America. Medications are generally a quick fix---you have a symptom, you take a pill for the symptom, and, ideally, the symptom is alleviated rather quickly. If it's not, you start to wonder. You take a pill and expect to see results in minutes, hours, or at least a day, depending on what you have and what you're taking for it. If the pill doesn't fix things quickly, you take more or call or see the doctor to try something else, right? Well, of course, because medication is designed to specifically target the symptoms it's prescribed for, and it should work relatively fast. But nutritional therapy is very different. I should warn you right now that this takes a long time---at least several months, or over a year. But if you don't do it, the asthma might be worse by then, or even kill, depending on how bad a sufferer has it and how well the medications are working by then.
The next thing you absolutely have to have is persistence. You have to feed your child and supplement your child with the things I'll tell you about consistently, persistently---day after day after day, meal after meal, week after week, never giving up---and this is where support groups can be of such value. Our bodies are built cell by cell, and they heal and acquire health cell by cell. As you can imagine, that takes a long time! And as the body heals itself, there are many changes taking place internally that can't be seen and maybe can't even be felt for awhile until so much of it has healed that it becomes obvious---that finally one day there's no mistaking that it is getting well. And then, only after it is well, can you begin to cut back on some of the supplements, one by one, until you can see where a "maintenance level" might be. Don't think that you have to continue huge amounts of supplements and a strict diet forever. Once health is achieved and medications are no longer necessary, the body will require far fewer nutrients than it did when you were trying to build health.
Once health is achieved, you're likely to think you don't need your vitamins any more and you can go back to the Twinkies and Ding Dongs; it's possible this can happen, but more than likely, without a good diet most of the time, and supplements, eventually the allergies and/or asthma will start to come back as the body gradually loses health again. (And then you'll see for yourself that your supplementation program really did work!) Then when you get back on the program, the problems will disappear again. I know this for a fact---I've tested it myself over the years with my own allergies & asthma. I've gone through giving up supplements, getting asthma, getting back on them, getting over asthma, at least 6-8 times over the past 30 years, so I know that if you're genetically predisposed to asthma/allergies as I am, your body does have higher requirements for certain vitamins than those who don't have the problem, and that you do have to continue to feed those requirements. (See the Are Allergies & Asthma Genetic? section.) There's much valuable research that has been done on that very thing.