I'll be riding my bike this summer!

I went to my asthma doctor today.  I have a mild asthma that wasn’t diagnosed until I was an adult, though my parents and I sometimes thought I might have it as a child.  It mostly manifests itself as a dry cough in cold weather or after physical exertion.

I finally got it “under control” with the use of a rescue inhaler as needed (rare, maybe once a month or so in the winter) and a puff of Advair on mornings when recovering from a cold or flu or an hour or two before doing exercise or heading out into the cold in winter.

That seemed ok, but I was not thrilled with the idea of taking medicine, especially asthma medicine which has a host of side effects.  I’d been interested in natural foods for a while, and believed that the right diet could improve health, but when I started getting involved with Weston A. Price’s research and raw milk and such, it sounded like really applying these principles could help me with my asthma (in addition to other health issues, but that is a topic for another day!).

See what changes I made and why I think that made me symptom free 6 months later, after the jump.*

It was January, 2009 when I started applying the Weston A. Price and Nourishing Traditions into my diet.  This includes:

• Raw dairy products whenever possible
• When raw dairy is not possible, then fermented and/or pasteurized at the lowest temperature and non homogenized
• Taking cod liver oil 3-7 days per week
• Reducing the amount of grains eaten – never going over the “food pyramid” guidelines and usually staying below it, some days well below it
• Soaking/fermenting/sprouting most whole grains before finishing their preparation
• Coconut oil – some days taking 1-3 tablespoons of it in a cup of warm water, and certainly cooking with it
• Butter – spreading liberally on toast, topping steamed vegetables with it, etc
• Eating plenty of traditional fats such as coconut oil, olive oil, and very importantly, butter fat, lard, and other animal fats
• Eating more seafood
• Eating more fermented foods such as water kefir, yogurt, sauerkraut, kvass, etc.
• Eliminating all soy except small amounts of fermented soy
• Eliminating when possibly and greatly reducing the amount of processed food in my diet (cereals, cookies, crackers, dinner-in-a-box, etc)
• Eliminating and greatly reducing the amount of non-traditional fats in my diet such as soybean oil, canola oil, corn oil, and safflower oil

Phew!  It is a lot of stuff, but it basically boils down eating traditional foods.  What my ancestors would have eaten between 150 to 150,000 years ago.  Now, I don’t follow it perfectly, but I think I do pretty awesome.  My food shopping habits have changed rather dramatically, as have my cooking habits.  This is a big change from even a year ago when I was getting all of my veggies from the CSA and eating mostly a whole foods diet.  It still wasn’t quite enough.  The few processed foods I ate back then were probably high in soy, and I wasn’t soaking grains or getting enough saturated fat.  I still had my unpleasant asthma symptoms.

Why would these things affect asthma?  Let’s break it down.

• Some studies show drinking raw milk is correlated with a lower incidence of asthma.  Of course, the article is quick to warn you that raw milk can be dangerous.  My answer to that is know your farmer and the condition the cows are kept in, as well as the cleanliness of the milking barn and milk storage area.  Also note that milk has vitamins A and D, both of which are important to the mucus membranes, and vitamin D in particular seems to help reduce asthma.  This could be due to how the muscles need vitamin D to function as well as the fact that vitamin D is a natural immune system boost.
• Cod Liver oil contains vitamins A and D, as discussed above.  It also contains a high amount of omega 3s, which are anti inflammatory.  And since inflamed airways causes many of the asthma symptoms, it makes sense that it would help.  By the way, milk from grass fed cows also contains a decent omega 3 to omega 6 ratio.  Don’t you love it when you are eating as nature intended and you find out how everything works together and has all the right nutrients for you?
• Grains, especially gluten containing grains, can cause an inflamitory response in many people.  By reducing the amount I eat, I’m reducing the possible inflammation in my airways.
• Soaking etc the grains before eating them helps release more of the minerals.  You can digest them and your body can use them.  Minerals play an important function in your lungs, so you want to be able to digest them and fully utilize them when you eat.
• Coconut oil is a saturated fat (along with butter fat found in dairy products).  Dr. Mary Enig says, “When it comes to our lungs, the very important phospholipid class called lung surfactant is a special phospholipid with 100 percent saturated fatty acids. It is called dipalmitoyl phosphatidylcholine and there are two saturated palmitic acid molecules attached to it.”
• The non-traditional fats I listed such as corn oil and canola oil are primarily polyunsaturated fats.  A study conducted in Australia found that, “a diet high in polyunsaturated fat, equating to margarine usually spread on bread and foods regularly fried in polyunsaturated vegetable oils more than doubled the risk [for asthma], accounting for up to 17 per cent of the cases studied.”  By the way, those oils are also high in omega 6 fatty acids which are sort of opposite to omega 3.  So if omega 3 reduces inflammation, omega 6 cause it.
• By the way, those non traditional fats are found in almost every processed food.  So are trans fats.  To revisit Dr. Mary Enig, she says, “When people consume a lot of partially hydrogenated fats and oils, the trans fatty acids are put into the phospholipids where the body normally wants to have saturated fatty acids and the lungs may not work effectively. Some research has suggested that trans fatty acids are causing asthma in children.”

So, there you have it.  Putting the proper foods in my body has completely gotten rid of my asthma symptoms.  6 months after starting eating this way in earnest, I rode my bike up a very steep hill and when I got to the top, I was a little winded, but I was NOT coughing or unable to have a conversation.  Before I adopted these eating principles, that was not the case.  I haven’t needed my rescue inhaler in months, nor have I taken the Advair in months.  I’m really pleased with how well I’m doing, and my doctor even said that he would like to see all of his patients make this kind of recovery.  Well, then what would he do for a job?

*Note that this is not medical advice, nor is this a cure.  This is simply what worked for me and why I believe it worked.  I recommend working with your doctor,  hopefully one open to eating traditional foods, as I did.

Tags: Basics, health, topics