Headache? Take an aspirin. 

Suffering from acidity- the salt should do it.

How about a multivitamin capsule for a month to stop the hair fall?

We, adults, have devised and discovered a panacea for all routine ailments with OTC medications and prescription drugs.

The routine medicines have also become highly sophisticated using our vast knowledge gained from the Internet and Social Media, and never hesitate to hop on the latest bandwagon of diet pill/ performance enhancer potion/ beautifying serum.

But did you notice those innocent eyes watching your every move, assessing your every whim? The tiny hands are itching to lay their hands on this "wonder-drug" world of adulthood. Where everything and anything that they want to achieve or want to be is just a pill away. 

Yes, I am talking about your children.

Children look up to their parents as role models. Not just for their social and behavioral aptitude, but other skills and habits like sleep, diet, and exercise as well. It is indeed possible that they observe you keenly - noticing how, after an anti-depressant and a few hours of sleep, Mommy is playful and cheerful once again. To their impressionable minds, medicines are certainly the panacea of all ills that's wrong with the modern-day adult.

We have two interesting articles on Asthma that we want to discuss today in the light of our wanton pill-popping behavior as Adults.

Relief to Asthmatics

For several years, researchers have known that deep breaths benefit the lungs of healthy individuals by pushing open narrowed airways. Now, Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered that deep breaths also provide protection by preventing airways from closing in the first place. 

The findings may lead to a real sigh of relief and new treatments for asthmatics. "Understanding the protective effects of sighing may give us therapeutic options for asthmatics in the future," says Alkis Togias, M.D., an associate professor of clinical immunology and principal investigator of the study, which appears in the August issue of the Journal of Applied Physiology.

For years, scientists have used the drug methacholine to study asthma because it narrows airways and causes wheezing in asthmatics, but not in healthy people. Then, in 1995, Hopkins researchers discovered that if people with healthy lung function took only shallow breaths before inhaling the drug, their lungs behaved more like those belonging to asthmatics, and breathing was difficult.

With further study, the researchers found that deep breaths help open airways after they close. To investigate whether deep breathing might bestow other protective effects, Togias and his colleagues exposed nine healthy volunteers and eight asthmatics to methacholine. 

At first, the volunteers were asked not to inhale deeply for 20 minutes before taking the drug. Then, the investigators gauged airway openness by having the volunteers breathe into a tube and measuring the speed and quantity of air exhaled. The test was then repeated, but this time the volunteers were instructed to take five deep breaths before inhaling the drug.

While breathing deeply did not affect airway openness in asthmatics, it reduced the adverse effects of methacholine in individuals by 85 percent. The scientists speculate that deep breaths may stretch lung tissue, which then causes the release of a protective chemical that keeps airways open. "If we could figure out what that substance was, perhaps we could provide it to asthmatics via a drug," says Togia.

Here's what Mike has to say about it:

Merely 17 people in the focus group do not make a satisfactory study, but I believe they are on the right track with the idea of lung expansion. Firstly, to me, sighing is not as protective as it is a signal that there is shallow breathing happening. Secondly, methacholine doesn't necessarily create the type of constriction that occurs while one is breathing out of balance.

Constriction is not the key to resolving Asthma. Instead, unbalanced breathing and excessive sympathetic nervous system innervation are the keys. Along with whatever allergy or toxin is causing or adding to the problem. And by allergy or toxins, I don't mean CO2.

What is indeed bizarre ( and typical of the western medical model) is that they have a significant non-drug-related insight ( deep breathing) right in front of them, and they want to use it to create a drug. 

Indeed, when you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail!

I believe that any negative aspects of nutrition, environment, internal cleansing and unbalanced breathing can cause or worsen upper chest breathing and Asthma. But when one handles the nutrition, environment, internal cleansing, and expands tidal volume by rebalancing the breathing and correcting the posture so that the breath retains its foundation in the parasympathetic lower abdomen, sides, and back, one can easily eliminate Asthma.

Meanwhile, the drug makers may have yet another way to peddle their wares and mess with our bodies. Another thing I deduced from this study is that when deep breathing does not help, it may be a sign of an underlying asthmatic condition or at least a tendency towards some kind of breathing problem.

Finally, this study pointed out that when deep breathing does not help, it may be a sign of an underlying asthmatic condition or tendency towards some kind of breathing problem. Click here for more.

Another asthma article and program with the best of intentions but potentially dangerous implications that “drugs are better”.

“Asthma is really the number-one health problem in schools," said Sal Mangione, a pulmonologist and asthma researcher at Thomas Jefferson University who oversaw the transformation of the bus into a mobile education center that will begin making the rounds to all the public middle schools in Philadelphia”

”Mangione said that while the incidence of asthma is on the rise, the good news is that it's "fully treatable. It's not curable, but it's treatable”

Read Mike's commentary on this recent article below.

Not curable? 

That is entirely a wrong approach. 

ASTHMA IS CURABLE.

Treatable implies to me the use of prescription drugs. Curable to me means NO prescription drugs.

Read More About Asthma

My Recommendation:

No More Asthma Self Help Program

Remember, you are the role model for your children, the first influencer, and the primary caregiver. You will be under constant scrutiny, and they will follow your actions. It is not up to you to decide what is good for them. A lifelong dependency on prescription, over-the-counter, recreational drugs or a drug-free life, healthier, happier life? We all can understand which option has zero side effects.

The question is:

Which one would you choose?