Natural Relief for Your Child's Asthma

Customer Reviews

• Powerful information for parents!  Jun 10, 2000 (41 of 41 found this helpful)

  This book helped our family put the brakes on the out-of-control rollercoaster ride of asthma. "Natural Relief for Your Child's Asthma" empowers parents with page after page of specific instructions on how to reduce your child's dependence on medication by understanding the limits of conventional medicine, finding and avoiding triggers, using food as a healer, using supplements to strengthen your child and using alternative mind-body medicine to enhance your child's well-being. While the authors have lots of great information about how to reduce dependence on medicine over time, they aren't zealots who encourage you to turn your back on conventional medicine. The real power that comes from this book is that now, when I go to see my child's asthma specialist, I can ask informed questions about my son's condition. I'm no longer a note taker jotting down what medicines my child should take when. I can encourage my doctor to challenge us to make dietary and lifestyle changes to detoxify our child's environment that he might not otherwise have mentioned assuming that we would prefer the "easy" way out of finding stronger and stronger medicines to rescue our child. I strongly encourage any parent of a child with asthma to read this book!

• Vegan Baloney  Sep 29, 2009 (1 of 1 found this helpful)

  Here's what's cool about the book: What could be better than a book that places in perspective the immediate need for conventional drugs to reduce or eliminate symptoms of asthma, the fact that conventional drug use will eventually only worsen and perpetuate asthma and create a vicious cycle of dependency, and the importance of integrating holistic, long-term therapies into a treatment plan in order to address root causes of asthma.
  
  What's not cool about the book: "Our eating plan is vegetarian or near vegetarian. It emphasizes plant foods and...plays down animal products such as cow's milk and meat because these foods are associated with a slew of serious diseases and conditions, including several types of cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, and ashtma. Plant foods, on the other hand, help promote better health." Say what? Based on what? OK, I get it; when my daughter's blood test showed allergies to wheat, eggs, and dairy, I found myself shopping in the vegan snackfood hell aisle at Whole Foods. But wait! My prolonged research shows that vitamin A--not beta carotene, not a precursor that may or may not be bioavailable to a child's body--is crucial to healing--not just asthma--but ADD, autism, neurological disorders. So my treatment plan includes attempting to get my child to take her fermented sticky brown cod liver oil, redoubling my efforts to buy good pate or cook with organ meats, make stock with the bones for calcium, etc. Then I'm reintroducing gradually the raw dairy; I've already reintroduced pastured organic eggs, as I find eggs dubious allergens. Plus, you've got the logical problem that the authors recommend soy as the replacement source of calcium--but wait--soy is a major allergen.
  
  I came to this book in a sort of back-door way, in that I first consulted with a naturopath for my daughter's chronic cough. The idea that she had mild asthma flummoxed me, as we already did so many things right--avoiding fluoride (won't find that in the book), eating organic, filtering bath water for chlorine, prolonged breastfeeding, and, though my daughter was vaccinated as a baby, signing the philosophical objection paperwork when it came time for boosters (the book will tell you about allergens like formaldehyde in soap but doesn't touch with a ten-foot-pole the allergens like formaldehyde found in vaccines, which bypass normal filtering routes and are introduced directly into the bloodstream.)
  
  For an entire summer, we avoided food allergens, took herbal drops, probiotics, amino acids; once school started and she caught a cold, my daughter's cough turned to pneumonia. Initially I was bitter about the holistic approach and tossed it all to see what our conventional pediatrician had to offer. It took me a while to work out a good integrated approach that works well for us, but I'm pleased now to be using albuterol and flovent sparingly--far more sparingly than my pediatrician knows--while also incorporating holistic remedies. The book doesn't touch the holy grail of homeopathy--the constitutional remedy--but I'm pursuing that one, as well. Along the way I've walked out on a bully of an allergist who insisted I was a bad parent if I didn't give my child the scary Singulair he was pushing.
  
  I've had to piece it all together myself, and if, at any time, I'd blindly gone along with an expert's opinion, my child would have suffered; that's what I like best about this book's integrated approach: take charge of your child's health, parent, because no one else will.