Chicken Soup for Allergies and Asthma

From the November 1998 issue of Coping with Asthma and Allergies.
Summary of Article

With so many bacteria becoming antibiotic resistant it is necessary to use not just drugs, but natural means of maintaining health. The article discusses some simple natural things that anyone can do to improve their health. For example, Grandma's chicken soup and hot tea are important and legitimate medical treatments, because they help the cilia of the nose and bronchial passages move quickly so they can defend the respiratory system against contaigons. Sometimes just increasing the intake of warm tea, to assure proper hydration of the body, can make a major difference in healing. (You don't need medical technology to check if you are hydrated - just keep drinking until your urine turns light yellow to clear.) My patients' favorite prescription is breakfast in bed. This can be an effective cure for even persistent, difficult-to-treat morning sneezing and coughing. The sneezing and coughing are often caused by a sensitivity of the body to cold before activity, so a warm breakfast under blankets really gets to the root of the problem.

Perhaps the most important example of helping the body's natural defenses is the 3000 year old yogic practice of sniffing salt water. This is helpful for fighting and preventing sinus infections, although we have vastly improved on this technique by developing pulsatile nasal irrigation. The pulsating action has been shown in clinical studies to improve the function of the nasal cilia, your body's most important defense against nasal infections. Anyone, even a 5 year old, can perform this treatment at home quickly and easily. (Be sure to use a pulsatile irrigatin device, one which is purpose-built to deliver the correct pressure, for safe irrigation.) Ear, Nose, and Throat specialists see patients all the time who have been medicated for weeks with the latest antibiotics without benefit, yet who show obvious improvement with pulsatile irrigation.

These natural procedures are a help not only to the occaisonal infection, but also to longer term asthma and allergy sufferers. Asthma and allergy specialists recognize the importance of clearing sinus infections in their patients. The less sinus drainage, the less the asthma. Pulsatile nasal irrigation enables patients to stop their drainage themselves. In some cases, antibiotics have been effective and have indeed saved lives, but adding the chicken soup and hot tea helps restore the body's natural defenses: by improviing the function of cilia, which prevent contaigons from entering the body, by improving the motion of disease-fighting white blood cells, which helps fight infection more effectively, and in numerous other ways.

By using the natural healing aids discussed in the article, both preventatively and as a response to symptoms, in many cases, antibiotics can be avoided. You health will improve, and you won't become immune to antibiotics, if you just give your body's own defenses a little help (with the techniques discussed in the article).

© 1999,2003 Dr. Murray Grossan

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Last Update 23 October 2003
Murray Grossan M.D.