The world has so far failed to wipe out the age-old disease of asthma. According to the findings of World Health Organisation, this planet hosts as many as 300 million patients, 10 million of whom live in Pakistan.

Asthma causes more than 250,000 premature deaths every year. Efforts to control this chronic disease have witnessed only five per cent success in Asia. Asthma causes airways  the tubes that carry air in and out of your lungs  to become sore and swollen. Children having smaller airways than adults are prone to worse affects.

When the airways react, during an asthmatic attack, the muscles around them tighten. This causes the airways to shrink, thus less air flows to the lungs. The swelling can also worsen, making the airways even narrower. Cells in the airways may make more mucus than normal. Mucus is a sticky, thick liquid that can further narrow the airways.

This can result in asthma symptoms. Asthma causes recurring periods of wheezing (a whistling sound produced when one breaths), chest tightness, shortness of breath, and coughing. The coughing often occurs at night or early in the morning.

Factors leading to asthma attacks are called triggers. People can eliminate the possibility of this fatal disease by keeping these triggers away from them. Any home can be full of triggers like extreme temperatures, humidity, mold, dust mites, second-hand smoke, cockroaches, cats and dogs etc. Other asthma triggers may be air pollution, different imbalanced foods, respiratory infections, even physical exertion and mental stress and pollens.

A pollen count over 1,500 per cubic meter of air is considered to be a very high level. If it crosses 5,000 per cubic meter, it indicates an emergency condition for people sensitive to paper mulberry. Unfortunately, each year Islamabad sees the worst pollen counts ever recorded in the world.

A research conducted by medical scientists at the University of Glasgow, the Europe’s largest medical school, indicates that those patients given an exceedingly small homeopathic dose of whatever substance to which they are most allergic can provide significant relief within the first week of treatment.

Homeopathy tries to ‘cure’ this disease, instead of trying to provide symptomatic relief. A homeopath not only records the symptoms of the disease but also studies the physical and psychological characteristics of the patient, his past medical history along with his family history. Of special interest to a homeopath is the history of suppression of any skin disease.

It is often, though not necessarily always, observed by homeopaths that when a right medicine is given, the asthma disappears but the old eczema, if it were there originally, reappears for some time, before disappearing for good. This reappearance of old symptoms is seen as a reversal of disease process and is considered a very good prognostic sign by homeopaths.

In children asthma is often preceded by eczema. The allopathic doctors have also observed this fact and medical textbooks recorded that the children often ‘move out’ of eczema and ‘move into’ asthma without known scientific correlation between these two phenomena. Homeopaths believe that the suppression of eczema with skin ointments does not cure the disease or sensitivity of the person, it merely drives it further ‘inwards’.

An e-mail message this writer received from the mother of an asthmatic child, who got rid of inhalers after taking the homeopathic treatment, is worth reading.

“Dear doctor the last winter was the first cold season in my seven-year old son Zeeshan’s life during which he was not nebulized. Moreover he was not given even a single puff of the inhalers! Alhamdulillah. We could not believe that homeopathic treatment could be so effective. His child-specialist had told us that after thirteen years of age ‘hopefully’ he will grow out of his asthma. We are so happy that the homeopathic treatment has given him so much relief. Thanks for your efforts”.