Milk - Link to Asthma

Source : www.naturalnews.com

The link between asthma and cows' milk is familiar to many young asthma sufferers and their parents. Many people assumed that milk worsens asthma by stimulating mucus production in the lungs. However, studies suggest that, either along with or instead of creating excess mucus, milk may worsen asthma due to an undiagnosed milk allergy.

"In all respiratory conditions, mucous-forming dairy foods, such as milk and cheese, can exacerbate clogging of the lungs and should be avoided," writes Professor Gary Null in his Complete Encyclopedia of Natural Healing. Very simply, when more mucus accumulates in the lungs than can be expelled, asthma attacks develop. This belief has long been held in practiced medicine, and many medical doctors still stand behind this theory.

At the same time, many other doctors and researchers are now beginning
to feel that undiagnosed milk allergies may be the underlying problem
behind the link between milk and asthma. As Dr. Robert M. Giller writes
in Natural Prescriptions, eliminating dairy products from the diets of
many adult and child asthma patients helps "not because dairy products
stimulate mucus production but because they're very common causes of
allergy, upper-respiratory allergies and asthma (which may be an allergy
in itself)."

"Milk is one of the two or three most common food allergens in the
American diet," says allergy specialist Dr. James Braly in Bill
Gottlieb's book Alternative Cures. In fact, Dr. Frank Oski, the chief of
pediatrics at the John Hopkins School of Medicine, believes that 50
percent of all school children may be allergic to milk, though many of
them remain undiagnosed. Some researchers believe that the figure may be
even higher, up to 60 percent of children, according to Dr. Charles R.
Attwoods's book, A Vegetarian Doctor Speaks Out. When most people think
of milk allergies, they think of anaphylactic shock -- a severe,
life-threatening allergic reaction that can only be relieved with a shot
of epinephrine. However, allergies sometimes manifest in very different
ways, and these may change throughout a person's life.

In Get Healthy Now, Professor Null explains a milk allergy's changing
symptoms: "Even if the symptoms are not the same, the underlying allergy
may be. A child who has suffered milk-associated asthma, for instance,
may have severe acne as a teenager. The milk allergy is still there, but
its symptoms have moved to a different organ system, often misleading
the patient and physician into thinking that the original allergy has
been outgrown." According to Alternative Medicine, up to half of all
infants may be sensitive to cows' milk. As a result, symptoms of an
underlying milk allergy may start as early as infancy, only manifested
as eczema, a symptom that may remain later on in childhood and
adulthood. Furthermore, in addition to asthma and eczema, an underlying
milk allergy may manifest as bronchitis, sinusitis, autoimmune
disorders, frequent colds and ear infections and even behavioral
problems.