Asthma – A Functional Medicine Approach

Functional medicine practitioners realize asthma attacks can be very stressful and a debilitating children’s health issue. Asthma is a condition that can often be managed well, and many families find that identifying contributing factors reduces how often symptoms flare. At the Functional Medicine Center, we believe that easing the effects of asthma matters, and so does understanding the conditions that lead up to an attack. Functional medicine doctors look for and address contributing factors, because those factors may also play into other symptoms later in life. A common factor that shows up in our asthma patients is stress. It is our goal to uncover the stresses unique to each individual. Identifying those stressors may meaningfully help your child, or at the least reduce a process that can contribute to further problems down the road.

Important: nothing in this article is a reason to stop, reduce or delay any asthma medication. Prescribed controller and rescue inhalers save lives in an attack. Always use them exactly as your child’s physician directs, and treat anything here as support alongside that care — never as a replacement for it.

As with every condition, stress is a major contributor whether it is structural, chemical and/or mental/emotional stress. Of the three stresses, chemical stress is often a key player in this children’s health issue. Many asthma sufferers also have a food intolerance or allergy, in some cases to dairy (i.e. cheese, cow’s milk, ice cream and yogurt). Most asthma patients have done the standard blood test and or scratch test to determine any allergies. However, these tests are not designed to detect DELAYED food reactions. Saliva testing is one approach used for this type of testing, as it looks at the digestive tract itself.

Some parents have identified a food allergy/intolerance and eliminated it from your child’s diet and still not seen the results they hoped for. Eliminating an allergen is doing half the work. The other half is supporting repair of the damage caused by all the months and years of ingesting this food. Repairing and supporting the body can be helped by way of medical foods and natural formulas that are prescribed by a physician.

How might a food allergen contribute to the children’s health issue, asthma? First, when the gut repeatedly encounters an allergen it will start to get stressed. A stressed gut can push your child toward a “fight or flight” mode, which will cause the adrenal glands to start producing more adrenaline and cortisol. Cortisol, if left high, can drive your child’s body toward a catabolic (breakdown) state affecting the digestive tract, as well as many other organs, such as the brain. The breakdown of the gut has been coined “leaky gut” which some link to “leaky brain”. As the gut breaks down it starts to cause an inflammatory reaction in an attempt to wall off the body from the allergen your child is ingesting. Eventually that barrier can weaken and larger proteins may pass through that the body can’t break down. This is associated with higher histamine levels, as well as other inflammatory markers that may contribute not only to asthma, but also to allergies like hay fever, rag weed and skin conditions. As a result you may start to see your child experience other children’s health issues like skin conditions or sinus infection. As your child is frequently challenged, their immune system can become over-stimulated and stressed. When the immune system is stressed, it can become hyper-reactive. In some people this contributes to autoimmune problems.

Adrenaline and steroids are commonly prescribed for asthma, and that prescribing is appropriate — those medications control inflammation and stop attacks. The functional medicine question is not whether your child should take them; it is what else is placing their system under strain. Your child may produce adequate adrenaline and cortisol of their own and still suffer the effects of asthma, because they are continually affected by structural, chemical and mental stress. Over time, the body’s receptors can become less responsive to its own hormones. For example, have you ever walked into a smelly room and after a while, you can’t smell anything anymore? This is desensitization and it is a safety mechanism that your body has so it does not burn out its own receptor sites.

On the other hand, if your child is producing little adrenaline or cortisol they may be lacking the precursors to do so. By reducing the stress that is keeping your child in “fight or flight” mode, the body has a better chance to rebuild the precursors that produce these hormones — which may have a positive effect on their children’s health issue, asthma, alongside the treatment their physician has prescribed.

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