Dr. Mercola September 22 2005 10,508 views
By Christine Wheeler, MA
Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) is a popular new asthma treatment (no drugs required) that often works where nothing else will. The discovery behind the method is that anxiety and other emotional issues are often at the root of the illness. Resolve the emotional causes (which EFT can usually do quite rapidly) and the wheezing and congestion typically fade.
Interestingly, the medical literature largely ignores fear, guilt, anger & trauma as a cause of asthma attacks. Note, for example, these explanations given at the Center for Disease Control (CDC) Web site:
Causes of an Asthma Attack: Environmental exposures, such as house dust mites and environmental tobacco smoke, are important triggers of an attack. [Note that emotions are not included as a cause.]
How Asthma is Treated: You can control your asthma and avoid an attack by taking your medicine as prescribed and avoiding the triggers that can cause an attack. It's just as important that you remove the triggers in your environment that you know make your asthma worse. [Also note that emotional relief is not included in the treatment.]
Medical doctors often agree, however, that emotional factors such as stress can aggravate or even trigger asthma attacks. But that is not the same as considering unresolved emotional factors as a cause. Interestingly, EFT approaches asthma strictly from the emotional point of view and EFT clients usually report impressive relief. This offers eye-opening possibilities for physicians and their patients.
While EFT is not perfect, its clinical results should command the attention of any objective observer. In about 80 percent of the EFT cases, wheezing and congestion in the chest noticeably subsides within moments. Sometimes people get complete relief from an attack in as little as three minutes. And, again, this is done without the use of the medications or inhalers.
EFT borrows from the much-heralded discoveries of Albert Einstein (i.e. everything, including your body, is composed of energy) ... AND ... from the ancient wisdom of Chinese acupuncture.
In essence, EFT is an emotional version of acupuncture except that needles are not necessary. Instead, certain release points are stimulated by tapping them with the fingertips. Further, the basics of EFT can be learned by anyone and can be self-applied (usually in minutes).
Here is a synopsis of an actual case using EFT for asthma, which can be read in its entirety at the EFT Web site:
Dr. Ed Leshin, a chiropractor and acupuncturist, used EFT to give immediate relief in a severe asthma case.
Carol came into Dr. Leshin's office in the midst of an asthma attack. She had used her inhaler three hours earlier but was still experiencing difficulty breathing. She was pale and sweating and quite frightened by her struggle to breathe. No matter how many asthma attacks one gets, it is still a scary experience. Some people say it is like trying to breathe through a straw ... while an elephant sits on your chest.
Dr. Leshin listened to Carol's lungs and noted considerable wheezing and congestion. Carol was becoming increasingly stressed by the attack and Dr. Leshin suggested EFT to relieve the anxiety related to her asthma attack. They focused on doing EFT for about 15 minutes and Carol's anxiety calmed considerably. She indicated that her initial symptoms had been close to the maximum ... on a scale of 1-10, they were a 12! After they did EFT the symptoms abated by about 50 percent. Dr. Leshin then reported:
"I listened to her lungs again, and they sounded 50% better. In fact there were no wheezing sounds anymore!"
Even though the symptoms of her asthma attack did not completely leave, Dr. Leshin believes that EFT allowed her to avert a trip to the emergency room.
Please note that, in addition to improving asthma with EFT, it has been a consistently effective healing tool for hundreds of other physical, mental and emotional ailments.
While a complete description of EFT is beyond the scope of this article, you can learn all the basics from the free EFT Get Started Package, including a free download of the 79-page EFT Manual (it includes all the basics). Those wishing to save time and dive right in can get the very affordable training DVDs.
Please consult qualified health professionals before putting EFT into practice for yourself or others.
Bone marrow recipients will develop the exact same allergies as their donors. And that happens without them knowing about their donor's allergies. So this is not good at all that they are trying to bring back the "it is all in their heads" theory that costs so many of us badly needed medical care and respect. Why bother to protect a child from cigarette smoke or take food triggers out of a child's diet if the problem isn't real? I have had the "what she doesn't know won't hurt her" lie told to me so many times by waiters and other people who should have known better. That has caused me great harm, wrecked vacations and cost me jobs. I have an acquaintance named Daniel who was beaten with a belt every time he had an asthma attack because his father thought his problem was all in his head too. And I was teased, scolded and ridiculed. Stress will make any health problem worse including allergies but the allergies themselves can become the biggest stressor if they cause sleep apnea that will not show up in a hospital clean sleep clinic. Severe, chronic sleep deprivation is Hell. I played outside all the time as a kid. I couldn't run much because of breathing difficulties but I was outside every day a lot. I got plenty of vitamin D but It did NOT help. Later I took huge doses of supplicants including vitamin C and what have you and I did that for decades. It probably did help me but adding prescription medications to what I was already doing also has helped enormously. Wish advice like this hadn't kept me from trying them decades sooner.
Prescription inhalers caused my asthma to get worse, especially Advair. The doctor was not surprised when I told her that. I'm staying away from inhalers from now on. I'll take a little blackberry brandy in apple juice and it's amazing how quickly the asthma leaves, and then I can get some sleep. I don't have to do it as often, and the asthma seems to diminished on its own. I think the brandy breaks the cycle, and that what helps it to improve.