Are Dairy Foods Bad for Asthmatics?

Q : I’ve asthma and have been advised to give dairy a miss. Can you explain why it may impact on my condition?

A : According to both Eastern and Western diagnostic measures, asthma involves disharmony in one or more organ systems:

1) the digestive centre (spleen-pancreas-stomach, and intestines)

2) the kidney-adrenals and liver/gall bladder, and/or

3) the heart and lungs. Most often all of these systems malfunction, with one of them most imbalanced.

These organ imbalances are corrected by following specific guidelines for treating the major types of asthma.

The major types of asthma include:

1) Cold-type asthma

2) Heat-type asthma

3)Mucus-type asthma

4) Deficiency-type asthma

In the West the mucus-type asthma is the most prevalent. Some mucus forming foods include most diary, meats, fish, poultry, eggs, most grains and legumes. According to Chinese medicine milk can be hard to digest by those who have mucus problems or weak digestion. Many asthma sufferers tend to benefit from eliminating dairy from their diets.

Milk has had a bad reputation among many Western heath advisors because most people already have an overabundance of mucus and are overweight as a result of their excessive consumption of meat, sugar, fat and dairy. Furthermore, having lived all their lives on these highly mucus producing foods, many have developed digestive weakness and are consequently allergic to dairy. Intolerant in some allergies is an inability to digest milk sugar (lactose). ‘Lactose intolerance’ is quite prevalent. When there are allergies or intolerances to dairy, the obvious remedy is to avoid these products.

A substitute to dairy for you would be to drink goat’s milk.

“One of the most vital issues to consider about milk is its quality. Modern animal milk generally have 400% more pesticides than an equivalent sample of grains or vegetables. In addition to pesticides that animals ingest on sprayed plants and feed, livestock raised for meat, eggs, or dairy frequently receive rations of hormones to stimulate growth and production, along with antibiotics to protect against disease. After their milk is tested, many mothers are told by doctors that they must eat fewer animal products in order for their milk to fall to safe levels of heavy metals, steroids, pesticides and antibiotics. Ref: Hergenrather, J. et al. Pollutants in breast milk of vegetarians. New England Journal of Medicine 304(13):p792, Mar 26,1981.”

For further information on asthma or dietary advice please visit the Irish Centre of Integrated Medicine on www.icim.ie or tel. 045 844819