Asthma and the Placebo Effect
I’ve had asthma ever since I was about eight years old. I remember my first asthma attack very clearly, if you can believe that. We were hiking as a family at an outdoor YMCA. It was a beautiful day and the sun was shining.
After running up a steep hill that was covered in queen anne’s lace and other things like dandelions, I suddenly felt a feeling I had never felt before. It was like rubber bands were compressing around my lungs, and I couldn’t quite catch my breath.
That was become what was known as the turning point for me as a youngster. I had my first asthma attack, and I would have many more after that, all of varying degrees in severity. When I look back now, I realize that many times pure excitement or anxiety caused them.
I firmly believe that much of asthma is brought about by pshychological excitements or anxieties, because when I look back on my attacks, even as a child, it almost always involved this aspect.
So I wasn’t surprised when I read recently that a placebo treatment did just as well as a real asthma treatment for many patients. It only further supports the theory that some asthma cases are really brought about by what we’re thinking at the time.
Granted, there are aggravators like mold, pollen and other allergens, but there are also emotional aspects of this conditions as well.
The study actually showed that patients who were given a placebo treatment that they believed was a regular asthma treatment, say like an inhaler, with totally inactive ingredients, they reported that they felt relief, as they would when they received the real treatment.
The patients did not always report this, but they reported it enough of the time to suggest that these patients at least experienced some of their symptoms due to psychological reasons.
If you have asthma, know that there are some excellent herbal remedies for asthma that can help you naturally overcome the symptoms and get over the attacks faster.
Albuterol and other medications should probably be kept around as an emergency intervention, however, use of these on a frequent basis can have other health side effects.