R. L. La Scola, MD (1968): “The asthmatic child responds most dramatically to the hypnotic approach, and the cure is so gratifying that it seems incredible for any other method of treatment ever to be considered.”

And now, we don't even need hypnosis, because we have Time Line Therapy®!

Most asthmatics have one or more experiences as young children that serve as the foundation of the problem.  The asthmatic breathing pattern sets up the physical conditions for the pain and difficulty breathing. When that old fear is released now, the breathing becomes normal.

It is useful to notice that the symptoms vary with the stress level and fear.  They may even be intermittent.

The problem is behavioral, not the result of tissue damage, which means that the tissues heal when the emotional causes are resolved.

Abstract: Asthma has been known to have an emotional cause since antiquity.  In the last 60 years, it has been identified to have an unconscious fear as its underlying cause, and specific behaviors in breathing that bring on the symptoms.  By resolving the old fear, the breathing pattern can change and eliminate the symptoms.

Certain health conditions have long been known to have their origins in the mind. This is the case for asthma, whose clinical description was so accurately noted in the time of early Greek physicians. The word Asthma, which means "Labored Breathing" in Greek, was first used to describe the illness by the famous Greek physician Hippocrates. 

In the 20th century and especially after 1940, a group of illnesses was identified as "psychosomatic" in response to widespread observations that the patient's emotional state had clear repercussions on the manifestations of the disease.  In this group were placed conditions such as essential hypertension, asthma, ulcerative colitis, peptic ulcer, and rheumatoid arthritis.  Psychosomatic means there is a mental aspect (usually an emotion such as anger, fear, or guilt) to the origin of the physical symptoms, and those symptoms will not go away until the emotional issues are cleared up. 

The most common psychosomatic respiratory illness is asthma.  Numerous investigations have shown the complexities of psychological factors contributing to asthma.  Investigators have emphasized the importance of the unconscious fear of the loss of the nurturing mother.  This may be brought on by the birth of a younger sibling, or by being placed in daycare at an early age.  Sometimes, the mother may have to go into the hospital, or maybe the baby did, and the child fears abandonment.  Books and papers by doctors identify many case histories of asthma that have been cured by hypnotherapeutic techniques. 

It is only in the last couple of decades that the pharmaceutical industry has tried to reclassify asthma into a disease to be treated by drugs.  It is interesting to note that they have not been successful in curing even one case.  The best they can do is mask the symptoms temporarily. 

More recently asthma has been blamed on air pollution, cockroaches, dust mites, the use of antibiotics, and the lack of exposure to dirt in a natural environment.  All of these explanations confuse cause with factors that aggravate an existing condition.  If air pollution caused asthma, everyone in New York, Los Angeles and Houston would have asthma.  If roaches or dust mites caused asthma, then everyone would have it.  The problem with all of these “explanations” is that they do not apply across cultures, nations, or time periods.  For instance, are we to believe that there are more cockroaches and dust mites in houses now than twenty years ago, or than in New York tenement housing a hundred years ago, or than in any housing in the Middle Ages? 

And then there is the suggestion that asthma may have a genetic component.  This is a smokescreen to distract attention from the fact that modern medicine cannot cure asthma. In true genetic diseases, the symptoms and the disease are there from birth, as in sickle cell anemia.  In the phantom genetic diseases, the problem does not develop until later in life.  Even if you can find certain genes in those with asthma, the question still remains, “What caused the expression of the gene, and hence the problem, in this person, but not in that one?” 

What all these have in common is an excuse for medicine to be ineffective at curing the problem.  After all, we cannot eliminate dust mites! 

Mind/body therapists find the causes of asthma to range from maternal insecurities as an infant, to near-death experiences in childhood, to past-life death trauma.  Adult onset asthma often begins with the impending loss of a spouse, whether through death or divorce.  What all of these situations have in common is fear.  The fear is not a conscious one, and it is usually reactivating a fear from the past, frequently from infancy.  The current fear resonates with the suppressed childhood memory, amplifying the expression of today’s distress. 

The physical symptoms of asthma are a result of a specific breathing pattern, which can be called “fear breathing”.  When a person gets scared, for any reason, they may tighten up all over, and especially in the chest.  When a person breathes rapidly and high in the chest (shallow breathing/hyperventilation), the bottom part of the lung does not get properly ventilated.  Hyperventilation, which causes a carbon dioxide deficiency (hypocapnia), is known to cause the bronchial tubes to contract and to spasm.  (References)

Blood circulates though all parts of the lung, no matter what the breathing pattern is, and carbon dioxide enters all the areas of the lung in preparation for exchange with fresh air.  But with shallow breathing, the exchange doesn’t occur and the carbon dioxide remains in the little lung sacs in the bottom part of the lung and increases over time as the blood circulates.  Since it is not exchanged, it dissolves in the moisture of the lung.  When carbon dioxide is dissolved in water, it is called carbonic acid, and has a pH of about 5.5.  This level of acidity is harmful to human tissue, so the lung secretes mucus to protect itself from the acid.  When enough lung sacs are full of mucus, there is no opportunity for fresh air to be brought in and so the sufferer has a limited capacity to inhale.  This may heighten the fear of suffocation, making the problem worse. 

This condition of limited respiration can be altered by a program of physical activity or of conscious breathing practices that slow and deepen the breathing.  Either approach causes a better exchange of air and thus allows the mucus to be resorbed into the body.  It has been found that about one deep exhalation per minute is enough to prevent a build-up of the acidity and mucus. 

The underlying cause, the fear lingering from events in early childhood, can be addressed with NLP techniques, with Time Line Therapy® or with hypnotherapy.  The result of any of these methods is that the fear is released, the fear breathing ends, and so the symptoms disappear.  This result may be produced in only a few sessions over several weeks.  And because the cause has been removed, the relief is lasting. 

Asthma kills more than 5,000 people per year in the U.S.  These are needless deaths.  Asthma in school children is the leading cause of missed work for parents.  The cost is staggering.  Let your school nurses know that they can teach people at risk of the alternatives to masking the symptoms with drugs.  Save a life.

For more information on how the mind affects the health of the body see: 
"Hypnosis in Psychosomatic Medicine"   by Gérard V. Sunnen, M.D. 
http://www.triroc.com/sunnen/topics/psychosomatic.htm

For more references, click here.

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