Asthma explained by common allergy to milk and dairy products

The link between Asthma and cows' milk is familiar to many young Asthma sufferers and their parents. I first became aware of the connection through my cousin's experiences with his four-year-old son. Since infancy, my cousin's son has experienced severe Asthma attacks and has been hospitalized twice for asthma-related pneumonia. When his asthma attacks become more frequent or more severe, my cousin and his wife respond by temporarily eliminating milk and milk products from his diet, and it usually works. I always assumed that milk worsened his Asthma by stimulating mucus production in his lungs. However, studies suggest that, either along with or instead of creating excess mucus, milk may worsen asthma due to an undiagnosed milk Allergy.

"In all respiratory conditions, mucous-forming dairy foods, such as milk and cheese, can exacerbate clogging of the lungs and should be avoided," writes Professor Gary Null in his Complete Encyclopedia of Natural Healing. Very simply, when more mucus accumulates in the lungs than can be expelled, asthma attacks develop. This belief has long been held in practiced medicine, and many medical doctors still stand behind this theory.

At the same time, many other doctors and researchers are now beginning to feel that undiagnosed milk allergies may be the underlying problem behind the link between milk and asthma. As Dr. Robert M. Giller writes in Natural Prescriptions, eliminating dairy products from the diets of many adult and child asthma patients helps "not because dairy products stimulate mucus production but because they're very common causes of allergy, upper-respiratory allergies and asthma (which may be an allergy in itself)."

"Milk is one of the two or three most common food allergens in the American diet," says allergy specialist Dr. James Braly in Bill Gottlieb's book Alternative Cures. In fact, Dr. Frank Oski, the chief of pediatrics at the John Hopkins School of Medicine, believes that 50 percent of all schoolchildren may be allergic to milk, though many of them remain undiagnosed. Some researchers believe that the figure may be even higher, up to 60 percent of children, according to Dr. Charles R. Attwoods's book, A Vegetarian Doctor Speaks Out. When most people think of milk allergies, they think of anaphylactic shock - a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction that can only be relieved with a shot of epinephrine. However, allergies sometimes manifest in very different ways, and these may change throughout a person's life.

Asthma Symptoms

• wheezing
  o usually begins suddenly
  o is episodic
  o may be worse at night or in early morningo aggravated by exposure to cold airo aggravated by exerciseo aggravated by heartburn (reflux)o resolves spontaneouslyo relieved by bronchodilators (drugs that open the airways)