Asthma, Allergies, and Getting Off Prescription Drugs

We all understand how much modern medicine has improves lives and increased longevity. Broken arms and serious diseases require treatment that we trust doctors to deliver. Many of us, though, struggle with nagging, chronic health conditions that vary from hardly noticeable through mildly irritating to almost unbearable, things like chronic allergies, asthma, skin conditions, and digestive issues. Doctors give us prescriptions and we take them, while we worry about side effects and wonder if we will have to be on them for the rest of our lives.

Looking at me, you’d think I’m in good health. I have a pretty healthy lifestyle and I am reasonably fit. But, my health issues began when I was a baby. I had eczema patches on my ankles and legs. Through childhood, being around a dog or a cat would make me sneeze and make my eyes puff up into red itchy circles. Day to day, my nose ran, I sneezed, I was always congested, and I always needed a tissue. I had asthma, and I was sick with bronchitis or tracheitis every winter as a child and young adult. It always ended with a heavy course of antibiotics.

As a child, I took an oral asthma medication that isn’t used much anymore, and I started using a reliever inhaler around age 10. Regular maintenance doses of corticosteroid inhalers were needed daily from age 14. I was also on a daily bronchodilator, as well as a daily corticosteroid nasal spray. Around age 21, the eczema which hadn’t bothered me since I was a toddler came back with a vengeance. It was mainly on my hands, though at times over the years it would creep up my wrists and arms, and then started to appear on my face. I used topical steroid cream to keep it at bay. Also around age 21, I developed what I thought was hemorrhoids. They never seemed to go away no matter what I tried, and almost ten years later, I was finally diagnosed with ulcerative proctitis, a form of Inflammatory Bowel Disease. I was prescribed a NSAID, or non-steroid anti-inflammatory drug.

It was at that point that, like many people, I began to feel despair about my health. I was almost thirty years old, and dependent on a host of medications just to get through the day. I was starting to realize that my digestion was bad, something I had never paid attention to. I had been to allergists and GI doctors, and all they had to offer me was more prescriptions. I was sick of feeling powerless, so I started reading up on holistic approaches to health. That meant seeing the whole picture of my health as related, rather than separate body parts which were the domain of various specialists. The same links began to creep up regardless of which condition I was reading about- inflammation, food intolerances, constipation, candida albicans, autoimmune reactions, and the necessity of detoxification.

I had tried alternative medicines before- acupuncture, Chinese medicine, homeopathy. They had helped a little. Homeopathy had really turned around one severe episode of eczema in my mid-twenties. But now it was back. I had had psychotherapy and practiced t’ai chi. I had been a vegetarian since the age of 15. I had tried various vitamins and supplements. I had even managed to take myself off my bronchodilator without any ill effects. But I had never seen the whole picture.

I decided something had to change, so I went to see a holistic doctor. I was looking for relief from the eczema, which was at that time really distressing. My hands and face looked terrible, and although I knew that cortisone cream was bad for me, I would use it out of desperation. My skin would get better for a few days, and then it would get worse again. It says right on the drug package not to use for more than seven days. But anyone who has looked to Western medicine for help from eczema knows that you have to keep using it, and that your doctor has little else to offer. I tried every kind of moisturizer, special creams, petroleum jelly- nothing worked. I was hoping the practitioner could offer me something like the homeopathic treatment that had turned around my eczema about five years earlier. I was only there for the eczema, not my other health issues.

But this doctor looked at my whole health picture, and it didn’t look good. He shook his head about all the medications I had been on for years. He wondered at the state of my adrenal glands; they were probably in bad shape because of the steroids. He told me that continuing on this road would only ensure more health problems in the future. He asked me if I was ready to give up dairy, wheat, soy, and sugar. He asked me how often I ate raw nuts, a question which mystified me. He also told me not to even think about having children when my body was in such distress and while I was taking such hazardous drugs.

I had walked into the office feeling hopeful, and I left feeling devastated. I never went back to that doctor. I didn’t want to believe what he had told me. I had always felt that my conditions were nothing serious, just annoying, just bad genes, bad luck. Over the next few days, thrown into worry and despair, I realized that I had been fooling myself. I had always known that suppressing my symptoms was only the illusion of health, and that I would never be truly healthy without addressing the root causes of my diseases. I knew I had to take control of my own health.

That was a year and a half ago. I have now been free of all medications for eight months. I have healed myself mainly through diet. For the past eighteen months, I have been vegan and gluten free. I embarked on an elimination diet, and over months of trial and error, I realized that I am sensitive to dairy and wheat. I stopped eating unfermented soy. Since then, I have been battling with my sweet tooth, experimenting with raw food, juice fasting, detoxifying, and eliminating as many toxins as I can from my life. It has been a long journey, paved with difficulty. There have been moments of doubt and despair, and moments of empowerment and victory. I have made great strides on the road to health, but I still have far to go. I know what I have to do to get well. I have been resisting, foundering, procrastinating; often choosing the suppression of symptoms and the temporary pleasure of food that made me sick, over true lasting wellness. I have discovered that it’s possible to take control of your own health. In fact nothing could be simpler. It just requires the decision to take care of yourself, listen to your body, and allow it to heal.

I won’t say it was easy. It took commitment, and my symptoms actually got worse before they got better. But I don’t feel doomed to live with chronic health issues and be on prescription drugs anymore. I feel empowered and free, because I experienced that I can improve my health through my own lifestyle choices. It is important to say that not all health issues can be managed by lifestyle alone. Making the choice to take medications or other treatment is personal and sometimes necessary and helpful. However, I believe that anyone can increase their wellness and sense of control by seeing how their diet and lifestyle fits into the picture. Every one of us could probably feel better through truly clean eating. The experience of a raw food elimination diet was one of the most empowering and remarkable experiences of my life. The link between gluten and my eczema is clear as day. I did the experiment and got the results myself, and I found a way to control my symptoms which no doctor had ever even mentioned. If you are inspired to give it a try, my advice is to research carefully, go slowly, and be brave. You deserve to feel in control of your own health.