Natural Remedies for Asthma

Symptoms

• Difficulty in breathing caused partly by kapha and partly by váyu, usually felt towards the end of the night

Causes: Primarily Weakness of the Heart Chakra

The Weakness of the Heart Chakra causes certain glands to weaken. These leads to the weakening of the fine bronchial tubes in the lungs be full of phlegm or mucus. This then obstructs the air.

Due to contraction of the weak bronchial tubes, the carbon dioxide of the body cannot come out. Such poisonous gas gets trapped in the body and breeds germs.

If the weakness of the heart chakra is supported by the weakness of the navel chakra (primary cause) and the sex chakra (secondary cause), then asthma develops.

If, due to weakness of the digestive fluids, the blood gets contaminated by acids, or if one is suffering from constipation, then different organs of the body also become weak.

In such a condition, due to weakness of the lungs, the nervous system controlling the lungs also suffers from debility and finally the bronchial tubes as well become weak. That is the time when asthma becomes fully manifest.

Diet

For breakfast patients should eat local sweet or sour fruits, or meoyá fruits soaked in water for a few hours. A little lemon juice should be consumed a number of times during the day.

The patient should never completely fill the stomach. The bowels should be cleared carefully, because constipation aggravates asthma.

A small quantity of hot boiled rice or rut́i, together with sufficient leafy-vegetable soup, milk, curd (yogurt) or curd-water should be used.

All alkaline foods are beneficial in this disease.

Ghee, oil, rice, pulses, rut́is, and all non-vegetarian foods are acidic, therefore the less these are taken the better.

Dos and don’ts

Milk should be the main drink for asthma patients.

It is better for them to finish the evening meal as early as possible, certainly by an hour and a half after sunset, that is, by 7:30 or 8 PM, because it will keep the stomach light, having digested the food well before dawn. Then acute asthmatic spasms cannot occur.

Asthmatic spasms cannot occur when one’s stomach hungers for food, so in a severe attack of asthma, the more one fasts, the better.

Asthma patients should strictly abstain from all sorts of intoxicants. Anyone who drinks less than 3/4 seer of milk a day should not drink even one cup of tea. Also, all non-vegetarian types of food are to rejected.

For a person who cannot avoid eating non-vegetarian food, a little soup of small and freshly-caught fish is permissible.

In those countries where it is almost impossible to obtain vegetarian types of food, patients should use myrobalan or some other laxative agent after meals in order to save themselves from constipation.

Sweet and fried foods are also harmful for asthma patients.

In summer, winter and in all seasons, patients should take a long walk in the open air.

Remedies

1. Excellent results can be achieved if the patient takes one tola of the branch roots of white punarnavá ground together in river water with 2 1/2 pieces of black pepper.

Do this on an empty stomach while sitting facing north, on any Monday, after bathing.

2. Boil 5 tolas of cow’s ghee in a káṋsá pot.

In another pot heat 2-1/2 tolas of ginger extract, and mix it into the boiled ghee and cover with a káṋsá plate. When the mixture has stopped simmering, take about 2 tolas and pour it into 1/8 seer of hot milk and give it to the asthma patient to drink when his/her suffering is acute. Plenty of mucus and phlegm will immediately be brought up, and the patient will feel relieved. If the mixture can be taken continuously for fifteen days, the disease will be completely cured.

3. Catch a frog and take out its heart.

Cut the heart into four parts. For four consecutive mornings, after having a bath, eat one piece together with a banana on a completely empty stomach. It will bring good results.

4. Catch 6 or 7 cockroaches and boil them in half a seer of water.

When the water has boiled down to 1/8 seer (10 tolas), strain it carefully and drink it hot twice a day, 5 tolas each time. This relieves asthma.

5. Burn a peacock feather to ashes and take 1/16 tola of the ashes by slowly licking with honey. This will relieve the suffering of asthma within a short time.

6. Aged raw cane sugar and pure mustard oil mixed in equal quantities (preferably one tola each), if taken by licking them each day early in the morning for 21 days continuously on an empty stomach, will give excellent results in asthma.