Jan08
Posted by Dr. Rangadhar Satapathy on Monday, 8th January 2018
Asthma is one of the most common health problems affecting around 2 crores of people in India and around 33 crores in whole world level. The death and disability from asthma is seen more in children from the age group 2-14. In asthma the bronchial tubes or air ways get affected. There is a cascade of bio reaction that occurs in the air tubes or respiratory tract of an asthma affected person. The lungs play the major role for gas exchange in our body. Each and every cell of our body gets their oxygen to stay alive. The air goes through the nasal passage and air tubes and reaches at lungs where it absorbs to the blood and finally goes to every cell. When you breath sending oxygen to your whole body and releasing carbon dioxide from the body. The whole function of air exchange is carried out by the respiratory system. The respiratory system consists of different parts or segments those takes the active part in respiratory function. The respiratory function starts from the nose or nostrils and end at lungs.The pathophysiology of asthma can be explaned as in 2 process –
1) bronchial inflammation,
2) broncho constriction
The bronchial inflammation – in everyday life we exposes thousands of foreign substances which are very minute in size and invisible to naked eyes. Those floats in airs and when we ingest them go inside our body and makes their way into the bronchial passage. The WBC or white blood corpuscles are one component of the complex immune system. There are 5 types of WBC neutrophile, eosinophile, basophile, Lymphocytes, monocytes. Among them the lymphocytes plays a major role in allergic reaction. The lymphocyte are divided into 2 types – the T lymphocytes or ‘T cells’ , the B lymphocytes or ‘B cells’. The T cells and B cells travel everywhere in our body passing through the blood vessels. Their role is to recognize a foreign particles present in the body and then to attack them. When they reach in bronchial airways the T lymphocytes check each and every cell to confirm it whether it is a safe cell or a foreign cell. When the T lymphocytes find a foreign cell then release some chemicals called cytokines. Those cytokines activate the B lymphocytes to convert plasma cell. The plasma cell produces one antibody, IgE anti body that moves and attach to the IgE receptor of mast cell present on the mast cell surface. The mast cells are the specialized cells distributed in various body parts of our body like over skin, inside the respiratory tract, inside the GI tract etc. Those mast cells contains some tiny protein granules called the histamines.
When an antigen or allergen get inside our body and reach in our air space it attached to the IgE antibody of mast cell. When the antigen and antibody unites the mast cell releases its histamines to the surrounding spaces. Those histamines have the pro inflammatory properties. So when they attach to the epithelial cells of bronchial tube with its H1 receptor that present on every cell surface the inflammation starts. So this causes the inflammation of bronchial airways. Due to the btronchial inflammation there is also mucus secretion around the areas.
Bronchial constriction – the bronchial inflammation causes the thickening of the mucous lining of the air tubes and in addition to that over secretion of mucus from the hyperactive mucus glands makes the bronchial spaces narrower and that causes bronchial constriction.
Besides that when there is an inflammation in the bronchial mucous lining the afferent nerves ending of the parasympathetic nerve fiber present in the bronchial airways sends some impulses to the vagus center of the brain stem and then down the vagal efferent pathway to again reach the bronchial small airways and secrets acetylcholine from the nerve ending that stimulate the smooth muscles fibers surrounding the bronchial tubes to be tighten more and more that result bronchial constriction and broncho spasm.
Homeopathy treatment for asthma –
The homeopathy treatment helps to treat the asthma in 2 ways – It controls the acute asthmatic condition by both oral medicines and homeopathy nebulizer (Dr Satapathy’s homeo nebulizer).The acute symptoms of asthma like coughing, chest tightness, wheezing sound, shortness of breath are immediately required to control as quick as possible so the person can breathe freely. There are many homeopathy medicines when selected as per the totality of symptoms of the person can able to control the acute asthma symptoms effectively and rapidly. The medicines for acute symptoms can be given repeatedly even 30 minutes to hour interval till the symptoms are not getting fully recovered. There is no specific medicine for any specific health issues in homeopathy. One medicine can be given in different health problem when the symptoms of the diseased person are fully matched homeopathically with the medicinal symptoms. For example a severe dry cough which worsen on lying posture with gagging or vomiting, suffocative sensation and more cough after drinking cold water can be given one homeopathy medicine ‘spongia’, another person with same dry severe cough but get relief after drinking little cold water will be given another medicine ‘cuprum met’. So here for the same health problem of cough there is two different medicines in which one get relief from tsaking cold water but another get worse, which is the key characteristic symptoms to select the specific homeopathy medicines. Similarly in all asthma symptoms that may be cough or wheezing sound or tightness of chest the medicines are not same for each individual symptom. The selection of medicines is totally depend upon the symptoms of the patient. But it is hundred percentages true that homeopathy has effective medicines for all acute symptoms. If the correct medicine with accurate potency is given it give immediate relieve to the disease. So besides the diagnosis of disease the diagnosis of medicine is highly essential to cure one disease in homeopathy. Unlike other therapist a homeopath has dual responsibility i.e. to diagnosis the disease and then to diagnosis the remedy. But at the same time the mother tincture form of homeopathy medicines have specific effect on a specific health problem like Justecea adathoda mother tincture is generally given for dry cough whatever the characterized symptom present. But the specific homeopathy remedy is generally given in raw form i.e. in mother tincture form or in very lower potency. The alkaloid or active principle of each and every homeopathy medicine has some key therapeutic property. In this regards homeopathic nebulizer developed by Dr.Satapathy do act in same principle and is given to all asthma patients as a common supplementary treatment to control the severity of asthmatic situation. With all the indicated homeopathic acute remedies, Dr.satapathy’s homeo nebulizer offers a rapid and long lasting relief to the acute symptoms of the asthma.
The control of the acute symptoms of the asthma won’t give a long lasting relief. It is the management of acute symptoms for a time period. Because though the symptoms can be well managed by the acute homeopathic remedies for a limited time period , but there is chance of reappearance of asthma symptoms if the patient again being exposed to the triggers. It is because the person’s immune system is still in hyperactive state so whenever he get exposed towards any allergens the symptoms again reappear. The immune system of an asthmatic person is very sensitized to many allergens and when get contact with them develop the asthmatic symptoms. Just to control the symptoms will not cure the asthma in a long term basis because his hypersensitive immune system again will react adversely when again get expose to the same allergen. So for a long term cure it is highly required to modify the hypersensitive immune system of the asthmatic person to a normal functioning immune system. A proper constitutional homeopathy medicines basing upon the homeopathy way of case history taken which covers the common clinical symptoms with their modalities , physical general symptoms, mental general symptoms, miasmatic back ground, past history of any health issues either physical or psychological background, family history of any diseases, if all those taken into consideration then the constitutional homeopathy medicine comes from those symptom similarities basis is the specific medicine for that particular person. If that medicine is given for a considerable time it will help to modify the hypersensitive immune system to normal functioning immune system. This type of homeopathy treatment is called as classical homeopathy treatment. From my 24 years of clinical experience I feel both acute homeopathy treatment along with classical approach of treatment is much more beneficial than alone acute treatment or alone classical treatment.
In spite of that there are many factors those also put bad impact on the immune system and convert its healthy functioning nature to hypersensitive nature. Factors that affect the immune systems are faulty life style, faulty food habits, lack of physical activities, constantly staying in a overstressed condition, side effects of various chemical drugs, obesity, smoking, rise of pollution, suppression of any skin disease, hereditary condition and so many life style changes also responsible for making our immune system hyperactive. So with homeopathy treatment a healthy life style, healthy food habits, healthy mind set up is mostly desirable to cure asthma permanently and forever.