Alternate asthma treatment

Parent Cafe
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<p>As some of you may remember- I am not a big allopathic medicine fan-
I delayed many of my younger D’s vaccines until her recent trip to Ghana, I use naturopathic care when possible & try and find alternative remedies to prescribed medication.</p>

<p>However- my younger d is on Singulair, Xanax & Strattera.
Which I was fine with- as I felt they all were needed, except, she has been complaining recently of extreme difficulty concentrating & wanted to increase her Strattera ( I don’t want her to increase it- as I think her main problem is anxiety- which it seems to increase- I also haven’t taken her to her psychiatrist yet- as she does not take ins )</p>

<p>When doing more research on her medications, I was disturbed to find that Singulair seems to be causing problems for some people ( suicidal behavior- which Strattera also seems to instigate) and the FDA is investigating. I suggested to her that she stop taking it- for a short period of time ( she has exercise asthma but hasn’t been complaining of any problems- she does have an inhaler) to see if it made any difference, but she hasn’t yet.</p>

<p>Im also going to suggest that she have allergies looked at- and a friend has found a "cure " with the Butekyo method of breathing which I have found very intriguing, although we haven’t tried it yet.
[medscape[/url</a>]
[url=<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0-0Rgp2ZKI]YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0-0Rgp2ZKI]YouTube</a> - Solve Asthma with Buteyko](<a href=“http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/411298]medscape[/url”>Breathing Disorders Triggered by Anxiety May Coexist With Asthma)</p>

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<p>If your d is well controlled on singulair, don’t stop it. I have heard/seen horror stories about people stopping their asthma medications. No health professional will in good faith recommend discontinuing a drug for a chronic condition which a patient is well controlled on. With asthma though, if a person is well controlled, you sometimes try and decrease the dose after 6 months of no asthma attacks. If suicide was a major side effect, it would have been detected during its trials. The trials can’t find any side effect which happens less often than 1 in 1000 because of sensitivity reasons. Normally, only a couple thousand people are involved in drug trials.
The other leukotriene inhibitor has no reports of suicide.</p>

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<p>spiriva works very well</p>

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<p>For our son, the line of defence are - non steroid inhaler, nebulizer (even if it is every 2-3 hr) then singular. It seems to work.</p>

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<p>Asthma still accounts for much morbitity and mortality in the US
I would be very cautious before discontinuing an asthma medication that is working.</p>

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<p>My son had great results with acupuncture/chinese medicine but he was just a baby at the time.</p>

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<p>Don’t monkey around with asthma. My brother in law died from an attack.
I also have exercise induced asthma. As your doctor about Advair. It is a daily inhalation of powder to prevent asthma flair ups. I also use singulair but I am outside alot and have allergies. I have not heard of Strattera.</p>

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<p>I have struggled with asthma for most of my life. When I was pregnant with my last child, it took a bad turn which required not only hospitalization for several days, but quite a few new meds to keep it under control . I was not very happy to have to take so many meds while pregnant , but I had no choice.
everything turned out fine. I do agree with the posters to be very careful when it comes to asthma. I wouldn’t trust accupuncture, chiropractic or other alrernative treatments when it comes to this serious disease.
Too dangerous IMO.
In the last several years, I have been lucky enough to have found Advair. To me, it is a miracle drug. I used to have to rely on inhalers and had at least two emergency room visits a year with bad asthma attacks. Since using Advair, I no longer use any inhaler, the nebulizor sits in a closet and haven’t had an attack at all.
I know it doesn’t work for everyone and my daughter doesn’t get much relief from it. She has been on Singulair for a few years and got another med this year ( the smokers outside her dorm entrance set her off )
I can’t recall what the new med is, but it has been working well for her.</p>

<p>I would talk to your doctor about alternatives if you want her to get off the Singulair.</p>

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<p>Advair is very expensive if you don’t have insurance. It makes Singulair looks cheap. Singulair is good for mild asthma. Asthma is one of the most effective control asthma medications we have. The good news is that I believe it will go generic at the end of this year. There are many commonly used Asthma maintenance medications.</p>

<p>Spiriva is a COPD medication and Strattera is generally used for ADHD.</p>

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<p>Our athlete was recently clinically diagnosed with EIB. Finding the appropriate medication for someone’s asthma is not exact science, since there could be a complex mix of mechanisms leading to the bronchospasm. Doctors would try the mildest meds first (like Albuterol), then add/subtract medications until they find something that works. Yes, Spiriva is prescribed off-label for EIA, but it did not work in our case.</p>

<p>Ek, I highly recommend visiting NW Asthma and Allergy near U Village - they are great. They can perform some additional tests to see if your D’s asthma is really asthma and not a case of vocal cord dysfunction (VCD), when vocal folds collapse around the airway and prevent air from entering the lungs. VCD mostly runs in tennage girls, and stress is a big trigger. Breathing excersises is the only way to treat/control VCD, but they will not replace asthma meds.</p>

<p>However, I have to mention what my doc said: DO NOT TRUST ANY INFO FOUND ON cantbreathesuspectvcd.com, DO NOT. A lot of it is plain CRAP.
A trusted source of info on VCD is the National Jewish Hospital:</p>

<p>[Diseases</a> - About Vocal Cord Dysfunction (VCD) - National Jewish Medical and Research Center](<a href=“http://www.nationaljewish.org/disease-info/diseases/vcd/about.aspx]Diseases”>http://www.nationaljewish.org/disease-info/diseases/vcd/about.aspx)</p>

<p>But here is the bottom line: DO NOT SELF-DIAGNOSE OR SELF-TREAT ASTHMA!!!. ONLY YOUR DOCTOR WILL BE ABLE TO DO SO.</p>

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<p>I’d have a good discussion with your Dr. about asthma medications and the severity of your Ds symptoms before changing anything. Advair is a great drug, but note that it contains a steroid. If your D’s asthma is well controlled without a steroid, and is having no symptoms currently-I’d say she is doing well on what she is taking. Discussing the anxiety in the context of the various meds might be something good to bring up with your Ds regular physician. </p>

<p>I like alternative medicine as well, and it is hard to balance when an allopathic approach is best, and when something more alternative might be appropriate. Asthma is not something to mess with. However you can use alternative treatments in addition to the allopathic, if compatible.</p>

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<p>bunsenburner - while I don’t know if your post will be helpful for the OP, I highly encourage anyone to whom who it might apply, to take it seriously.</p>

<p>We finally took D2 to a pediatric pulmonologist associated with Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago for consultation. He did a full battery of tests - she has allergies that can trigger asthma, but mostly hers was exercise induced. She was using Albuterol everytime she participated in any kind of physical exercise (which was a problem because of show choir in high school as well as phys ed). Our daughter is also a singer, and is pursuing this in college, so figuring out what she had was very important.</p>

<p>While the pulmonologist (who, by the way, speaks very highly of National Jewish conferences he’s been to) agrees she has asthma, he also suspects she has another disorder - exercise-induced vocal cord dysfunction (different from vocal cord dysfunction) - along with her asthma. He put her on Asmanex, a once-daily inhaler (easier for her to comply with when it’s once a day). Ever since she’s been on that (two years), she has not used her Albuterol once… until a couple of weeks ago when she ran out of her Asmanex while home for Easter when it was really cold, and she had to use the albuterol while helping us shovel snow (yea, I know… I’m a slave-driver).</p>

<p>Anyway, with her future hopefully lying in performing, we decided to have her vocal cords checked out, and were referred to an ENT who specializes in VCD, and who pretty much exclusively sees singers and some athletes. He did a scope (we got pictures) of her vocal cords, and he did detect a little bit of dysfunction, but nothing major.</p>

<p>So we returned to the pulmonologist with this report that her scope was pretty clean; he then told us that in order to diagnosis exercise-induced VCD, the scope and test needs to take place as they’re on a treadmill, or immediately following a vigorous treadmill run. He said this is what they are recommending out of National Jewish. Unless she begins to show some signs of potential damage (hopefully her voice teacher at school would hear a difference), I’m not going to make her go through the test again anytime soon, but knowing the best way to make the diagnosis will be helpful in the future.</p>

<p>By the way, CoachC, who posts in the musical theatre forum, works with one of the top ENTs in the country who deals with VCD - she’s a speech pathologist who specializes in the singer’s voice. If you search some of her posts, she is a wonderful wealth of information and resources. What we learned was, there are so many possibilities when it comes to symptoms that mimic asthma, that it’s highly recommended to see a specialist.</p>

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<p>teri, I jumped to the conclusion that EK’s daughter had a case of asthma that was not well controlled by her prescription meds, so I brought up the subject of VCD, which easily gets mistaken for EIA.
We were lucky that when I called the asthma clinic, I asked for someone who is experienced in teenage athletes, and the receptionist suggested seeing a particular doctor. Turned out, he was actively involved in VCD research, and he was able to diagnose her condition and reduce the dosages of her asthma meds (she does have EIA in addition to her VCD and she still uses her Levalbuterol inhaler for exercise, but discontinued the unneeded Advair). My D had a “treadmill-kind” of test: her doc made her run up and down the stairs, and then performed the scope test. D still has those pictures :slight_smile: D had a series of breathing lessons at a local speech clinic with a specially trained voice therapist, and it helped to improve her sports and musical performance dramatically.
VCD used to be dismissed as one of those “pretend” diseases, but luckily in the past several years, the number of Medline references on this subject increased significantly, as well as the general awareness of this condition.</p>

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<p>Nova10,
I don’t have prescription coverage with my insurance, so I get sample from my doctor…I also have a friend that works at a doctor’s office and gets it for me from the rep too. I have only paid for it once when I was on vacation and forgot to bring it…you are not kidding it is expensive.
The good news is that the patent is expiring soon, paving the way for generics.
Even though it has a steroid, I would choose it over being dependant upon albuterol ( which gives the jitters big time ) I have seen several people that overuse their inhalors and that isn’t a good thing.</p>

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<p>She has very mild asthma and has never been evaluated for allergies ( except by a naturopath who had me take her off wheat for behavior- it helped but hard to maintain)- or taught to use a flo meter. ( and actually the Dr that originally prescribed the inhaler, we are not seeing anymore- she wasn’t a Dr that was detail oriented)
When she was using Albuterol, I originally suggested Singular to her Dr since the Albuterol didn’t seem to be enough when she was running track in hot weather & the other inhaler was too strong. ( Advair I think)
The Xanax is for anxiety and the Strattera is for depression although it also seems to precipitate suicidal ideation as does the Singulair.</p>

<p>That is much more of a concern for me, as I think that the difficulty breathing is more of an anxiety hyperventilation problem from my observations of her change in pattern when stressed.</p>

<p>I do wonder how long the concern about Singulair has been around however, my own Dr was really reluctant to prescribe it when i asked about it for myself. I don’t remember to take it however & just rely on drinking lots of water, or Ive also had acupuncture treatments which last for months, I wonder if she is ready for that?
[Living</a> Well: Acupuncture looks promising on the kid-allergy front](<a href=“http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/health/198419_condor08.html]Living”>http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/health/198419_condor08.html)</p>

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<p>EK, that is one more reason to get her tested for VCD @ Northwest Asthma and Allergy (I hope they accept your insurance). If she does have it, she will not get additional meds for it (there are simply none), but she will get breathing therapy (basically the Buteyko stuff). The docs there can also be able to tell if her inhaler which seems to work only partially is the right one for her asthma and if she is using it correctly - you may be surprised that some kids and adults use their inhalers incorrectly.</p>

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<p>Uggg! I wish this ENT had done that because getting her back for a second test (his office was over an hour from our house) will be next to impossible now that she’s in college far away, and not coming home for much of the summer. </p>

<p>Speaking of pictures, my daughter immediately put them up on her facebook, and asked people to guess what part of her anatomy it was. I have to admit, there is a striking resemblance :eek:</p>

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<p>teri - too funny!!! Kids do strange stuff, but some adults could be no better. H and I had a long discussion that colonoscopy pictures were not art and therefore did not belong on the family room walls.</p>