Chinese herbs for asthma, have you heard of this?
By Cathy Margolin
on December 13, 2009
Yes, Chinese herbs for asthma sufferers. This comes straight from the horses mouth, the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. Stated in September 2005, “This is the first well-controlled study in which an anti-asthma Chinese herbal medicine has been found to be as effective as a corticosteroid drug. Additional clinical studies of ASHMI in the USA are planned.” That was four years ago and I couldn’t find any published results since then of additional studies in the U.S. Not sure why. This study was published by the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York. A fine institution like Mt Sinai telling us Chinese herbs are AS effective as a corticosteroid drug would certainly interest a large segment of the population who suffer with asthma.
It’s a real shame that we don’t have more research studies on Chinese herbs in the U.S. but if these kinds of results were repeated the drug companies might have some competition selling some very profitable drugs. Corticosteroid treatment for asthma has become the norm and some of those drugs rank in the top 10 most popular prescriptions on the market.
If you choose to read the published report you’ll see that neither the patients or medical staff involved in this study were informed to which group was getting the herbs or the prednisone tablets for their asthma. Double blind studies such as this are conducted everyday in China and Taiwan but the English speaking world is rarely provided with such documentation. Do me a favor, if you find any follow up studies on asthma and Chinese herbs, drop a line or a comment below, so we can all be privy to the most recent medical research. Also leave a comment on how you feel about the amount of research being done in the USA on natural alternatives for diseases such as asthma. ?
December 23rd, 2009 at 12:20 AM
TCM doctors know a number of Chinese herb remedies for asthma, referring to different types of the illness (e.g. Spleen Deficiency, Liver Heat …). However, as you point out, Western research on the subject is rather scarce.
December 28th, 2009 at 4:28 PM
Yes, sad but true, Western studies don’t exist. We are planning that 10% of our profits will go to organizations such as the Cochrane Collaboration which is a worldwide organization which does fund alternative medicine studies. The more private industry and help fund non-profit research organizations the better.