Cold & Allergy Induced Asthma

Like many kids with a peanut allergy, Bean has asthma also. I’m sure many of you can relate. Bean doesn’t have bad asthma, and typically only has asthma symptoms when she gets a cold.  My younger daughter can have a cold with a cough, and it’s no big deal.  However, when Bean gets that same cold from Bubbles, her cough sounds much worse and her cold induced asthma kicks in and she starts wheezing.

Everyone is saying allergies are REALLY bad this year, and we are experiencing this first hand. Bean has had a little cough for the last couple days, but this morning she had a congested cough and had that rumbly sound in her chest when she breathed in and out. She felt like she needed her rescue inhaler, and her breathing was a little labored. She also had a low grade fever of 99.8. I called her pediatrician, but they couldn’t get us in until later today. Based on how bad the cough sounded and the rumble noise she had going on when she breathed, I chose to take her to the urgent care a few blocks from our home.

They were fantastic and took her back right away. She was wheezing when the doc listened to her lungs. They put her on Prednisone for three days and Albuterol nebulizer treatments every 4-6 hours, with a recheck with her pediatrician on Monday. Although she has not had a bad cough and needed these meds in a long time, here we are back in this familiar boat. It has been so long that I was actually wondering if she had maybe outgrown this. Unfortunately, this is not the case. She has never suffered from allergy induced asthma before, so this is something a little different than before. She is regularly on Flovent, Flonase, and Singulair, but here we are anyway. We need to up her meds to 2 puffs of Flovent daily now, instead of just one.

They said that she most likely has been suffering from allergies, although her nose has not been running, but the doc said looking at her sinuses and the back of her throat she has been having drainage. 😦 Urgent care said they have been seeing a lot of people coming in with asthma issues this season, because allergy season is so bad this year, due to the extra long cold season we had, everything is popping at once making it worse than normal.

I just keep hoping she will outgrow this and we will be able to eventually reduce some of the meds she is on daily. In the meantime, we will just do what is necessary to keep her well.

Allergies and Chiropractic Care

In addition to having issues with gluten, both my children ( and myself) have environmental and seasonal allergies.  And while there are literally thousands of things that fall into these categories, sometimes I feel like we may have wound up with reactions to a good percentage of them.  For awhile we had been on the seemingly never-ending cycle of allergy medicines that did not quite work well enough and overly tired, crabby kids due to the medication.  On top of that, I would typically limit our time outside, knowing that the longer we were out, the worse it would be for the kids later.  Now, my kids are the kind that would be perfectly happy living outside, if there was a way to do it, so cutting their time outside short never ended well for any of us.

That is when my husband and I began to look into other options for treatment.  This is what lead us to natural medicine, including chiropractic.  After a long period of research and continuous learning, we now choose to treat our children naturally and homeopathically whenever possible ( by this I mean that if there was a serious condition going on I would of course bring my children to their traditional pediatrician).  While starting down this new path, we can across the idea of chiropractic.  I had previously always thought it was something that either older people or people with back problems used.  I never realized the vast amount of conditions that chiropractic can help treat, and actually prevent.

We did our research and had meetings with multiple chiropractors before we found one that was the right fit for our family.  Before we even told him our concerns, he was able to look at the kids and pinpoint a lot of their conditions, which amazed me.  He then explained to us that our bodies have this insane healing ability that most of us are not aware of, and once everything is in alignment,  our body is able to take back over and work on healing.  We spoke of the laundry list of things that I was concerned about with the kids, and myself, and we got to work on a treatment plan.

Soon, we were all going for regular adjustments.  After the first adjustment, I noticed amazing results in the kids.  Temperaments were better, they slept better, they even ate better. As time went on, I began to see a drastic reduction in the way they responded to their typical allergens.  Reactions were far less severe and medication was rarely necessary.  Of course, our chiropractor advised us that the likelihood of a “cure” for their allergies was far-fetched, and not something we should be anticipating.  But, he also let us know that with continued adjustments, we can help keep their reactions at bay, since their bodies are better able to handle being exposed to the allergen.

We now continue to go for regular adjustments and check ups.  We use a homeopathic allergen blocker right under their noses on days we know the mold and pollen counts are high, which helps keep those days less severe.  We still keep Benadryl on hand, just in case we have a bad day or two, but I can honestly say I could not tell you the last time I needed to use it for seasonal and environmental reactions.

I am well aware that chiropractic care is not something that everyone is open to.  However, if you are, and if your family and children are, do your research and think about adding this to your treatment plan.  For us, it has made all the difference in the world.

Spring allergies: Seven natural remedies

The are saying that this coming allergy season is going to be brutal.  CBS News did a report about 7 natural remedies.  You can see the video and the article here.

Allergy Season Going to be “more brutal”

Women’s Health is saying that this year’s allergy season is going to be rough for people with seasonal allergies.  Having one daughter with seasonal allergies, and another with seasonal allergies AND asthma, all I could do was think UGH!

You can read the article here to get the scoop.