Asthma is a condition that has a mild to severe impact on a patient’s ability to breathe due to swelling and constriction of the airways. The condition’s severity is often compounded by excessive mucus production. These factors come together to create symptoms of coughing, wheezing and shortness of breath. If these symptoms become life threatening, patients may experience an asthma attack.

Luckily, in addition to doctor prescribe inhalers, several natural treatments can help a patient manager their asthma and reduce the frequency of asthma attacks:

1. Yoga
Yoga fights asthma by giving people the tools needed to manage potential triggers. Yoga is particularly effective in managing stress levels. This makes it an important tool for people whose asthma is heavily tied into stress levels. Yoga can be thought of analogous to weight training. Weight training helps people gradually gain muscle strength which they can use over the course of any given day. Yoga helps to strengthen people’s ability to regain calm in the midst of any emotional turmoil. This is an especially useful tool for anyone who experiences asthma attacks due to stress. Additionally the breathing exercises associated with yoga may offer some level of improvement for one’s lungs.

2. Acupuncture
It’s often difficult to link acupuncture to a single mechanism of action. Studies will often show that acupuncture is an effective treatment for various conditions. However, it’s often not nearly as clear why or how acupuncture is achieving these positive results. However, anyone suffering from asthma can agree that in the end what matters most is results. And acupuncture has been able to deliver positive results to many people.

3. Biofeedback
Biofeedback is a method by which one uses technology to gain some measure of control over normally unconscious processes. As such biofeedback has the potential to help mitigate most symptoms of asthma. As with yoga, it’s often best to use biofeedback to help work with emotional responses. Biofeedback training can help people notice the initial signs of emotional states which might result in an asthma attack. Likewise, experience with biofeedback can help people deal with some of the less severe symptoms. It’s important to note that there’s only so much one can do to control normally unconscious responses within the body. However, while there are limits biofeedback is still a uniquely powerful method to treat asthma.

4. Herbal therapy with ding-chuan tang (DCT)
Ding-chuan tang, also known as ding chuan tang, is a well respected component of traditional Chinese medicine. It’s still fairly obscure within the West. However, the overall effectiveness of this herb has been earning it some much deserved recognition. Chinese medicine as a whole has traditionally placed a high level of importance on treatment of bronchial conditions. This means that one can find a wide range of treatments for asthma within the traditions of Chinese medicine. Ding-chan tang is often hailed as one of the most effective examples of these traditional Chinese asthma treatments. This does seem to hold out in clinical trials as well. Recent studies show that ding-chan tang use can result in more stable airways and lowered severity of asthma symptoms. However, as with many natural treatments the mechanism of action is yet to be fully understood. Thankfully one doesn’t need to fully understand why the herb works as well as it does. For many people suffering from asthma it’s enough to simply know that the herb is helping them.