My son started getting sick with ear infections at the age of 5 months, and was frequently prescribed Antibiotics each time he had one. He seemed to grow out of his ear infections about the age of 2, but his colds always lead to very serious fevers and he was extremely sick with each cold, the colds lasted for a good month and then he would still hack for a few weeks after finally getting over his colds. When he started preschool at the age of 4 he began having asthma attacks with each cold he caught. My son only had asthma when he was sick with a cold, but it was serious enough to warrant a couple of ambulance trips to the hospital and the purchase of our own nebulizer machine. My son was very pale and always had dark circles under his eyes. His father is very fair skinned and blond haired, and I figured he was just pale because he was so fair and I didn’t realize how sickly he looked because he had always looked that way. I was curious as to what brought about his asthma, but our doctor and the emergency room doctors could only tell us that, “Some people just get asthma, and there’s no way of telling who will get it and who won’t.” We used his steroid nebulizer machine several times a night to keep him breathing with each cold he caught, and usually each cold would turn into a sinus infection to which we would need Antibiotics . The steroids were scary too. Each time he used his nebulizer he would shake uncontrollably for a couple of hours and his heart would beat so hard you could see it through the skin on his chest and neck. This really scared the heck out of me, but I had no other option than to keep using his nebulizer or he couldn’t breathe. I kept thinking there had to be a better way to deal with this so I read every asthma book I could get my hands on. I found a few books that discussed the link of candida to asthma, and using a candida diet to control asthma symptoms. I didn’t do the candida diet in the books I had read because it seemed impossible to follow for a little boy, but we did cut out Sugar in our diets. Our diets were crap, we ate tons of pizza, tons of lasagna, lots of fast food (hamburgers, fries and pop), and worst of all we ate lots of cereals, breads, cookies, brownies and everything else that would cause candida. I kind of put the candida idea away for now, believing that my son couldn’t have candida, because the searches on the internet about candida said only people with compromised immune systems or undergoing chemotherapy could get that. I figured the best way to beat his asthma would be to build my son’s immune system up, so I started cooking from scratch and adding lots of veggies and fruits to our diet, and I started him on some really good vitamins. My son’s asthma didn’t improve with his colds, but his complexion looked much better. He actually had color in his cheeks, he didn’t look so pale and the dark circles under his eyes were fading some. Well, gradually my son started popping out in hives. I couldn’t figure out what he was getting them from so I started watching what he was eating and he would get them about once a week always with a different meal. I started a log book and discovered he was hiving up every time we ate pizza. We stopped eating pizza, but he would still get hives occasionally and his colds were still turning into sinus infections and more frequently. I stopped feeding him all wheat and he stopped having hives. I figured he had a wheat allergy. Stopping the wheat seemed to help quite a bit, but it was really hard to feed this little guy who was always hungry. I started feeding him corn cereals, rice bread all the alternatives to wheat I could find, and still he got asthma and sinus infections. Tired of being up all night long giving my son breathing treatments and tired of being terrified my little guy might die during the night because he couldn’t breathe, I finally decided to start the candida diet that was suggested in a few of my asthma books. It was really hard to feed a 6 year old a candida diet. Especially hard because I had never made my child eat vegetables before in his life, but I stuck with it. Under protest from my son I made lots of veggie dishes, we ate lots of raw broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and meat dishes with veggies. He had improved so much. He still got yucky sounding with his colds, but we didn’t need to do the nebulizer treatments as much, and he slept through the night with his colds. His colds didn’t turn into asthma quite as often and he was getting better, but he was still battling sinus infections. Now he was getting sinus infections without even getting a cold. I was so frustrated. One day I happened to read in a health magazine that diary allergies aggravate sinus infections. We stopped dairy. No cheese on anything. He really missed eating cheese but it did slow down his sinus infections and he didn’t come down with them as often. I happened to catch a show one day called, Know the Cause with Doug Kaufmann. He had a guest on talking about a product called Oregaresp, and they were talking about how it helped fight asthma and sinus infections. I bought some and with the next cold he had I started him on it. His asthma wasn’t bad enough that he couldn’t breathe so we didn’t need to use his nebulizer and his cold never turned into a sinus infection. I was amazed. I started reading more about the fungal link to asthma and realized this had been our problems all along. It made so much sense. I had a really bad bronchial cold that would never clear up before I gave birth to my son. My doctors gave me a couple of scripts for Zithromax which didn’t help my bronchitis at all, but I really think damaged both mine and my son’s good bacteria. About a year after my son was born we moved to another house in another town, and after living there for a few months decided the carpets were gross and when we ripped them out to have them replaced we found a lot of moldy wood for floor boards. My husband replaced the wood on the floors before we had carpets installed, but I think this mold definitely added to my son’s fungal and asthma problems. I read articles on asthma that discussed steroid inhalers actually causing yeast and adding to the fungal problem in the lungs of asthma patients. My son had so many steroid treatments I feel that this definitely added to his asthma as well as all the Antibiotics he had taken in the past. It all clicked and made sense why he was so sickly when he was little. I fed my son the worst diet (and a great diet to let candida or fungus thrive in the body) from the time he could eat himself until he was about 5 years old. We have done a lot of experimenting with his diet. He still follows the candida diet for children (allowing green apples and berries), we don’t eat dairy at all and we have started rotating the use of different antifungals oregano oil, olive leaf extract, grapefruit seed extract. I don’t give them to him every day, just when he gets colds, and when he isn’t sick we use probiotics to help replace the good bacteria in his gut that was wiped out with all the antibiotics he had used in the past. My son will be nine soon and he hasn’t had to use his nebulizer or take antibiotics for a sinus infection for the past 2 years. I keep oregano oil drops on hand and if he gets a cold and has a nasty cough I put a few drops of it in boiling water and let him breathe the steam and his airways loosen up and he is able to cough everything out on his own without steroids. It was a long process for us to figure out why he was sick and had asthma, a long process of trial and error on diet and foods, and finally slowly but surely he is better now. He is well enough to cheat once in a while now. Over the holidays we were able to make cookies and he had a slice of pie on Thanksgiving, and he was okay-no cough, no sinus infection, and no asthma. If we deviate from the diet for too long he does start to sound nasally and starts to form a cough but still no asthma, but I am sure if he kept eating foods not allowed on a candida diet his asthma would return eventually. We changed his diet and added some supplements that have brought my child back to a normal healthy state. He doesn’t catch colds very often, he doesn’t get sinus infections anymore and his asthma symptoms are gone. I wouldn’t exactly say we cured his asthma because if he were to go off his diet for a long time I am sure it would come back, but we have controlled all his symptoms finally, and they have been controlled for the past 2 years. It’s worth sticking to a strict diet to have a child who has normal colds now, a child who can breathe all through the night without any problems and a child who his healthy and actually looks healthy finally. If you or your child are battling asthma I would definitely start searching the internet for information on yeasts, fungus and molds causing asthma. It doesn’t hurt to try the diet and some natural antifungals and see if it helps.

Here are some of the books to find in the library that helped me in my search for answers about this disease:

The Allergy and Asthma Cure by Fred Pescatore (a great book by a doctor who overcame his asthma with diet change).

The Fungus Link by Doug Kaufmann (I bought this book after watching his show on fungal causes of disease).

Here are some good on-line articles to read on this subject, hopefully this can help some others fighting asthma:

Fungus Conclusively linked to Asthma

http://www.newstarget.com/008731.html


Candida Role in Asthma

http://www.candida-society.org/ncs/asthma_russian.htm


Asthma due to Fungi?

http://www.yourasthmatreatment.com/asthma-due-fungi.htm


Bronchial Asthma and Candida

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/69238.php


YouTube video news show about Antibiotics causing Asthma

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF_8NQAAKvA


The Truth about Asthma (talks about dairy aggravating asthma, steroids and Antibiotic therapy aggravating asthma, and candida overgrowth as a cause)

http://www.health-science-spirit.com/asthmatruth.html


Mayo Clinic Study Implicates Fungus As Cause Of Chronic Sinusitis

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/09/990910080344.htm