Life Battle

Today, for the first time in more than 2 months, I feel healthy.

I've been sick the past several weeks with bad asthma brought on by a minor component of seasonal allergies and a major component due to particulates and/or mold being stirred up at my workplace due to rennovations in the building. I hung in as long as possible, but ended up being out sick for a full week in mid-October.

I'm also getting the allergy shots, and perhaps I am less able to deal with the allergens at this time. Several factors may be in play.

During my time out, I found help from Fred Pescatore, M.D.'s book, The Allergy and Asthma Cure. I'm now following his 3-month nutritional program and have tapered off from Advair Diskus because I think it's been part of the problem. Dr. Pescatore writes this about the class of drugs that Advair belongs to: "There is now some concern that there is a relationship between use of these drugs and dying from asthma." [The component Serevent is the suspect drug, according to the Advair commercial I just saw.]

Both my regular doctor and allergist put me on the strongest Advair (up from mid-strength) in mid-September and the month after that was horrendeous. I felt I was heading towards 'dying from asthma'; twice I almost called 911 it was so bad.

The nutritional 3-month program tackles yeast overgrowth that can happen with people who, among other things, take steroids. Both my rescue inhaler and Advair are steroids. I've also had varied symptoms of yeast problems for a while now.

The program is similar to the Atkins diet, except I can't have anything containing sugar or yeast. It's challenging, but I'm hopeful that it can contribute to my overall wellness.

I'm hoping that I'll be able to add exercise in soon and to have the energy and focus for the job search which is still necessary to get out of my harmful work environment.