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 The
Simplest Asthma Solution
By Drs. Ralph & Lahni DeAmicis
During the Democratic convention the Reverend Al Sharpton quoted a shocking
statistic: One third of the children in Harlem suffer from asthma. This
shouldn’t be completely surprising since asthma cases have been consistently
increasing over the years, especially in the cities, escalating recently during
the rollback of some key environmental laws, but it is a trend we must turn
back.
While parents have only limited control over the environment where they raise
their children, there is a personal environmental decision they can make that
may dramatically reduce the symptoms their children experience. It all comes
down to detergent, and not just any detergent. It is the detergent that they use
to wash their children’s clothes and sheets. The biggest selling detergents in
the United States contain large amounts of irritating phosphates, which are not
only a major irritant to the skin and respiratory system, but a source of
serious pollution, and a component in global warming.
If you are wondering if your laundry detergent contains phosphates just read the
label, it is listed there. In most industrialized countries phosphate detergents
are outlawed for good reason, but in the United States the chemical industry has
a strong lobby and cheap phosphates help manufacturers keep their costs low, so
their use continues. The next time you walk though the laundry detergent section
of your supermarket, take a deep breath and notice how much the smell irritates
your nose and lungs.
What kinds of detergent contain low, or no phosphates? Baby detergent! No mother
would dream of washing their newborn’s clothes and sheets in the family’s
powdered detergent! That would give their baby’s delicate skin rashes, not to
mention an increase in crying and crankiness. There are many readily available
natural detergents that are phosphate-free and it’s worth the time to find
them.
We have noticed tremendous improvements for both children and adults when their
clothes and sheets are consistently washed in a phosphate-free detergent. By
itself this change may not alleviate all of the symptoms of asthma and those
related skin rashes, but it clearly removes an insidious irritant from the
equation.
It might be helpful to explain why this simple change is so effective. Testing
in Europe shows that, while sleeping, people are between two thousand and ten
thousand times more sensitive to chemical and electromagnetic pollution than
while they are awake. When a child’s pajamas are washed with a chemical
irritant and they sleep on bedclothes containing those same toxins, their immune
system is challenged nightly, during a time when they are most vulnerable. Their
body’s nutritional reserves are consumed in that battle and they are less able
to defend themselves from the pollutants they encounter during their day. Asthma
and allergies are not produced by a single irritant, but by an accumulation of
minor irritants that eventually overwhelm the body’s ability to adapt. It is
not a huge leap to imagine that removing a respiratory irritant from the
sleeping environment, where a person spends one third of their time, is going to
produce an improvement in a child’s ability to breathe.
Drs. Ralph & Lahni DeAmicis are Naturopathic Physicians. Their educational
program, The 10 Minute Herbalist, seeks to put the knowledge of everyday good
health into everyone’s hands. Information about their program and publications
is available at www.SpaceAndTime.com.
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