Asthma and COPD

It often comes as a surprise that asthma and COPD may be helped by a real food, low carbohydrate way of life. Obviously if you lose weight, you may help your body to move around with less effort, and so you can exercise, but that may not be the only factor at play. There is something about how the low carbohydrate way of eating and drinking (less sugar, less starch, less alcohol) helps the immune system. There are theories that certain substances harm the lining of the gut and cause something called leaky gut. This leaky gut then lets in substances that harm our immune systems. The immune systems then malfunction and we are less able to handle infections, and may also react to substances in the environment with wheeze, cough and other symptoms such as runny nose, eyes and sneezing.
I once had a patient who came in about a sore throat and while she was there I noticed she had not ordered her asthma inhalers in about 10 months. Prior to that her asthma had been poorly controlled and she had needed inhalers every month. I asked her if anything had changed about her life and she mentioned 2 things. One was that she followed a type of low carbohydrate diet called the 5:2, and the other was that she went out regularly walking with her new dog.
The evidence for exercise and asthma is well established. The evidence for diet and asthma is less so, but if it works for you, and you have less or no inhalers and feel as if your asthma has resolved, I am sure you will not have any concerns about the lack of randomized controlled trials.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0072701/.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4137988/
http://dralexrinehart.com/nutrition-benefits/does-leaky-gut-exist/– quite a nice review and better than the NHS one IMHO.