What should Asthma UK do to help people with allergies?

Asthma UK should look at the strong links between hidden hyperventilation & the triad of excema, hayfever & rhinitis as well as anaphalaxis. Hidden hyperventilation is where one breathes excessively depending on level of activity. At rest, one should not hear or see (use of shoulders or upper chest to breathe) that you are breathing. People with asthma &/or allergies should retrain themselves to breathe through their nose whilst talking, sleeping & exercising as well as coughing, sneezing through their nose rather than mouth (vastly reduces spread of infections too), fight their coughs, sniffs,snorts and sighs & cough through their nose. NB in and out breath both through the nose. For people who have found nasal breathing helpful (just switching to nasal breathing gives about 25-30% of gains from buteyko breathing technique) they have noticed a huge reduction in this triad of seemingly unrelated side-effects. If the correct method & exercises are then followed to reduce the volume of air breathing slowly and carefully to a new rate (diaphragm breathing rather than the typical upper chest breathing) that becomes the bodies new "normal" rate then often people no longer suffer from these symptoms & indeed their asthma. Whilst the results from trials are both disputed & uneven, there is great merit in further pursuit of a solution in this area. More people should be informed that the correct way to breathe, without question is through your nose. It is amazing that the new "normal" way of breathing is through the mouth. This reduces the nose to an empty vessel that quickly becomes blocked by mucus build-up & the lack of regular breathing encourages polyps to fill the void. This leads to further sinus problems, a belief that ones nose is permanently blocked & the cycle of ever deteriorating symptoms & consequent spiral in treatment required continues. We should encourage people to try breathe less not more, at a reduced volume not deeper.Exercise is not encouraged enough!

Something that could be very helpful for people with asthma and for parents/carers of children with asthma would be to have guidance about when they should be asking for specialist allergy diagnosis and advice. For example, lots of people, it seems to me, soldier on with more than one conditon in the atopic triad of asthma, eczema and hayfever but never really get to the bottom of what is driving these conditions or are properly informed about the implications of allergy for asthma control. This can result in poorer asthma control and, in a few cases, might leave people vulnerable to a fatal attack, as reported in this sad case of a young mother's death in 2005 - http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/bt-woman/i-vowed-to-raise-him-as-my-own-14376826.h tml . She had been thought to be mildly asthmatic but in the days before the fatal attack was apparently struggling a bit due to hot weather-induced hayfever. A GP relative recently attended a paediatric allergy/asthma event in Scotland which included education about why/when atopic co-morbidities need to be taken seriously and when referrals for specialist advice and diagnosis are warranted. She found it very helpful but in Scotland, as in the rest of the UK, there is serious underprovision in secondary and tertiary allergy care, as documented by the recent Review of Allergy Services in Scotland. So, perhaps Asthma UK could help on two fronts: informing about when an allergy diagnosis should be sought and also aiding the efforts of other allergy organisations and the National Allergy Strategy Group (NASG) to promote the case for better allergy provision in primary, secondary and tertiary care.