High-risk patients use both conventional and alternative therapies for asthma, Johns Hopkins nurses report, even though some alternatives could be risky.
In-depth interviews with a group of low-income, mostly female, African Americans, all of whom had severe asthma, revealed all participants used some form of alternative medicine in combination with conventional medicine.
Writing in this month?s issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School Nursing researcher Maureen George, notes that “while most subjects trusted prescription asthma medicine, there was a preference for integrating [alternatives] with conventional asthma treatment.”
They stated beliefs that alternative treatment was “more natural” than manufactured agents, could reduce the need for prescriptions, provided protection from illness, and offered some hope of a cure. While participants denied replacing their prescription medication, 63 percent also reported they had not stuck totheir prescription regimen.
They also did not disclose these therapies to their doctor.
Alternatives included ingesting camphor-based or mentholated topical salves, dissolving cough lozenges ? up to 10 at a time ? in herbal tea, and taking Echinacea, an herb that could provoke allergic reactions.
