Asthma

My son has had asthma since he was a toddler. He is now 14 and when ever he gets a runny nose, asthma is triggered. It is sometimes triggered by exercise especially when the air is cold. Hence he always carries ventolin, and is supposed to be on preventative through out winter. Though like all hygiene with male teenagers, he slackens off and 'forgets'. The asthma hits and the reality sets in to what happens when you 'forget' too many times. Already this season he has had an early morning visit from the ambulance, and then again last weekend, he came through during the night stating that he couldn't breathe. The hospital has given us cortisone tablets, so I got him straight on to those for the perscribed three days, and as promised he recovered quickly. But I don't want the cycle of puffers and drugs to continue to dictate his well being.
Eighteen months ago I attended a seminar by Sue Denegate on how our food is contributing to our health. I attended for work as there are well know links between food and behavour and autism, but what I heard astounded me. Why do we consume all the garbage that manufacturers call food? Why have we allowed our food to be polluted with chemicals, and even more questionable, is why are we feeding it to our kids?
Hence after that seminar, I read the labels of everything I bought. It became time consuming and tedious initially, but then I got into the pattern of knowing which brands were ok. Over the course of six months or so, I couldn't see any great improvement. James still had the occassional bout of asthma and as the rest of us had no obvious effects, it seemed so not important as time wore on. So although we have stuck to alot of the newly found brands, we have slackened off and allowed cost and whims dictate what we ate.
However winter has now hit and as I have mentioned, James has had two major asthma attacks. And I have had a reality jolt. If I feed chemicals to my kids, their health will suffer.
Food intolerances are not like food allergies. The consumer doesn't get an instant reaction, instead it is a gradual build up, hence why instant results won't be seen. However last winter, James had no trips to hospital, no cortisone, so in reflecion and in comparrison to this year, the low additive/preservative diet was working. We hadn't cut out on the salicilytes as that was too hard, though I was aware of them and fortunately James is a huge fan of tin pears anyway.lol
So last night I once again took forever in the supermarket making careful selections, and yes the total cost was up, but that is nothing compared to the cost of feeding them chemicals.
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