If you are alarmed by medicine's hit and miss approach to asthma with dangerous drugs, there are many sensible approaches that may lessen or even eliminate your symptoms. As Leo Galland writes: "If an effective allergy desensitization technique is used and as much environmental control as possible is exercised, drug free treatment is virtually always possible in children."

Find an experienced clinical ecologist or allergist who can find out what you are allergic to. This may mean going to someone who is familiar with exclusion diets or, in the case of airborne triggers, EPD desensitization methods which will locate your allergies with far more accuracy than the old prick test method .Avoid any food or ingested allergens. That particularly includes milk products. Use a calcium supplement if you don't add enough calcium from other sources.

Add the following supplements to your daily diet: vitamin B6 50-100 mg, linseed (1-2 Tbs per day) or walnut oil (2 to 4 Tbs) plus evening primrose oil (4-8 capsules); vitamin C (at least 500 mg );' zinc (10-20 mg ); vitamin E (at least 600 IUs); and magnesium.

Follow a diet low in sugar, animal fat and additives, and high in grains and vegetables.

Take regular gentle aerobic exercise like swimming or walking, which reduces symptoms.

Dr Galland recommends that asthmatic children have the following supplements, which play a role in assisting or curing asthma:

High doses of essential fatty acids. (I Tbs of linseed oil and 1 Tbs of cod liver oil or 3 g of MAX EPA per day). Magnesium: 3mg per pound of body weight per day. Calcium: 600 mg per day if dairy products are eliminated. High doses of vitamin C (2 gms a day). B6: at least 200 mg a day. B12: 1 mg twice a day for six weeks.