My son has asthma but none of the doctors have diagnosed him with the disease....what to do?

Question

My son has been coughing a lot lately and I can hear the difficulty he is having breathing. I have taken him to several doctors and they all say the same thing. I really believe that he has asthma due to giving him breathing treatments that have worked. Is there anything else I can provide my 7 year old to help ease his condition?

Answer 1

You can tell your doctor your theory, and ask him what is wrong if it is not asthma.

Answer 2

I agree with WWD that you should not be so in a hurry to label your child's condition as asthma. It has no bearing on the treatment required and will impact later on when it comes to employment opportunities where your child may not qualify because of his condition. What is important is getting the treatment that works.
Whether you call it cough, asthma, bronchitis, they are all respiratory.
To be able to get the proper treatment, you have to detemine what triggered the coughing: it could be the change in weather, an allergy, or viral (caught a cold from someone). You also have to see the quality of the cough, dry or with phlegm, etc. So the best is still to have a doctor check it out. Best to see a pulmonary (respiratory) doctor.
Lastly, what I know works best is using the nebulizer. It's non-invasive and treatment is faster since it goes straight to the lungs so that breathing is eased more quickly. Also stomach troubles are avoided compared to oral medication

Answer 3

I would look at allergies. When I was seven, I developed pneumonia and it was discovered I was allergic to milk. My parents switched to soy milk. A year later, I had become allergic to that and had pneumonia again! The point is, allergies can and do affect the respiratory system.

Food sensitivities are usually a good place to start looking. You can do this at home, with a great measure of self-control, by starting on a one-day water-only fast, and then slowly adding back into your diet one food item at a time (one per meal). When you have the reaction again, then you know you just added one too many! and what you are allergic to. If you do not wish to fast without food (very difficult for a 7-year-old), start with rice. Extremely few people ever become allergic to rice.

Once you know what allergies you have, eliminate those foods from your diet COMPLETELY for at least six months. Especially for growing children, it is not uncommon for the immune system, given time, to forget its "war" against those proteins, and many children grow out of the allergies. When I say "completely"--it means not even as much of that food as a crumb.

Milk is the most common allergen. Milk also increases mucous production in the body, so if you have a respiratory illness, that's a good one to eliminate from the start. The body is allergic to the proteins, so "milk" means: milk, cream, cheese, butter, yogurt, etc. as well as the following ingredients on food labels: sodium caseinate, calcium caseinate, casein, milk solids, whey, etc.

To find a better doctor, find one that deals with either allergies or toxicities. Many mainstream doctors know little about these two specialties and will try to prescribe drugs which mask the symptoms while not addressing their root cause.

If the doctor does allergy testing, ask for the blood test known as "RAS" testing. The skin tests simply are not as accurate, are more invasive, and leave scars.

Hope this helps! And good for you for doing your research! Too many gullible people just accept their doctor's say-so. Doctors aren't perfect, just like the rest of us!

Answer 4

hello I had the same thing happen to me with my child about the doctors. you can start with his food you can start with taking away foods like peanut butter,oranges strawberry's, some sea foods like shrimp and when he has a cold take away the cheese.and milk that Will trigger the asthma also and sometimes pasta will also trigger it but you can take him to see a allergie doctor and talk to them about asthma don't give up you will find the right doctor.and also no rugs, cats,dogs, in the house and in the summer time get an ac for his bedroom that helps too and at night keep the window up just a little to get some air in there. you will see it gets better, good luck from a mother to a mother . p.s let me know how things work out for your child o.k

Answer 5

You're in a hurry to tag him with a diagnosis that will make it very difficult for him to get insurance or join the military, among others, when he's grown. If he gets treated as if he had asthma, then the name isn't going to make a lot of difference. I don't see the advantage of doctor-shopping until you get one to say what you want to hear if there's no advantage to your son. If need be, I'm sure his doctors will arrange pulmonary function tests when the time is ripe. I'm assuming the "several doctors" you're talking about include several visits with his primary care doctor, and not just a series of episodic-care visits to doctors who don't know him.

Answer 6

try changing his diet. try cutting down on dairy products and a lot of proccessed foods and not to mention junk foods. what kind of doctors did you go see? try a certified holitic doctor, it may cost more but it is worth it. but until then try changing his diet to more natural foods and not a lot of red meat. most times your daily food intake can make a difference in your well being

Answer 7

does he do any wheezing? does he get dizzy? does he faint periodically?
the think that worked for me when i was that age was a vaporizer. the reason was that my lungs grew slower than my body. and later came to normal.
sounds like the same thiong i had.
so do not fret it. everything will be ok!!

Answer 8

Well now, the doctors don't think he has it? It certainly is a good idea to ask a bunch of us on the internet, who are imminently more qualified to diagnose, then they are. I think if you take him to enough doctors one will eventually tell you what you want to hear.

Why people like you are allowed to reproduce is beyond me.

Answer 9

See if your primary dr will send him to a respiratory dr. To check him out.