If you have some type of inflammation, its likely your doctor prescribed you steroids to treat it. Whether you have arthritis, lupus, eczema, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), or any other inflammatory condition, steroids are the drug of choice.
Doctors love steroids because they are very effective at suppressing symptoms. So they make the doctor look good. The pain does go away, but the treatment is often worse than the disease.
Steroids can wipe out your own adrenal glands ability to make hormones. You will then become dependent on taking the drugs. It can take months or years for the glands to recover. Even worse, steroids can cause a whole host of other serious complications. These include weight gain, cataracts, diabetes, osteoporosis, immune suppression, and more.
Would it not be great if there were something that could get your own glands to step up to the plate? Well, now there is!
Researchers from Mount Sinai University and China recently conducted a landmark double-blind, four-week study on 91 asthma patients. They wanted to know if a unique Chinese herbal formula they called ASHMI (Antiasthma Herbal Medicine Intervention) was an effective treatment.
The participants were divided into two separate groups. One group took ASHMI and tablets of a placebo designed to look like the steroid prednisone. The other group took 20 mg prednisone and placebo tablets resembling ASHMI. This way, both groups would have no idea which product they were taking.
Both groups had a significant and about equal improvement in lung function. (The steroid group did only slightly better.) But the best part is that the researchers had measured the subjects own cortisol (steroid) and immune markers before and after treatment. As expected, all subjects were initially deficient in cortisol.
After the treatments, the prednisone group had a significant further reduction in their own cortisol production. The ASHMI group had a significant rise. The meaning? Taking prednisone shuts off the critical hormone production of your adrenals. ASHMI helps restore their function.
Furthermore, the prednisone group showed significant weight gain after just four weeks, while the ASHMI group did not.
The researchers commented that the mechanisms underlying the herbal formulas remarkable effects are largely unknown. But they did admit its likely the results came from the synergistic effects of its ingredients.
Senior researcher Dr. Xiu-Min Li commented, This is the first well-controlled study in which an antiasthma Chinese herbal medicine has been found to be as effective as a corticosteroid drug.
This is absolutely huge news – herbs as potent as steroids in helping asthma. But the results suggest far greater use than for just asthma. The ASHMI group had higher levels of cortisol. Getting your adrenals to make more cortisol on their own is the best thing you can do to modulate any inflammation in your body. It does not matter whether its in your lungs, joints, or elsewhere. Too little adrenal steroids (adrenal fatigue) are as bad as too much. Its a common cause of exhaustion, hypoglycemia, arthritis, inflammation, and metabolic disturbances.
This study strongly suggests that you do not have to be dependent on external sources of potentially dangerous hormones. By restoring your ability to make its own steroids, you wont ever have to worry about the consequences of over medication. When suggested, your body has its own mechanism to make just the right amount. That mechanism is defeated when your doctor gives you hormones by mouth or injection.
Even better news is that the product is now available in the U.S. The name of the product is Phytocort7. It contains three Chinese herbal extracts: Ling-Zhi (Ganoderma lucidum), Ku-Shen (Radix Sophora flavescentis), and Gan-Cao (Radix Glycyrrhiza uralensis). Its available from Allergy Research Group/NutriCology. If you are on steroids, take this information to your integrative physician. I strongly recommend that you have a health care professional monitor any attempt you make to wean yourself off these potent drugs.