Integrative therapies for people with asthma

Asthma is a complex disease with many phenotypes. Its definition and treatment by a number of cultures round the world may play a role in the efficacy of such treatments. Western medicine defines asthma based on inflammation, obstruction, and mucus production which are reversible with treatment. A number of studies focusing on natural products, mind-body medicine, manipulative therapy, and others have not been able to reproducibly demonstrate efficacy in treating asthma. This may be due to a number of factors including methodology, study design, and-most importantly-the definition of asthma used for each study. The Western definition of asthma may differ greatly from the definition used by those cultures which originally created the therapies used in studies of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Because of this difference, the outcome of the studies may not be an accurate reflection of the ability of these therapies to treat the disease process they were originally designed to treat. Future studies in CAM will likely need to address these differences.