Intrinsic (exercise-induced) asthma is caused when the body activates the mammalian dive reflex – a reflex that shuts down the airways and produces mucus in the throat and sinuses
The body has two emergency response systems.
- The more commonly used is the adrenaline response, also known as the fight or flight response, or the sympathetic mode response.
- The mammalian dive reflex is supposed to kick in in cases of potential drowning or smoke inhalation.
However, if for any reason, the adrenaline response is not functional, the body will institute the mammalian dive reflex instead.
We have recognized since the 1980s that intrinsic asthma creates the same physiological and chemical changes in the body as the mammalian dive reflex. What was not understood was the reason for the body using this reflex.
Recent research in 2019 discovered that, every person with intrinsic asthma presents with an error in the currents that should flow to the adrenal gland. This error is always located somewhere on the current known in Chinese medicine as the Bladder Channel, somewhere between the top of the head and the back of the knee.
During an increased need for adrenaline,the Bladder channel carries an increased amperage. This increased amperage causes a switch at the back of the knee to open, shunting the current across the knee over to the Kidney channel. This creates a short-cut for the current with increased amperage to get to the adrenal gland. The Kidney channel flows directly to the Kidney and the adjacent adrenal gland. When this process is activated, the UB current does not flow all the way to the feet. This shunt process is referred to in Chinese medicine as “The First Divergence” (a divergence away from parasympathetic mode).
However, if there is any sort of blockage in the Bladder channel preventing the flow of this current to the knee, the increased-adrenaline response will not occur. The body, unable to use its primary emergency response, will instead use the mammalian dive reflex – causing the airways to close, and the throat and sinuses be coated in mucus.
To treat intrinsic asthma, the location of the electrical error in the UB channel – or in the knee – must be located. The error is usually caused by an incompletely-healed injury. The injury usually occurred within a year prior to the onset of asthma.
How to learn how to locate the electrical error
In order to locate the spot where the UB current or the back of the knee current is blocked, one must learn how to feel the currents.
Free instruction on learning to feel the currents by hand is available at
www.pdRecovery.org. Click on Publications. Click on Tracking the Dragon, Chapter One.
Most people can master this technique within about 30 hours of practice. I have taught classes in learning this technique, and nearly every student can learn to even differentiate the varied sensations given off by the different currents by the end of the fifteen week semester. The students who practice the most outside of class master this technique the most quickly, which indicates that this is not some strange esoteric technique that can only be learned by people with some magical gift. Instead, it is like anything that must be learned through practice. I often compare it to tuning a violin. Students who are new to the violin insist they will never be able to hear the subtle differences in pitch. And yet, within a few years, all violin students can tune their instruments. (This analogy is losing its effectiveness, as more and more students now use electric tuners. But still.)
I have observed that people who are taking anti-depression or anti-anxiety medications might have trouble learning to feel these electrical currents. All my other students have been able to master this technique.
After you find the location of the electrical blockage, the area needs to be treated so that the injury can finish healing. The best technique for triggering the healing is Yin Tui Na, a very, very simple holding technique that is described completely in the book Yin Tui Na: Hands-on healing for traumatic injury. This book is available for free download at www.pdRecovery.org . Click on Publications, click on Yin Tui Na.
If for some reason a friend of family member is not able to perform the Yin Tui Na holding technique, the most qualified healing arts technician would be a craniosacral therapist. Look online to find someone near you who does this type of work. Please refer the craniosacral therapist to the Yin Tui Na book, as the patient will usually not respond to the basic type of craniosacral therapy. They will more likely respond to Yin Tui Na, which is a less invasive type of physical therapy.
As a note: in a relatively small research study, which started in January 2020 and had to be stopped due to the onset of COVID-19 and the lock-down, it was noted that nearly 50% of the people with intrinsic asthma had an unhealed shoulder injury at the front of the shoulder.
This injury, usually incurred in childhood, was causing a current on the front of the shoulder (the Heart channel) to shunt over the shoulder to the backside of the shoulder area, near the scapula, instead of traveling down the arm. When this displaced current reached the shoulder blade, it flowed under the scapula (closer to the ribs than the skin). The Bladder channel is supposed to flow under the scapula. The nearby Small Intestine channel is supposed to flow over the scapula (closer to the skin than to the ribs). The Small Intestine channel, which derives from the Heart channel, is missing in people with this injury pattern.
The wayward current created by the front-of-the-shoulder injury displaces the UB channel, which is deflected elsewhere, somewhere – each person’s response is different. (All healthy people are healthy in the same way. All unhealthy people are unhealthy in their own way. – Paraphrase of Leo Tolstoy’s opening line of Anna Karenina).
In the case of a shoulder injury, in order to restore correct flow of the UB channel, the injury, not the UB channel, must be addressed. Please see the chapter on treating shoulder injuries, in the Yin Tui Na book.
The second most common location for a UB channel blockage is in the neck. If the asthma began after a neck injury, (often from gymnastics class or some other sports-related injury), please have a craniosacral therapist work with the patient. They are trained to be extremely careful with necks. Or, if you cannot find someone to do this work for you and a friend or family member must do the work, please do not ever force any movement in the neck. Instead, just do the supportive holding of Yin Tui Na until the neck itself feels safe enough to move on its own. You provide support so that the body can heal itself. Do not ever try to force movement in someone’s neck.
For blockages in the UB channel that are located in areas other than the scapula or shoulder area, Yin Tui Na treatment should be applied to the area of the blockage.
The error in the channel that prevents current from getting to the adrenal gland might be located along the head-to-knee portion of the UB channel, OR at the knee (from an old knee injury or knee surgery) OR in the portion of the Kidney channel that extends from the knee up into the groin. The electrical error is most often found in the UB channel, but the other two areas, the knee itself and the thigh portion of the Kidney channel, must also be considered, especially if no blockages are found on the UB channel.
More technical information about this syndrome and its treatment can be found in the Fall 2019 issue of top-ranked, peer-reviewed The Journal of Chinese Medicine.
A word of warning: most acupuncturists are not familiar with detecting errors in currents (sometimes called channels, or (mistakenly) meridians). These techniques are not taught in most schools of acupuncture. Teaching about the electrical currents that are the basis of Chinese medicine have been outlawed by the officially-atheist government of the People’s Republic of China since the mid twentieth century. These “invisible, and therefore mystical currents” are considered too Taoist, therefore too religious. A doctor of Chinese medicine in China will be sent to “camp” (prison) for teaching medical applications of channel theory. In China, the currents/channels can only be legally discussed as historical superstitions.
However, some western-trained acupuncturists do learn these techniques in their schools, or in continuing education classes.
The odds of you finding an acupuncturist who is trained in this model are very small. You are probably going to be better off learning to do these techniques on your own, at least for locating the site of the electrical error. Once you’ve located it, you might seek help for treatment of the unhealed injury from a craniosacral therapist.
Case study
Five years ago, shortly after my article on intrinsic asthma was published in The Journal of Chinese Medicine, a parent of a ten-year-old patient with severe, chronic asthma, who was hospitalized regularly since early childhood for life-threatening asthmatic breathing failure, contacted me. She asked me to travel to England to help her son. I suggested that, for research purposes and the greater good, treating her son herself would be more helpful. I said I would make myself available for any questions that might arise, so that I could improve my instructions on treating asthma.
Working from the material in chapter one of the book Tracking the Dragon, she quickly mastered the technique of feeling the electrical currents. She found the blockage. Working from the instructions in the Yin Tui Na book, she held the injured areas using the Yin Tui Na techniques. The child has not been hospitalized since. He now uses no medications, and is able to participate in sports.