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Ions for
Asthma
Ions
are small particles that take on an electrical charge.
In nature we tend to find between a few hundred to a few
thousand of these ions per cubic centimeter. The small
particles that take on this charge are either negatively
charged, positively charged or neutral. In a cubic
centimeter of air out over a grass field, we find the
ratio is almost balanced between negative ions and
positive ions. In other words we are breathing
quantities of electricity.
Positive ions are known to make asthma victims worse.
Positive ion winds such as the Chinook Wind in Calgary,
Alta., Canada and the Santa Ana Winds in Southern
California are known to coincide with Asthma attacks.
There are many areas around the would known for positive
ion winds (times when the ion balance has more positive
ions per cubic centimeter than negative ions).
A
Doctor treating burn victims with negative ion
generators found that those patients who also had
respiratory problems - chronic bronchitis or asthma -
all reported that negative ion therapy helped them
breath more easily. With these findings the Doctor
started research into the effects of ions on respiratory
ills. This research was carried out at the Northeastern
Hospital, at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate
Hospital, and the Frankford Hospital in Philadelphia. He
found 63% of patients suffering from hay fever or
bronchial asthma "have experienced partial or total
relief" because of negative ion therapy. One hospital
doctor who worked on the project said later, " They come
in sneezing, eyes watering, nose itching, worn out from
lack of sleep, so miserable they can hardly walk.
Fifteen minutes in front of the negative ion machine
and they feel so much better they don't even want to
leave."
In
Britain two Oxford University statisticians conducted a
study among 100 victims of asthma, bronchitis, and hay
fever chosen at random from a list of people who had
purchased negative ion generators in the hope that it
would help their problems. In the end their report was
based on interviews with only 74 of the 100. They found
that 18 of 24 asthmatics; 13 of 17 bronchitis sufferers;
11 of 12 hay fever victims; and 6 of 10 people afflicted
with nasal catarrh reported that negative ion generators
had noticeably improved their condition. A few
claimed the generator had cured them.
Brazilian Hospitals have commonly used ionizing devices
for the treatment of breathing problems, including
allergies, following a test involving 36 children with
asthmatic allergies. All of them had consistent and in
some cases crippling problems before taking negative ion
therapy; during the treatment only one of them suffered
an allergy attack and afterward all were reportedly
cured, at least to the point that they no longer
suffered problems so long as they took part in
occasional negative ion therapy sessions.
In 1966
at a hospital in Jerusalem, doctors performed a series
of tests on thirty- eight infants between two and
twelve months old. All suffered to about the same degree
from respiratory problems. They were divided into two
groups of nineteen, one kept as a control group in a
ward without any ion charge and the other where a
negative ion generator was in use.
The
researchers reported that negative ions without any
other treatment - that is, no drugs - seemed to cure
attacks of asthma and bronchitis more quickly than
drugs, antibiotics included. They also observed that
there were none of the "adverse side effects" frequently
found when treating such children with drugs. They
concluded that the children treated with negative ions
were less prone to "rebound attacks" (relapses). As to
objectivity, the scientific report said that the tests
"demonstrated that the atmospheric ions have an effect
on infants, especially those suffering from asthmatic
bronchitis." Less scientifically, they found that
babies didn't cry as often and as loudly when they
were breathing negative ions as they did in normal air.
And there is nothing subjective about a bawling baby.
Humidity and Asthma
In
humid areas - New York in high summer, for instance, or
in Toronto - part of the familiar discomfort is caused
by the fact that air becomes ion-depleted. Really humid
days are murder for anyone suffering from asthma or any
respiratory allergy, and the fact that such people find
it difficult to breath in hot, humid air may have less
to do with the amount of oxygen in the air then with the
massive negative ion depletion. Air electricity is
quickly conducted to the ground by the moisture in the
air, and what negative ions there are attach themselves
to particles of moisture and dust and lose their charge.
We have seen how positive ions make breathing more
difficult and reduce the body's ability to absorb
oxygen; and how negative ions help breathing and improve
oxygen absorption. (*NOTE; DO NOT USE HUMIDIFIERS OR
VAPORIZERS WITH NEGATIVE ION GENERATORS. NEGATIVE IONS
WILL ATTACH TO WATER MOLECULES FROM THE HUMIDIFIER OR
VAPORIZER AND CREATE POSITIVE IONS. THE STUDIES HAVE
SHOWN THIS EFFECT.)
Pollen, Pollution and Asthma
The ion
count is always low in cities where there's precious
little open ground to generate them. Pollution makes a
bad situation worse, since it tends to deplete the
negative ion count even more. The high pollen count
in certain parts of North America each fall cuts even
further into the negative ion count, since pollen has
the same effect as dust. The end result is that the
total ion count in cities is always down to what many
scientists consider perilously low levels. As if that
weren't bad enough, the normal 5 - 4 ratio of positive
ions to negative ions is distorted so that people are,
in a sense, victims of positive ion poisoning.
Central Air Conditioning and Heating
Hot or
cool air forced through the duct work of most central
heating and air- conditioning systems sets up friction
that results in the loss of almost all the negative
ions and also draws most of the positive ions out of
the air as well. Then comes the coup-de-grace: This air
with some positive and virtually no negative ions is
forced out through vents in to rooms, offices and
passages - and as it passes through the vents more
friction is set up that generates an additional overload
of positive ions. What finally comes out of most heating
or air- conditioning outlets in the offices we work in
and the rooms we live in is likely to be an overload of
positive ions which will upset the mental and physical
equilibrium of everyone, not only those of us who are
ion sensitive.
Just
how bad these systems are depends to a great extent on
their design and the material from which the duct work
is made. The design or layout of the whole system is
crucial. At bends and curves and right-angle junctions
the friction between ducts and air increases and has the
effect of increasing the number of positive ions in the
air. What comes out of the heating and cooling vents in
any centrally heated or air-conditioned building is air
that is not only low in total ions, but also has a heavy
positive ion count when measured against the almost
negligible quantity of negative ions. It is because of
the design of this duct work that some parts of a
building may be more "uncomfortable" to work in then
others. That depends on whether you're on the receiving
end of air that has passed a particular section of duct
work, where there is a sharp bend near the outlet - as
the air is forced around bends and corners there is
greater friction and a consequent increase in positive
ions.
Asthma and Synthetics
Asthmatics or people with emphysema and other
respiratory ills often suffer additional agonies because
of the cloth they wear, and are just as often unaware of
the reason why they suffer. Dr. Bernard Watson,
professor of medical electronics at Britain's St.
Bartholomew's Teaching Hospital in London, says: "Changing
the immediate unhealthy ion environment to help
asthmatic means changing everything, clothes, sheets,
furniture - just everything." One of his patients a
girl at that time of fourteen, who had begun to suffer
from serve migraine because of clothing - and then cured
it herself. When she grew to adolescence and began to
wear, with great pride, nylon bras and panties favored
by most women, she began to suffer from occasional
headaches for the first time in her life. When she
graduated to slips and night-dresses and pretty nylon
blouses, she became a full-fledged migraine sufferer.
Her local general practitioner could offer neither
explanation nor help beyond suggesting the onset of
menstruation as a cause. But the girl was bright enough
to associate the clothes of blooming womanhood with her
problem and promptly abandoned the feminine underwear
and nightdresses. Now her clothes are of cotton, which
is the only fiber that creates no charge at all, and of
natural fibers like wool, which carry little charge of
either kind. However, once migraine has taken root it is
not easy to cure and Dr. Watson is still treating the
girl, in part by suggesting to her parents that certain
items of furniture in their home should be removed.
The
Director of the Danish Air Ionization Institute,
Christian Bach (electrical engineer) has studied the
clothes and environments of asthmatics and others who
suffer from positive ion poisoning, then pinpoints the
offending fabrics and articles that are throwing the ion
effect out of balance. Bach and his colleagues have
worked with many hospitals in treating many victims of
asthma and other respiratory ills.
Bach
tells of what has become a classic case history
involving a woman who had asthma in her own apartment
but not in the homes of friends. Even a negative ion
generator was of no help, so Bach conducted what must
have been one of the oddest investigations in history:
Was the culprit the furniture, the television set, the
bedding, the lamp shades? Bach found that the lady's
taste ran mostly to modern synthetic fabrics. However,
that alone was insufficient to explain the problem, so
Back began cross-examining the woman about her
housekeeping. He found that her furniture was treated
with cellulose and silicone-based furniture finishes.
Laboratory tests proved that such finishes, when rubbed
with polishing rags and dusters, produce a positive
charge. Then he visited the friends in whose home her
asthma condition disappeared. There he found that the
furniture was hand polished with old-fashioned wax and
elbow grease, which produced no static charge at all.
Bach coated the victim's furniture with an anti-static
compound, told her to buy antique furniture without
modern wood treatments, and her asthma attacks ceased.
In all,
Bach had by 1967 treated almost 1,000 hay fever and
asthma cases whose problems were cured or eased by his
"passive therapy" approach. in one case, he says, a man
became an asthma victim because his wife bought two new
lampshades that led to overproduction of positive ions;
In another instance several members of the same family
became sufferers because their new television set had a
teak cabinet that had been treated with cellulose. He
also. He also tells of one instance in which he was
called in to help save the fortunes of a chicken farmer.
The farmer had two monstrous chicken houses each housing
20,000 chickens. In one of them between 150 and 200
chickens died every week. Bach found that both chicken
houses were of identical design and construction, except
that the one where the chickens died had a roof lined
with sheets of plastic while the other had a roof lined
of wood. Whenever there was a change in whether the
death rate went up. Bach concluded that when the whether
changes affected air electricity the plastic stimulated
the production of positive ion overdoses. He treated the
roof with anti-static substance, and within weeks the
chicken mortality rate was normal in both hen coops.
Bach
says like all Scandinavians, the Danes keep their homes
spotless, forever flourishing dusters, wielding brooms,
pushing vacuum cleaners, and otherwise raising clouds of
dust to which negative ions are attracted, and so
disappear as physiologically active small ions. It is it
would seem, healthier to be a sloppy housecleaner then a
meticulous one. At the International Ion Research
Conference in Philadelphia in 1961. Dr. Hansell ended
his speech by saying that to prevent a buildup of
potentially harmful ions the person who comes home from
work should promptly take his shoes off and walk around
the carpets in their stocking feet. And he added, "My
suggestion to the house cleaner is that it is very well
known fact that it is very difficult to get a charge
from a dirty surface. They should not, I suggest be too
house proud."
Respiratory Tract and Ions
In the
mid-1960s, Experiments showed that the cilia of the
trachea, or windpipes, of small animals are stimulated
by negative ions and depressed by positive ions. Human
cilia, like those of small animals are microscopic hairs
that maintain a whip like motion of about 100 beats per
minute while cleaning the air we inhale of dust and
pollen and other matter that should not reach the lungs.
Subjected to tobacco smoke, which absorbs negative ions,
the cilia slow down. Tobacco smoke plus positive ions
make this slow-down take place from three to ten times
more quickly than does smoke alone. An overdose of
negative ions, however, neutralizes the effect of smoke
on the cilia. Although this experiment took place in a
laboratory and involved mice, rats, and rabbits, the
implications are clear: Smoking and other forms
pollution that absorb negative ions may also damage the
ability of the cilia to clean the air that finally ends
up in the lungs. Does that mean their is a relationship
between positive ions and the incidence of lung cancer,
particularly in smokers? As Bach points out, that is one
of the many things about ionization we don't yet know,
though scientists are investing the relationship.
The
effect of ions on respiration is more obvious. The U.S.
experimenters Windsor and Becket gave sixteen volunteer
overdoses of positive ions for just 20 minutes at a time
and all of them developed dry throats, husky voices,
headaches, and itchy or obstructed noses. Five of the
volunteers were tested for total breathing capacity, and
it was found that a positive ion overdose reduced that
capacity by 30 percent. Exposed to negative ions for ten
minutes , the volunteers maximum breathing capacity was
unaffected. What is significant here is that negative
ions did not effect the amount of air breathed, but
positive ions made breathing more difficult.
Negative ion generators are not a cure all. They do
cause the body to convert excess serotonin (the
antagonist for most of the problems) into a harmless
chemical called 5HA ( 5-HIAA ).
If you
do have respiratory difficulties and use a negative ion
generator in your bedroom at night beware that the
negative ion generator will keep you alert and awake
longer then you might want.
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