TIA’s versus Asthmatic Symptoms – When the Symptoms and Answers Aren’t Quite the Same

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My daughter has been taking her herbalist certificate training at an accredited college recognized by both the BC and Federal government of Canada. The main herbology textbook has been a nightmare of 1800’s style medicine, written in 1800’s style English, while having an original copyright date of 1969 and the latest update occurring in 2011. Occasionally, they share information that doesn’t risk harming the patient and actually does the job. Sometimes they share herbal recipes that work to address the condition discussed, but for drastically different reasons than the primary herb’s purported capability. In general, the remedy’s additional herbs are doing the work, not the herb being put forth as the solution to the condition.

Ashley is on the home stretch in dealing with this textbook, just a handful of lessons left before moving on to the final textbook. In a chapter on lung issues, the author of the textbook relates a common mainstream medical misdiagnosis, but misdiagnosed it themselves in their own mother, and treated the apparent symptoms rather than the cause for apparently, the better part of 9 years of the mom’s affliction.

The condition’s symptoms being addressed by the author, described what my son has had to deal with off and on since entering the work world, a condition mainstream medicine couldn’t identify properly, but that a medical definition in an integrative medicine article would hit square on the head. Since addressing my son’s Transient Ischemic Attacks as the TIA’s they are, rather than the asthmatic symptoms they presented with, his bouts have all but disappeared altogether! What follows is part my writing and part my daughter’s writing as she answered a question in her lesson covering the author’s misdiagnosis of her mother’s condition.

From the textbook:

Asthma
The symptoms of this disease are well known. The spasmodic attacks from which the person suffers are most distressing to see. Frequently the asthmatic person will not suffer from any symptoms until after lying in bed for a time, and then breathing becomes so difficult that it is impossible to lie down. There is a constricted feeling across the chest; the wheezing sound as the sufferer seeks to obtain air becomes in some cases a cause of alarm to those who are around.
There is a severe cough that is the body’s way to remove the mucous from the lungs.

Ashley wrote:

What the textbook describes is better known as a Transient Ischemic Attack (TIA) and it does have some similarities with asthma. It is, however, not asthma at all. It is a heart disease. The recommendations given by the textbook only handle the external symptoms and not the causes as TIAs are not asthma!

The Mayo Clinic describes causes of a TIA this way:

The cause of a transient ischemic attack is similar to the cause of an ischemic stroke, which is the most common type of stroke. In an ischemic stroke, a blood clot blocks the blood supply to part of the brain. In a TIA, unlike a stroke, the blockage is brief and there is no permanent damage.

The blockage that occurs during a TIA often results from a buildup of cholesterol-containing fatty deposits called plaques in an artery. This is known as atherosclerosis. The buildup also may occur in an artery’s branches that supply oxygen and nutrients to the brain.

EMedicineHealth shares:

-they also may develop dizziness, loss of balance, and/or coordination,
-difficulty walking,

Dizziness is often a sign the brain isn’t getting enough oxygen. MedShun out of New Jersey, shares the following:

A stroke can cause weakness in the muscles used for breathing.
A stroke can affect the part of the brain responsible for controlling breathing and can weaken the muscles that help with breathing. This includes both the inspiratory and expiratory muscles. The stroke’s effects on these muscles can cause a reduction in the effectiveness of respiratory effort and cardiovascular fitness and exercise capacity. It can also lead to a higher incidence of pneumonia due to reduced cough strength.

Ashley continues her response to her textbook:

All asthma is spasmodic. It is the irritation of the mucosal membranes of the respiratory system. This irritation can be caused by exertion, allergens, cold/dry air or warm/wet air due to mold spores in the lungs.

This comes from a person who has family members that suffer from TIAs and asthmatic attacks, not often in the same people. (my condolences to the textbook author, that sucks, we ran into modern medical that doesn’t know how to deal or diagnose it unless it is happening in that very moment and had to figure out how to deal with it)

To elaborate further on her statement above, the textbook’s author claims her mother experienced this trouble for 9 long years. In our home, it would be my son regularly having bouts of vertigo and dizziness starting in his early high school years. When he had what seemed like heart attacks on two different occasions as a young adult, doctors claimed they didn’t find anything on the scans. It wouldn’t be till I found mentions of heart attacks known as TIA’s could affect both breathing and balance, and that a TIA tends to block oxygen to the brain, that we’d realize on our own, what he was dealing with and then begin a better treatment method.

Ashley carries on now:

Treatments that we’ve found to be useful include:

For the Transient Ischemic Attack:

Hawthorn, ginger, high sources of B6 and B9, natural electrolytes such as what is found in oranges, chokecherry and potatoes. Cinnamon and nutmeg assist in easy blood flow and flexible blood vessels.

Hawthorn is a known herbal cardiovascular medication all by itself, and has been known to enhance manmade heart medications, blood pressure medications, etc.

If a person is on these medications and wishes to add Hawthorn to their regimen, they need to do so in small increments, and back off if they hit a level at which their Dr ordered meds are adversely affected.

Some people apparently report no contraindications, while others have.

B6 and B9 promote healthy blood vessel behaviour, as well as aid the Central Nervous System, most specifically aiding the nerves of the inner ear.

For asthmatic attacks, Ashley shared this:

chokecherry berries, pin

Exertion based:

***

Chokecherry, high in quercetin and anthrocyanins, opens airways akin to bronchodilators of alopethic medicine. Can be taken as a tea using the bark, leaf or berry, or enjoyed as a juice a minimum of 20 min before activity.

Great Mullein, and crane’s bill

***

Allergin based:

Chokecherry, catnip, arrowleaf balsamroot, mallow and/or mullein and pine needles, taken as a tea an hour before activity or the night before.

Emergency allergin based asthma, or in the moment of an unforseen attack:

Pine needles and catnip. Just eat the leaves outright, hold leaves in mouth and breathe.

A tincture of the general allergin may be of use for emergencies.

***

Mold Spore caused asthma:

Arrowleaf Balsamroot blooming at the barn

If moving to a dry are isn’t possible and living situation has mold that can’t be dealt with, and the mold is well and truly entrenched;

Mallow/mullein, chokecherry bark, pine, arrowleaf balsamroot, 3 flowered avens, catnip and elecampane root, all equal parts in a tea, taken as needed.

A dehydrater in the home may be useful, or moving to a different house/work place/classroom. Exposure to mold is very bad and can kill.

As an allergic asthmatic myself, with the cause having been exposure to mold spores over an extended period of time, recommendations above have helped me greatly! If I know I’m going for a massive hike the next day, putting chokecherry bark in my tea the night before is important. I have personally chewed arrowleaf balsamroot leaves for mild asthmatic relief, catnip for respiratory allergic reactions, and pine needles to help tamp down an emergency asthmatic situation. I did have to move to a dryer locale, and use a dehydrator in my home to keep moisture levels at or below 30%.

Understanding the benefits of the increased potency of tincture, whether they be alcohol, vinegar, or glycerine, has us considering the above emergency list in tincture form. A herbal preparation purchased from a healthfood store had many of these herbs, as well as a few we can’t forage for in our area. It is my goal both as a natural health practitioner and as an allergic asthmatic sufferer, to find a completely herbal answer to manmade inhaler medications. If I can forage for all the ingredients, that makes the answer that much more accessible.

But it is important to know the difference between someone with difficulty breathing having an asthmatic attack, versus someone having a TIA affecting their ability to breathe. Initially, we thought my son had contracted a form of asthma similar to myself when he began talking about needing a ramp to sleep at night because laying down started coughing attacks.

The reason laying down causes coughing, is due to phlegmatic fluid in the lungs shifting position and entering zones where the lungs want the fluid expelled. However, if the lungs are having trouble expelling the fluid, spasms can develop. It is important to change position to get the fluid back down into the lower lobes of the lungs, calm the spasms, and help the lungs dissipate the excess fluids. A really bad case of this sent me to hospital in October of 2020, and it was the ventolin, flovent, and another bronchodilator that opened the airways, calmed the histamine reaction, and allowed the body to clear itself so I could breathe. It is these meds I am on a private mission to replace!

While my situation was caused by mold spores and allergens, with the hospital trip caused by mouse dander on everything due to an infestation we were preparing to move away from, my son’s situation was not an allergic or mold response, nor an asthmatic response. Initially, ventolin seemed to help him get more oxygen to the brain, but he’d be lethargic, white, and unable to process the oxygen he was taking in for anywhere from a few minutes to sometimes an hour or more. Once we learned he was suffering TIA’s, our management methods changed!

He’s had low blood pressure for his entire life, and we were already breaking mainstream nutritional norms by addressing this with added salt in his meals. He occasionally complained of faster heart beat bouts (tachycardia is a TIA symptom), incidents that didn’t always happen, but would from time to time. So when we learned the definition of TIA and how it can manifest itself, it was time to get more serious about heart health from a herbal perspective. For awhile we had him on ginger twice a day at breakfast and bedtime, but then we added Hawthorn at breakfast every day. Vertigo bouts were continuing while the breathing was largely better, so B6 and B9 were added via orange juice and potatoes. Since those latest additions, his bouts of trouble breathing, bouts of vertigo, and bouts of having to sleep on a ramp at night, have all basically quit! But he needs to stay on these diet additions, because without them, symptoms threaten to return.

Mainstream medicine admits that TIA’s can be hard to diagnose, because you need to be having an attack at the hospital or they think nothing is going on. Symptoms don’t last very long most of the time, so it’s hard to catch. Because it is generally caused by a clot that formed in the system, it is necessary to ensure the body has enough nitric oxide to keep blood vessels supple, and that the blood can flow easily, hence the pumpkin spices that contain cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger.

The sources I’ve quoted above give other causes and symptoms as well for TIA, and many sources never mention shortness of breath as a potential symptom of the condition, but it does happen, and for my grown son, was happening repeatedly. We are grateful that he’s never had a full-on stroke after any of them, but Lord-willing, now never will either.

I feel for the textbook author and their mother, that they mistook her symptoms as a form of asthma and treated it using herbs that benefit asthma patients. But this is when you remember that whether it’s mainstream medicine, or herbal medicine, it is possible to misdiagnose.

As a natural health practitioner, I am not allowed here in BC, to diagnose and treat, I can only assess and recommend. Having said that, it is my goal to refer to trusted sources for information to assist me in doing the assessing so that we can arrive as accurately as possible to the best recommendations for what is being suffered. It isn’t enough to merely deal with the symptoms, which asthma meds will do for a TIA sufferer affected by difficulty breathing. The cause of the symptoms, as much as possible, should be dealt with as well and if it’s a nutrient deficiency as is the case with my son, shoring that up to ensure deficiency doesn’t lead to emergency.

A nutrient deficiency can be caused by poor diet, or by poor absorption of the nutrients in one’s diet. In the case of the former, adjusting the diet to contain more of the missing nutrients is required. In the case of the latter, more or denser food choices containing the required nutrients is necessary. For my son, it was a bit of both, as he is a picky eater. If a person doesn’t like any of the foods that are highest in the missing nutrient, they may need to experiment with different presentations of the food to find out what they will tolerate to get that nutrient into them. You won’t find me recommending supplements most of the time as my focus is wholefood as medicine that might grow outside your front door. The reason is that God engineered each plant to phytochemically balance every nutrient and phytochemical in the plant. All the vitamins, minerals and compounds in the plant are perfectly balanced for that plant to live and thrive, and for us to benefit when we eat it. So it’s strongly advised that you get your nutrition and medicine from plants.

If you are going to make tinctures, infusions, herb blends, etc, use the plant directly, not exracted components of the plant. Leave the components in the plant and use the plant itself to make your preparation. We prefer to make our preparations from dried herb rather than fresh, as we find it increases shelf life and we rarely have to throw out unused portions.

It is possible that Ashley will be marked wrong on her answer in her herbalism lesson today, because they occasionally insist that what the textbook says is the final say. But maybe the fact we could identify with the textbook author regarding mainstream medicine unable to diagnose my son, and only definitions combined with observation resulted in our own discovery of what he was dealing with and how to mitigate it. might still have her marked correct on this question.

She doesn’t have long to go now before her studies are done and she gets her own sheet of paper legally allowing her to share the herbs that address human suffering, but her studies have largely taught her what NOT to do when assessing and sharing recommendations for various ailments! Safety comes first, life comes first, and we know from personal experience that it’s possible to deal with health issues without adding adverse effects caused by the apparent medication. She has one more textbook after this, and then she’s done!

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