MATERIAL AND METHODS

The data on 46 patients between 12 to 65 years of age with established bronchial asthma with or without nasal allergy have been presented here. They all had either seasonal or perennial episodic attacks of airway obstruction (wheezing) with intervals of normal health. Only two of the chronic patients had emphysema, leading to continuous wheezing and breathlessness, all of them starting with episodic asthma. In all the patients the airway obstruction was precipitated by one or more of the usual factors like change of weather, dust, smoke, fried food, exercise, emotions or infection. 

A basic set of Yogic practices (Table 1) was taught to most of these patients, by Yoga teachers trained specially for the purpose. The method is to start with simple practices and lead them to the complete basic set depending on the capacity of the individual to perform without strain. In some of the aged and/or severe cases, some of the practices were omitted. It is important to check the over enthusiasm in the initial stages lest they may become incapacitated by the strain of the practices. Normally one hour period is adjusted to fit some Asanas, Pranayama and meditation. Kriyas replace the Asanas once a week. However, the Kriyas, Jalaneti and Vaman Dhouti, are performed daily in some specific cases to enhance the benefits.

While taking history from these patients, special care was taken to collect the details about the following parameters used to assess the results of this study: severity, duration, number of attacks per week, nasal allergy and medication (the number of tablets per week of the bronchodilator and / or antihistamine tablets used). The same data were collected before and after the initial course of 4 weeks of Yoga training under supervision. Table 2 shows the scoring of the parameters used for the analysis.