Our 2.5 year old daughter was just diagnosed with intermittent asthma. Our pediatrician recommended Traditional Chinese Medicine as an alternative treatment, but didn't know of any practitioners. Has anyone tried TCM for their child's asthma? If so, who could you recommend? We relocated to the South Bay earlier this year, but we're willing to travel to SF or the East Bay for treatment. Also, what other alternatives have people used? I looked in the archives but only found one alternative recommendation (Dr. Morrison @ Hannuman Clinic). We have limited funds (only Medical for insurance). We don't want to go the steroids/arbuterol route, so we're looking for something that will do more than just treat symptoms. Monika

Being another parent strongly committed to finding alternatives to mainstream doctors & methods, I highly recommend the NAET method of allergy clearing, we used this with our son. Check out http://www.naet.com/ for more info. NAET stands for Nambudripad's Allergy Elimination Techniques and there are many practitioners in the Bay Area.

We took our son to Lynn Segura at The Ashby Center of Complimentary Medicine in Berkeley, 2615 Ashby Ave (near College Ave) 510-843-8889. She is an acupuncturist among other things though she used accupressure with my son. Before we went to her, we went to William Chau near downtown Oakland. Check his website for phone numbers, he has Oakland, SF & Burlingame locations. http:// www.drchauallergyclinic.com/.

Lynn Segura and William Chau are both great healers with different styles. We ended up to going to Lynn more mostly because it was closer to home, it's challenging to make it to a bunch of appointments with a little one. We didn't use Chinese Herbs with our son, so I'm sorry I'm not much help with that. It's possible that these practitioners use them, you can ask. We feel that Dr. Chau helped our son very much, we also have a special connection with Lynn Segura, she has a very gentle and intuitive sense. We were referred to her by a family member who's had great results and we have since referred another family member who has experienced a 60% improvement in her condition so far.

I was skeptical of this approach for some time, my husband was the one who researched and found out about this. He has a much more open mind about some things than I do. I finally came around, realising that it could only help (or not) to try it. I would be happy to share more with you personally, you can email me and then we can exchange numbers if you like.

I do believe that NAET helped my son get better, though I have heard that kids sometimes outgrow allergies too. I think this method helped to strengthen his immune system, he gets fewer colds and no more wheezing! Ananda