Symbicort

[Kimberly P]

Hi all! I was recently prescribed symbicort for asthma like symptoms. I have been taking it for a couple of days and I feel like pooh - same way I feel when I've been glutened. Of course, I'm racking my brain trying to figure out if I have picked gluten up somewhere, and the only new thing is the symbicort. I'm trying to find information and I don't see anywhere where it definitively states it is gluten free. The ingredients are Budesonide and Formoterol. Does anyone have experience with this medication or with these ingredients? I did learn that Budesonide is used to treat Celiac? I found that interesting. Thanks in advance! 

[Victoria1234]

Might just be a normal side effect of the drug. Have you googled its side effects? 

[Kimberly P]

It could be. Head ache is a side effect, from what I read, and I am working on day 4 of a head ache. Super nauseous and achy yesterday, but that seems to be subsiding. So, maybe it's viral, or something. Good ole Celiac always keeps us guessing! 

[Sdrocks]

Did you ever discover if it was gluten free or not. Just prescribed and want to make sure. Thanks! 

[cyclinglady]

3 hours ago, Sdrocks said:

Did you ever discover if it was gluten free or not. Just prescribed and want to make sure. Thanks! 

This drug was on the gluten-free list.  It should be gluten free still.  

http://www.glutenfreedrugs.com/newlist.htm

You can check pillbox too (gov website):

https://pillbox.nlm.nih.gov/results.html?medicine_name=Budesonide&imprint=&shape=&color=&inactive_ingredients=&repackaged=false&page=1&items_per_page=20

and....you can talk to your pharmacist.  

[Beverage]

Those drugs are bad nasty things to put in your body. I reacted with super high blood pressure and lots of body aches to those and all steroid based drugs. You just do not want to be on those drugs long term, they are so very bad for your organs, so if you can find a way to get off them and control your asthma another way, by getting to the root cause, that's much better.

I had severe asthma, so bad I could not sleep, hospital many times, turned blue, etc. It was really bad.  I was taking the rescue inhaler (albuterol) every hour, which gave me side effects also.  Many times I had just given up and expected I would not wake up in the morning.

I found the connection between asthma and stomach acid. Not HIGH stomach acid, but LOW. As we age stomach acid reduces, or from other causes like Celiac's, or taking certain drugs, including antacids, our stomach acid goes down.  But this is not what you want.

We need stomach acid to digest our food and break it down so our intestines can absorb vitamins.  When stomach acid is low, the food rots in the stomach instead of digests, that irritates the sphincter, which lets the sulpherous fumes from the stomach escape up the esophogus and can irritate throat and they get inhaled into the lungs, causing asthma. 

I had a super hoarse throat and severe asthma for years, went to the ear nose throat guy and then to a pulmonologist, best lung doc in the state, but they only prescribed more steroid based things, and that really messed me up. Finally one doctor asked if I had acid reflux. I said that I used to have a lot before I went gluten free, but no more. He said it could be SILENT REFLUX. Aw geez! 

But then he tried to prescribe me acid reducers, and I said, no way, we need stomach acid to digest and get our vitamins, and that won't be good for long term.  Anyway, I went back to my naturopath and we worked out to try Zantac for a short time to reduce the acid and see if that improves the asthma.  It did a little, so that added some indication that stomach acid was a component of the problem.

Then we added a spoonful of apple cider vinegar just before each meal to INCREASE acid.  Wow, that helped more, asthma greatly reduced during the day, still a ilttle, but still bad at night after I laid down.  So continued with 1 Zantac right before bed for awhile to let more stomach healing happen.  Also, she did a blood test, and my Vitamin D was on the low end of the range...curious...because I take several thousand IU of D every day.

In the meantime, I was reordering my Procaps Labs gluten-free multi vitamin and they had a special on Vitamin K2, which I had read about and was supposed to be imported for vitamin D absorbtion.  Hmmm, so D and K2 are connected, so I tried it.  I noticed a HUGE improvement in my asthma in about 2 days.  In about 2 weeks COMPLETELY GONE except when I do gardening outside, like cutting tree limbs and such, and am exposed to a lot of pollens, and sometimes when cutting the grass, but not nearly as bad as I used to.

So I did some more reading on D and K2 and all that, and found that low D is also connected to asthma. 

There is a good article out there by Dr. Jonathan Wright, who is an internationally known natural medicine guy, wrote many books, and whose clinic I went to, about stomach acid and vitamin D.

I got confirmation on the K2 to D connection when I changed by gynecologist doc to one closer to home. I told her my story about the D and K2 and she nodded enthusiastically, which surprised me as most docs don't really get it.  She said she was aware of that because she has Rhuematoid Arthritis, another auto immune disease, and she found great improvement in her RA after adding K2.  She said that none of her medical education led her to that, that she had to do a lot of digging and reading and researching on her own, but it was like magic after she found it.

So...LOW stomach acid is the root cause of low vitamin D absorbtion (and K2 helps more to absorb D), which is linked to asthma.  Low stomach acid is also the root cause of fumes getting up to the lungs and can cause asthma.