Overcoming COPD

When Reba first came to the Whitaker Wellness Institute in June, she was breathing like a fish out of water. Wheelchair-bound, with ashen skin and a tube in her nose hooked up to a tank of oxygen, it was obvious that she was in respiratory distress.

The therapy that helped Reba is inhaled glutathione. After Reba's first treatment, she could breathe a little better and her coloring improved. The next day she reported that she had the best sleep she'd had in years. Her clinical course over the intervening months was nothing short of remarkable.

She came in on 10 prescription drugs. Now she's only taking a thyroid medication (her thyroid was removed years ago) and a much-reduced dose of one blood pressure medication. Her initial pulse oximetry, which measures the percentage of hemoglobin in the blood that is saturated with oxygen, was 89 percent (it should never be below 95 percent). After two weeks of treatment it was 97 percent. Initially she couldn't exhale with enough force to even register on tests of lung function. Today, she has only moderate obstruction. Both Reba and her husband feel that her progress has been "simply marvelous."

She's much more alert than before, and the anxiety that understandably affects many patients with COPD (imagine having to fight for every breath) has dramatically improved. She's gradually spending more and more time out of her wheelchair. And all this without the drugs that her conventional doctors told her were "keeping her alive."

— from Health & Healing by Julian Whitaker, MD