Asthma is the leading cause of disease and disability in children and teens ages two to seventeen years.  Asthma generally manifests itself in the form of an asthma attack.  Between these attacks, an asthmatic will usually seem perfectly healthy.  An attack is characterized by a narrowing of the bronchial passages, along with an excessive excretion of mucous, resulting in impaired breathing, with the severity of the symptoms often accelerating rapidly. 

An attack will usually begin with an unproductive cough, followed by rapidly progressing difficulty in breathing.  While the respiratory rate does not increase, expiration becomes prolonged and labored, resulting in wheezing that can often be heard from a distance.

A number of allergic and environmental agents can bring on asthma attacks, including pollen, dust, mold, animal dander, feathers, textiles such as cotton and flax, detergents, petrochemicals, air pollution, and smoke.  Wheat, milk, and eggs are among the most likely foods that will trigger an asthma attack.  Chemical additives such as food coloring and food preservatives can also be at fault.

Arsenicum Album 30X – Air passages constricted from allergies.  Whistling, wheezing breathing.  Asthma, worse around midnight.  Shortness of breath.  Suffocative catarrh.  Hayfever.

Belladonna 30X – Difficult, short quick respiration.  Asthma in hot damp weather.  Tickling, short, dry cough, worse at night.  Cough worse fine dust in air.  Moaning at every breath.

Ipecacuanha 30X – Gasps for breath.  Asthma.  Cough incessant and violent with every breath.  Loose, coarse rattle in chest without expectoration.  Dyspnea, constant constriction in chest.

Kali Carbonicum 30X – Asthmatic, wheezing, worse least motion or walking.  Incessant, hard retching or choking, futile cough, then vomiting.  Hydrothorax.

Lobelia Inflata 30X – Asthma, attacks with weakness, felt in pit of stomach and preceded by prickling all over.  Dyspnea from constriction of chest, worse any exertion.  Irritation which provokes coughing and expectoration.

Natrum Sulphuricum – Humid asthma, rattling in chest, at 4 and 5 a.m.  Every fresh cold or any unusual exertion brings on an attack of asthma.  Constant desire to take deep, long breath.

Silicea 30X – Shortness of breath.  Sycotic asthma.  Rattling in chest.  Shortness of breath from manual labor, walking fast.  Violent cough when lying down with a thick, yellow lumpy expectoration. 

References:

Homeopathic Remedy Guide; Robin Murphy, ND

Alternative Medicine The Definitive Guide; The Burton Goldberg Group