Many asthma sufferers remain undiagnosed but they suffer from chronic coughing and wheezing, they are constantly short of breath and they sometimes experience tightness in the chest. Sometimes they even mistake the persistent coughing as a sign of more serious respiratory conditions such as lung disease. In most cases, the coughing associated with the ailment usually begins in childhood. In many cases the symptoms are mistook for the long-term cough, as whooping cough and postnasal drip.

According to Statistics Canada ,over 3 million Canadian men and women of all ages suffer from serious respiratory diseases - asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), lung cancer, influenza and pneumonia, bronchiolitis, tuberculosis (TB), cystic fibrosis, and respiratory distress syndrome (RDS). Respiratory diseases, including lung cancer account for nearly $12.18 billion dollars of expenditures per year (1993 dollars) including direct health care costs, such as hospitalization, physician visits and drugs (over 3.79 billion dollars) and indirect expenses associated with disability and mortality, which may be even more significant (8.39 billion dollars).

The difficult parts about managing symptoms of asthma are that they come and go and in some cases you may experience symptoms but you aren’t sure that you’re having an episode. This makes it difficult for the asthma sufferer to enjoy certain activities because they never know when they are going to have an attack. A medical doctor has been trained to diagnose asthma and similar conditions such as pneumonia, cystic fibrosis, heart disease, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)

The Asthma Society of Canada has many important resources and links in order to provide you with the most updated information. It even has a Bill of Rights, http://www.asthma.ca/napa/bill_of_rights.php that provides patients with information regarding their rights. One of the rights mentioned was to "Take an active role in managing your asthma with the support of your health-care team. For the most part, control of your asthma rests with you. You are the one managing it on a day-to-day basis."

As the one person that is most responsible for the management of the respiratory condition, you owe it to yourself to be aware of all of the potential treatments for this very serious disease. An alternative and complimentary treatment to traditional medicine in Europe since the early19th century, Halotherapy is a 100% natural, safe and drug-free and highly efficient alternative treatment that provides effective long-term relief of respiratory ailments, allergic conditions and skin conditions.

A salt cave is a room that contains salt, salt is everywhere, from the bricks on the walls, or the crystals that are sprinkled floor. Salt also gets dispersed through a "halogenerator" that distributes microscopic particles of sodium chloride through the air so visitors can inhale it.