EMPORIUM, PA. Oboe was music to asthmatic man's lungs

Playing the instrument gave Brian Simpson relief from asthma.
EMPORIUM, Pa. (AP) -- "Physician, heal thyself" is the lyric to Brian Simpson's song.
Fifteen months ago, Simpson, 33, an asthmatic who works as a respiratory therapist, was given six to nine months to live by a doctor and turned down for a lung transplant because he was deemed too ill.
Today, he is breathing easier because he took up the oboe with the help of a Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra musician and has doctors at UPMC Medical Center in Pittsburgh considering whether others could be helped by the instrument.
Simpson, of Emporium, had played the oboe in school but primarily was a French horn player. As he lay in bed, fighting for breath, he read a letter from a former music teacher about an asthmatic from England who found that playing the oboe helped his lungs function better.
"If I had tried this when I started getting sick, I may not have gotten this sick," Simpson said.
A lung workout
The oboe treatment made both musical and scientific sense to Simpson.
The instrument requires the musician to inhale deeply, then blow a very small stream of air through two reeds with great force. Essentially, it's great exercise for the lungs.
At first, Simpson could play for only a few minutes at a time. Then he was inspired when he was given a copy of a compact disc featuring the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra's principal oboist, Cynthia Koledo DeAlmeida, playing pieces written specifically for the instrument.
Simpson increased his playing regimen gradually to 2 1/2 hours a day, got out of bed and went back to work part-time. Still not entirely recovered, Simpson carries an oxygen tank with him, but he's now back to work full-time at Elk Regional Health Center in St. Marys.
Dr. Bruce Rabin, medical director of UPMC's Healthy Lifestyles Program, said Simpson's experience indicates that the oboe treatments should at least be studied. DeAlmeida has contacted Dr. Rubin about including the instrument in UPMC's musical therapy program.
Dr. Rabin said his review of medical literature so far has turned up no indication that oboe-playing has ever been seriously studied as a treatment for asthma.