Severe allergies can have a devastating effect on your quality of life. An alternative treatment known as "salt therapy" is helping some patients.

Until a few years ago, Tish Webster would have found the daily tasks of walking outside or working at her job -- almost impossible. from the time she was a little girl, the twenty-eight year old yoga instructor has suffered from hayfever and severe allergies to dust.

"This time of year I'd definitely be suffering really badly. I'd have tissues with me constantly. I'd be sneezing, I'd be weeping out of my eyes," said Webster, an allergy patient.

After years of taking allergy pills, Tish looked into alternatives and discovered something known as halotherapy --or salt therapy.

"When I first went in to the Salt Cave, I noticed an immediate difference from going in. My breathing capacity was much better. After three sessions I noticed first thing in the morning I wasn't congested like I normally am."

Since the late 1800s, eastern European patients with respiratory illnesses like asthma and bronchitis have been prescribed visits to natural salt caves or mines. Proponents of salt therapy say they found salt miners rarely suffered from tuberculosis or other respiratory diseases.

Today what's found and felt in those caves is being replicated in clinics and spas across eastern europe like those in Hungary, in Toronto, and now, in London.

In 2006, The New England Journal Of Medicine published a study on patients with cystic fibrosis who used this kind of saline therapy for 48 weeks. They found that it was a safe and effective additional therapy for patients.

And just to be clear -- health practitioners say stopping medications like steroids for asthma and only opting for alternative care can be dangerous and counter-productive. Talk with your doctor.