Three Keys To Fighting Your Asthma

Asthma is a terrible affliction that effects about one out of every ten Americans. Symptoms can get as bad as continuous coughing, mucus buildups, and shallow or modified breath. The last is the most dangerous and can cause permanent damage if not addressed.

By effecting your breathing to this degree can lead to some additional dangers, including panic attack, or even heart attack. Mitigating these risks is more than just helping the symptoms, it is keeping these side effects from becoming dangerous. There are some medications for asthma treatment and some daily changes you can make to help treat it or to prevent an attack.

Using Tools

One of the most important tools for monitoring your asthma, is the peak flow meter. It can tell you how well you are passing air in and out of your lungs. If you are experiencing an attack or even milder symptoms, the flow meter will read it. This is a good way to go to your doctor with useful information relating to your condition. Make sure you also talk to them about what over the counter medications you are using, because they may also be causing difficulty. Using both over the counter and prescription medications for your asthma is not recommended.

Look For Other Interactions

Some other conditions can cause exacerbation coupled with asthma. Stress and depression are triggers that are not entirely understood. Studies show that people under significant stress, or that are depressed, are more likely to suffer from asthma in the first place. This is just one example of where your mental health impacts your physical health. Asthma can also cause sleep apnea, which is an uncommon or incorrect breathing pattern while you are sleeping. You may need a machine to help you breath at night, or additional medications. This condition can occur before or after asthma symptoms progress.

Understand What Your Triggers Are

Make sure you always track your triggers carefully. Write down when your symptoms occur, and when major attack happen. This will help you decide on a treatment and get away from triggers. Triggers are the most common allergens that cause your asthma to flare up. Things like pollen, mold, and dust are the most common triggers, and may even lead to an attack. Your doctor can help diagnose what cases your attacks with this information. Recording them for yourself can also help to avoid the symptoms in the future.

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Current Health Events Related to Asthma

Chronic diseases like asthma can disturb our life a lot especially if we find ourselves having to cope with these diseases in our young age. However, playing sports while you suffer from asthma is not impossible and in fact up to 17 % of athletes in the US have asthma. These figures and much more information can always be found in the current health events related to asthma symptoms and cures.

Even if you don’t plan to join the Olympics, it is very good for your system to exercise and to be fit. It will also keep your weight under control which is very important for your general health. The muscles of your lungs and chest will also benefit from fitness and sports as well. Current health events recommend doing some kind of fitness exercise to improve your immune system and to allow it to face the requirements in case you are suffering from chronic diseases like asthma.

Other benefits highlighted by many current health events include the emotional benefits of taking on some kind of sports on a regular basis, like the constant production of endorphins, which are body chemicals that allow you to feel contented and at peace with yourself. Also, exercising and spots will definitely give you better sleep. Mild mental health issues like depression can be handled easier by people who feel strong about themselves.

Current health events have highlighted the necessity for fitness and sports for people suffering from emotionally related diseases like asthma. Asthma is also considered a hereditary disease, however, its roots are basically emotionally and feeling good about yourself will always bring a balance in your emotional system.

Sports that don’t need too much high energy input like golf, yoga, and light biking will not flare up the symptoms of asthma. However, endurance sports may make it more difficult for someone to handle them. However, some research has found that with proper diet and medication, people with asthma have reached very high levels in their sports activities without any problems.

If you are an asthma patient, and are very interested in following a hard sport, then the best thing for you to do is to make sure your asthma is totally under control. Many current health events give us much more understanding of the many ways that we can reach these goals. Too many asthma attacks will not be good for you in the beginning and you should be prepared for the changes and demands of the body once you start the training.

Talk to your doctor and keep yourself updated in all the current health events. This will give you a better understanding of what you should do in which condition and if you feel that the fitness regime is too harsh for you given the present health conditions, then it is better to check with your doctor to see if you require a different treatment altogether.

Preparing A Sleeping Area For A Child With Asthma

When you are dealing with a child with asthma, it is very important to ensure that you do everything that you can to prevent asthma symptoms from occurring. An asthma attack can be devastating to a young body and severe attacks can result in hospitalization and a significant recovery time.

Three Steps to Preparing a Sleeping Area to Minimize Symptoms

In order to prepare a sleeping area for a child with asthma, attention to detail and a high level of cleanliness is necessary for creating an area that will be comfortable for the child to sleep in.

1. Dust Furniture With Dust Capturing Product

The first thing that you should do to prepare a sleeping area for a child with asthma is dust the furniture in the room with a product that captures dust instead of just brushing it off of surfaces. The frame, headboard, and footboard of the bed should be dusted thoroughly to limit the amount of dust that is around the child while he or she is sleeping. If you notice that there seems to be a lot of dust in the sleeping area, you may want to consider installing a high quality air filter into the home’s HVAC system to remove more of the dust from the air inside the home.

2. Cover Mattress And Box Spring With Protective Cover

Dust mites and their offspring live and breed deep within the mattresses and box springs used in sleeping areas across the nation. To protect people with allergies and asthma, some manufacturers have begun making protective coverings for all sizes of mattresses and box springs that prevent allergens from coming through the covering including baby beds and toddler beds. These coverings are used to cover the mattress before the sheets and blankets are put on to provide an additional layer of protection from anything that may be in the mattress.

3. Wash Bedding And Pillows

Before placing a child with asthma in a sleeping area, all of the bedding and pillows should be washed thoroughly using the washing directions the manufacturer has placed on the tags of the items. Washing these items before allowing the child to sleep on them will remove any contaminants or pollutants that may be present on the items that you may not know about. This is especially important for bedding that has been recently purchased as many companies spray their products with chemicals before shipping to protect them from pests, bacteria, and mold. If the child likes to have stuffed toys in their sleeping area, these should be washed thoroughly as well.

Be Proactive with a Plan

According to the Mayo Clinic, because asthma can’t be cured, it’s important for parents to have formal a plan to minimize symptoms. One important part of this type of plan lies with making sure that children with asthma have a sleeping area designed to minimize exposure to symptom triggers.

Putting On The Pounds May Mean Added Asthma Risk

The more you weigh, the less you may be able to breathe. New research suggests that overweight and obese individuals in Dallas, Houston and throughout Texas are 50 percent more likely to develop asthma than normal-weight men and women. Public health efforts to control asthma should therefore emphasize the importance of healthy weight management, the study researchers reported.

“The bottom line is that being overweight appears to significantly increase the risk of asthma,” said study co-author Dr. E. Rand Sutherland, of the National Jewish Medical and Research Center (NJMRC) in Denver. “But the caveat is that, until further studies are done, it won’t be clear exactly what type or severity of asthma is present in obese people.”

According to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, asthma is an incurable but usually controllable chronic disease involving inflammation and narrowing of the airways that carry oxygen into and out of the lungs. The disease, which affects approximately 20 million Americans, including 9 million children, typically provokes recurrent wheezing, coughing, and a hypersensitivity to allergies.

A recent national survey found that about 65 percent of Americans are either obese or overweight, and research has long suggested links between asthma and obesity. In this study, researchers pored over prior data on the body mass indices (BMI) — measurements of body fat based on the height and weight — of adult asthma patients. They looked at data from seven prior studies conducted between 1966 and 2006 in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Together, these studies had looked at the relationship between BMI and asthma in more than 333,000 severely asthmatic patients.

During data review, the study adopted standard BMI yardsticks, which define “normal weight” as having a BMI of under 25, “overweight” as a BMI between 25 and 29, and “obese” as a BMI more than 30. For example, a person who is 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighs 145 pounds has a BMI of 22.

The odds of developing asthma grew by 50 percent among patients with a BMI of 25 and up, and the risk climbed as the pounds piled on, the study found. Women and men appeared to be equally susceptible to the weight-asthma association, they added.

Based on the findings, the researchers believe asthma should be added to the long list of diseases — including diabetes, sleep apnea, stroke, cardiovascular illness, and arthritis — for which excess weight is a risk factor.

And, because two-thirds of the U.S. adult population is now thought to be obese or overweight, that means millions more Americans may be at risk of developing asthma than was previously thought, the study reported. On the up side, “significant weight loss” could potentially reduce asthma cases by as many as 250,000 each year, the researchers noted.

Not every overweight person with respiratory symptoms necessarily has asthma, however. The experts noted that excess weight can cause lung volume reduction, chest wall restriction, and breathlessness unrelated to the disease.

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