Asthma That Has Been Induced By Exercise

Asthma is a recurring condition of the lungs that is characterized by difficulty in breathing. People with asthma have ultrasensitive or hyper-responsive air passageways.

During an asthma attack, the airways tend to become irritated then starts to constrict and become narrow thus resulting to an increase in airflow resistance, and obstructs the flow of the air passages from and to the lungs.

There are some people that seem to experience asthma attacks after they jogged or took any other form of exercise. 

There was a time when doctors believed that the resulting asthma was different. Nowadays, studies have shown that it is normal for people with asthma to suffer from asthma attacks during or after an exercise.

Read how this person cured his asthma the natural way

The “exercise-induced asthma” is problematic particularly for young people. The truth is, doctors used to wonder why children would suffer from exercise-induced asthma while adults did not. Soon enough, research showed that most adults do not exercise as much as children.

Nowadays, doctors believe that people who experience asthma attacks only when exercising do have mild asthma that does not show up most of the time. However, the exercise provokes it due to faster breathing brought about by additional exertion.

If the air you breathe during the exercise is dry and cold, then the asthma could worsen. If the air is moist and warm, the asthma is less bad, which is why swimming only causes mild asthma compared to outdoor running.

The lining of the air passages becomes cool and dry due to an increase in breathing, which is usually essential for somebody to experience exercise-induced asthma. This accounts why air that is warm and moist protects against exercise-induced asthma. Presently, it is not completely understood why cooling and drying of the airway passage linings causes an asthma episode.

Exercise is just one of the numbers of things which show irritation of the air passage or that you have asthma. This basically means that things which are harmless to other people can cause an attack for individuals with asthma.

People do differ to some extent with regards to the factors that trigger an asthma attack. The only thing for sure is that they all cause irritation or narrowing of the air passages in asthma sufferers.

Exercise is just one of the factors that can trigger the narrowing of air passages. It is just one of a number of things that indicate the hyper-reactivity or abnormal irritability of the air passageways that is an important feature of asthma.

The good news here is that exercise-induced asthma can be used to diagnose asthma in a child. A safe but convenient way of provoking a mild asthma attack is to let the child exercise for about six minutes. This practice has allowed a number of children to obtain early and appropriate advice and treatment.

Asthma that has been induced by exercise has also proven to be useful in asthma research. It can be used to test the efficacy of newly-developed medicines that may help treat asthma in the future.

By now you would be able to pick-up some useful clues. Swimming instead of running, more warm and moist air, warming-up for short periods of exercise, and getting into training can all help.

A number of cross-country skiers wear breathing masks that store some of the heat and moisture from the air they breathe out and return it to the air they breathe in. This is very helpful in lessening the risk of an exercise-induced asthma.

In case you are a professional athlete, then you could be concerned about being disqualified from the event because of your need to use anti-asthma drugs to control your asthma. But there really is no need to worry since all of the ordinary asthma medicines, used in a medically recommended way and dosage, are accepted by sporting bodies as long as you use them only for asthma. You may seek expert advice if you are in doubt.

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Filed under: Asthma