Exercise With Asthma

Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease that causes the airways (bronchial tubes) to become particularly sensitive to irritants.  The condition is characterized by difficulty in breathing.

This chronic condition is highly ranked in adults in most western countries and is the leading chronic illness in children.  People with asthma find that managing the disease becomes a fact of life.

Controlling asthma means staying away from sources of irritants, and taking medicines as directed by your doctor.  While asthma cannot be cured, most patients are able to control the condition, leading to minimal and infrequent symptoms and active lifestyles.

When it comes to exercise, some choices are better than others.  If, for example, you take part in activities that use more oxygen, you may experience more wheeziness or chest tightness than you would in other forms of exercise.

For asthma sufferers, running outdoors is usually worse than swimming.  In fact, swimming can be one of the best forms of exercise for people with asthma because it usually causes the least amount of chest tightness.

If the air you breathe during exercise is cold and dry, then the asthma will become worse.  Asthma symptoms tend to be lighter in a warm, moist environment.  This can also explain why swimming usually causes less asthma symptoms than outdoor running.

During exercise, the increased breathing can cause cooling and drying of the lining of the air passages, often resulting in exercise-induced asthma. It is not fully understood why this cooling and drying occurs, but it does explain why symptoms are lessened in warm, moist air.

It usually takes about six minutes of exercise to trigger an exercise-induced asthma attack.  Periods of activity shorter than this should not trigger asthma.  Strangely, for a few hours after you have had an exercise-induced asthma attack, repeating the same amount of exercise may not produce the same degree of symptoms.  You may experience no symptoms at all.

Some people with asthma are able to ‘run through’ their exercise-induced asthma attacks by warming up with short bursts of exercise, or with continuous exercise that does not bring on a severe attack.

If you have asthma, consider sports that involve short bursts of activity with periods of rest in between:

* Avoid long-distance or cross-country running.  These are strong triggers for asthma because they occur outside in cool air without short breaks.

* Hockey, football and other team sports are good choices as they allow the player to take short breaks.

* Swimming is an excellent form of exercise for people with asthma because the warm and humid air is less likely to trigger symptoms.  Swimming in cold or heavily chlorinated pools, however, should be avoided.

* Yoga is a good choice as it relaxes the body, reduces stress and may help with breathing.

* Compelling evidence suggests that gradual athletic training can make you less prone to exercise-induced asthma.

Advanced treatment with medicines can have a powerful effect on exercise-induced asthma. Proper treatment and better asthma control reduces the occurrence of exercise-induced asthma.

If you are an athlete suffering with exercise-induced asthma, then it is worth getting advice form a top-level specialist.  Professional athletes train to levels of fitness which most of us don’t even think about so, if you’re serious about your sports, get the best advice to help you manage the disease.

There have been many Olympic medal winners who have suffered with exercise-induced asthma.  With the right advice, training, treatment and self-discipline asthma-related problems can usually be overcome.

You can take several steps to reduce the symptoms of exercise-induced asthma.  These should be used along with the medical treatments prescribed by your doctor:

Read how this person cured his asthma the natural way

* Warm up and cool down.

* Avoid exercising in cold air. Keep your mouth and nose covered in cold weather.

* Stay in shape.  Regular aerobic fitness can help to reduce exercise-induced asthma.

Tagged with: asthma attacks • asthma relief

Filed under: Asthma