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Asthma is known as a chronic lung condition characterized by difficulty in breathing. People with asthma normally have extra sensitive or hyper-responsive airways. During an asthma attack, the airways become irritated and react by narrowing and constructing, causing increased resistance to airflow, and blocking the flow of the air passages to and from the lungs.
A peak flow meter is a hand-held instrument that shows how well you are breathing.
As part of your asthma action plan, you may use a peak flow meter at home to measure how your lung functions. To use it, you should take a deep breath and blow hard into a tube to know how fast you can blow out. This will give you a peak flow number. For a few weeks, you will need to find out your “”personal best”” peak flow number by recording the peak flow number every day until your asthma is under control. The highest number you get for that duration is your personal best peak flow. Then you can compare future peak flow measurements to your personal best peak flow. That will show if your asthma is staying under control or not.
Your doctor will give instructions on how and when to use your peak flow meter and how to use your medication based on the results. You may be asked to use your peak flow meter every morning to keep track of how well you are breathing.
The peak flow meter can also help warn of a possible asthma attack even before you feel the symptoms. If your peak flow meter indicates that your breathing is getting worse, you should follow your action plan. Take your quick relief or other medication as your doctor prescribed. Then you can use the peak flow meter to find out how your airways are responding to the medication.
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To get a rough indication of what your peak flow should be, different charts are available, such as this Peak Flow chart :
To get your peak flow, move right along the bottom axis until you get to the point corresponding to your age, and then vertically up until you hit the red curve that corresponds to your height, and then where these intersect, go horizontally left and read the peak flow value of the vertical axis.
For instance (above), if you are a woman aged 58, who has a height of 61 inches (5 foot, 1 inch, or 154 cm (1.54 m), then your predicted Peak Flow is roughly 430 litres per minute.
Tagged with: asthma prevention • asthma relief
Filed under: Asthma