Archive for the 'CONTROLLING & LIVING WITH ASTHMA' Category

As spring season comes, you have to think about spraying your home quickly.

This is especially important when you are suffering from asthma.

In winter months, dust and other allergens collect, making dangerous asthma triggers in your home.

You have to follow simple steps to protect yourself and your family from potential indoor asthma triggers.

Steps to prevent indoor asthma triggers

Dusting properly:

During the months of winter, dust might have gathered, so it is the time to clean every corner by moving the furniture aside. Curtains and window blinds are the places where dust collects, so remove and clean them properly.

If you identify that dust mites can trigger your asthma, you can reduce by vacuuming and dusting all areas using a vacuum cleaner with good suction and a filtered exhaust. You have to change the vacuum cleaner filters regularly.

Even though you are cleaning your home for spring, you should be careful as dust particles will stay in the air for at least two hours after cleaning process and these particles can trigger your asthma symptoms. One thing you can do is while cleaning your home; you have to keep the doors and windows open.

Yoga can be beneficial to all age people.

Yoga can help in reducing stress, curing circulatory disorders and respiratory diseases such as asthma and bronchitis.

Asthma is a respiratory problem that involves narrowing of your bronchial tubes.

When bronchial tubes narrow, difficulty in breathing takes place.

Bronchitis can occur with severe infection of lungs and bronchial tubes.

Bronchitis can make bronchial tubes swollen with viral or bacterial infection.

Yoga poses includes relaxation and breathing techniques, which helps in keeping your mind and emotions in control. Once your mind and emotions are controlled, you can feel relaxed and can breathe easily.

Working of lungs will become better with yoga poses. Your airflow can be enhanced during asthma attacks.

Yoga can reduce the symptoms of asthma, improve tolerance of exercise, decrease the use of medications and enhance peak flow.

Yoga poses (techniques) to take control over bronchitis and asthma:

Easy pose:

This pose is generally performed after corpse pose. This pose helps to straighten the spine, slow down the metabolism, keep your mind still and promote inner peace. To perform this pose, sit on the floor by bending your knees.

Do you have a habit of swimming? Swimming can be a great workout for people suffering with asthma.

This is because, while you swim, you breathe in warm and moist air rather than experiencing cold and dry air, which can aggravate your asthma symptoms.

But be aware of the adverse effects, which you can face due to regular swimming practice in either outdoor or indoor swimming pools, especially asthma patients.

Chlorine present in the swimming pools can be the main offender!

Though swimming is a great exercise, most of you repeatedly complain about several breathing problems. Can you guess what could be the reason? It is mainly due to the chlorinated water used in most of the swimming pools.

Asthma is known to be one of the most common chronic conditions, which mainly affects over 300 million people worldwide.

It can occur due to many reasons, but it appears that chlorinated water used in the swimming pools is the main factor, which is linked with an increased risk of asthma symptoms.

Certain warnings about the adverse effects of chlorinated swimming pools, particularly where it can mainly affect young children’s airways are becoming increasingly prominent in recent scientific literature.

Asthma is a chronic lung disease which mainly affects the respiratory system of your body.

Most of the people suffering with asthma relay on the synthetic drugs and medicines.

But, there are several preventive measures to be followed personally apart from using medications and proper diet.

The surroundings and environment in which you live also play an important role in controlling asthma and other respiratory problems. Maintaining healthy and hygienic environments is very essential for prevention of asthma attacks.

How to control asthma at home?

Some of the tips which are helpful for you to control asthma at your home are given here. Try to follow these tips and make yourself free from asthma attacks.

• Keep your home clean and make sure that your home is free from dust mites, molds and other potential triggers of asthma.
• Wearing a mask is very essential for you while dusting your home. This will be very useful for you in reducing the severe attacks of asthma. A mask avoids dust and other allergens to enter in to lungs through the air passages.

Maintaining healthy and balanced diet is very important for every one to lead a healthy life.

Especially for asthma patients, it is very important to consume healthy and nutritious food.

If you are suffering with asthma, then you are more prone to allergies like food allergy.

So, it is very important to maintain healthy diet with more proteins and nutrients.

How asthma is linked with food allergy?

Asthma diet mainly helps in preventing food allergies, which can lead to inflammation in the air passages. These air passages are the main sources to convey air to your lungs.

Eating unhealthy diet or foods to which your immune system is sensitive can trigger the allergic reactions in your body and leads to asthma attack.

Only in some rare cases, food allergy can trigger asthma. How ever, the symptoms are overlooked in several skin tests for allergy and it takes more time for the symptoms to appear, after the ingestion of food.

Even though the asthma attacks due to food allergy is rare, it is very important to maintain better asthma diet to prevent yourself from attacks.

Asthma action plan is a written and customized plan to help you manage asthma events.

Asthma action plan is based on changes in respiratory symptoms and peak flow numbers.

It gives information about when and how you are taking medications and peak flow meter to you and your family.

It also helps to decide when to call your doctor and when to seek emergency medical care.

With asthma action plan, you can prevent asthma from getting worse.

It is designed to tell what to do when you experience changes in the severity of symptoms and in peak flow readings.

Each person’s experience and symptoms of asthma is different, so each action will be different too.

Green zone: When you are in green zone, you are doing well. You have no symptoms of asthma and you can do usual activities. Your asthma is well controlled, so you can get an asthma action plan that can use to manage asthma when it gets out of control.

Yellow zone: If your asthma is not totally controlled, then you are in yellow zone. You can see some symptoms like coughing, wheezing, tightness in the chest and shortness of breath.

If you have asthma, you experience wheezing, shortness of breath, feeling of tightness in the chest or persistent cough especially at late night or early in the morning.

Asthma guidelines are important for diagnosis and management of asthma. [Tips For Asthma Management]

Asthma guidelines:

Asthma guidelines include long term management of asthma in children with mild or moderate persistent asthma, combination therapy in moderate persistent asthma and use of antibiotics to treat acute exacerbations of asthma.

Asthma guidelines include prevention which means early treatment on the advancement of asthma.

The goal of asthma guidelines should be minimal or no chronic symptoms day or night, minimal or no exacerbations, minimal or no adverse effects from medications and minimal use of short acting inhaled beta 2 agonists.

Asthma guidelines include inhaled corticosteroids should be used in infants who have more than 3 episodes of wheezing that lasted more than one day or affected sleep.

According to asthma guidelines, antibiotics are not recommended for acute asthma treatment except as needed for comorbid conditions, for example if patients are suffering with fever, pneumonia, or suspected bacterial sinusitis.

According to asthma guidelines, the written action plan should be part of the treatment because it educates patients in self-management.

Thousands of people are suffering from asthma every year. If you have asthma, you should have faith and patience for asthma control.

While asthma is a chronic condition, you can still enjoy your life with asthma control program.

After diagnosing with asthma, you feel that you should make undesirable changes in your lifestyle.

Asthma changes your life but your life also improves when you follow asthma control plan and look for support networks that offer help in controlling asthma.

Remember one thing that you are not alone suffering from this chronic disease.

You should not hesitate in taking support from family members and friends for asthma control. If you take support, you can make best out of your life. There are many options you can look for when you need support and help for asthma control.

You may feel alone when you are suffering with asthma. There are many support networks available in the web. Asthma control is possible when you learn more about your disease and symptoms, asthma treatment options and finding people who you can connect with them long term.

If you have asthma, it is important to take care of yourself for living with asthma.

Living with asthma is not an easy task, but with proper plan and management, you can make it easy.

Asthma is not completely curable, so you have to prevent to enjoy normal life.

Tips for living with asthma:

• You have to inform your doctor about all the medications you are taking for controlling asthma. You have to go for check up regularly for asthma management. You should keep the doctor’s appointments regularly.
• Medications should be used correctly for living with asthma. You should take the medications regularly and inhalers should be there always with you.
• Learn how to use the inhalers, otherwise less medication will get into your airways. If you have problem in taking asthma medications, discuss your problem with your doctor.
• Inhaled medications can be taken by metered dose inhalers, dry powder inhalers and nebulizers. Keep track of the inhaler doses and discard the inhaler when you have used the number of doses indicated on the package label.
• For living with asthma, you have to educate yourself about asthma. You can control and reduce the risk of asthma attacks once you educate yourself.

If you are an asthma patient or if your family member is suffering from asthma, then having an asthma air purifier is vital.

An asthma air purifier can be very helpful in preventing attacks from happening.

Allergies are the main cause for asthma attack and asthma air purifier can help in getting rid of unwanted particles that can trigger allergies.

Unwanted air particles which we cannot see enter your lungs and irritate the airways. The airways become inflamed and make breathing difficult. Therefore, it results in weakening of lungs and other health related issues appear.

An asthma air purifier filters the oxygen you breathe and eliminate the unwanted particles before you breathe them in. It is designed to draw air into its filtering system.

Decide in which room you and your family members spend most of the time so that you can fix the air purifier in that room. If you spend lot of time in cooking, you need to keep an air purifier in your kitchen which can absorb chemicals.

Every asthma air purifier is not same, so depending on the filtering system and how it works, you have to change the filters once in a while or you have to wipe off the plate that the particles are trapped on.