PrepperMed 101: Breathe, Child… Prepping for Asthma, Part I – Avoidance

Ok, I know asthma affects many adults as well as children.  It is common in childhood though (about 13% of children in the U.S.), and what tugs at a parents’ heart more than a child struggling to breathe?  

When the smooth muscle around the small airways in the lungs constrict, it makes sucking air into the lungs feel like trying to drink through one of those tiny coffee stirrer straws.  Mucous produced and dumped into airways narrows them further as the sufferer wheezes, coughs, and feels like she’s suffocating.

When this happens to your airways…

…it feels as if you’re trying to breathe through one of these.

Unfortunately, the best treatments we have for asthma are drugs; drugs that cause the airways to open up and reduce their mucous production, and drugs that stifle the inflammation that causes the attacks in the first place.  

That doesn’t mean we’re helpless if the drugs aren’t available, though.  There are things that can help reduce the number of attacks and their severity; things that don’t rely on access to medical care.  

I offer these ideas gleaned from the asthma research with prepping in mind; but as always keep in mind I’m not a physician and so these are simply informational, not medical advice.

Preventing attacks is much of the battle.  Reducing the triggers that provoke attacks is a great start.  Triggers differ by individual, but the two most common are inhaled irritants and exercise.

Irritants and asthma

Some particles are just plain irritating to the lungs and provoke inflammation in everyone.  If the person is prone to asthma, they trigger attacks.  Tobacco smoke is a great villain in this story.  

Seriously, if you like your kids to be able to get air, you shouldn’t smoke in a building where they live.  (I’m all for freedom so if you like the smoking more than air for yourself; it’s not for me to tell you no.)  

Other kinds of smoke have similar effects, so if you’re considering a wood-heated BOL, you might look carefully at your design for venting.

Pretty much the worst thing ever to share the house with an asthmatic person.

Other particulates might not bother everyone, but do trigger asthma in allergic individuals.  High on the list of these are dust mites, cockroach parts, and cat dander (people speak of it as ‘cat fur’, and that’ll do because if one’s around, so is the other).

Dog dander and mold do it for a smaller number of people.  Dust mites are impossible to get rid of (being tiny arachnids that live off tiny particles of skin we all shed), but reducing their numbers will make you a Hero of the Asthmatic Union.  

There are special mattress and pillow case coverings that greatly reduce a sleeper’s inhalation of the mite particles and they can help both now and in case of emergencies.

A microscopic picture reveals these dust mites for the evil monsters asthmatics know them to be.

Anything else that irritates lungs makes asthma worse.  Once the immune cells in the lungs get riled up, pretty much Everything makes them go on the warpath.  That means it’s worth extra care to avoid exposure to respiratory infections (colds and flu for example) in people prone to asthma.

Exercise and asthma

This one is definitely a two-edged sword.  On one hand, in the short term, exercise triggers asthma attacks in some people.  Or to be more specific, stopping a bout of exercise triggers the attacks.  

When we exercise, we naturally increase the signals that allow our airways to open.  Then as we back off on the intensity, the process is reversed and our brains signal for airway constriction.  

In some susceptible people, the brain gets rather carried away with the process, and there is too much constriction that occurs when the exercise intensity plateaus or decreases.

This does not mean asthmatics shouldn’t exercise, though!  On the contrary, regular exercise is perhaps the single best tool for avoiding asthma attacks.  Remember how some of the drug treatments for asthma worked by stifling inflammation?  

Well, regular exercise does the same thing by provoking nice small and regular doses of the stress hormone cortisol.  Cortisol suppresses inflammation (just as hydrocortisone, a close chemical relative, suppresses the inflammation of a bug bite).  Small regular doses suppress excess inflammation such as asthma attacks.  

Too much cortisol and you suppress even appropriate immune responses…so you see, it’s not your imagination, you do get sick more often just when a million other things are going on.

Wrapping it up

How to not get cut by either edge of this sword?  Attacks are less likely when the exerciser warms up gradually before going hard, and cools down gradually.  The suppression of the underlying disease works best when the exercise is regular; and it seems to help if it’s aerobic — so regular running, biking, basketball, or whatever might work better than weightlifting for this purpose.

Here’s a nice aerobic exercise to keep asthma at bay…

So there are some ideas on how to have less asthma. A future post will move on to some ideas for managing asthma when you can’t quite get rid of it.

You can read Part II of this series HERE (CLICKY)

PrepperMed 101: Breathe Deeper… Prepping for Asthma, Part II – Three Management Ideas