Prepping To Not Have Asthma
One of the readers of one of my previous posts on asthma asked if there was a way to keep kids from getting asthma in the first place – really much nicer than having to manage it. Is there a sure-fire way? No. Are there some things one can do to reduce the chance of asthma developing? Yes. Are there things one can do to reduce one’s own tendency to have asthma attacks, after the disease has developed? Also yes; and they’re the same things that make its development less likely in the first place.
Though I’m not a physician (and these are therefore not to be taken as medical recommendations), I’ve been keeping up on the research on this topic for years now (as a professional interest) and have collected some ideas to share.
The most common variety of asthma is allergic asthma. Allergies happen when the immune system attacks a foreign substance it really should get rid of, but does it with so much vigor and violence it ends up doing far more harm than the foreign thing itself ever would have. It’s like seeing a mosquito land on a baby’s head…and smacking the mosquito with a hammer. Reducing allergies means reining in the runaway immune system so it still does it’s job of defending against real threats without getting so carried away.
The Hygiene Hypothesis: Too Much of a Good Thing
Here are some trends: Children in developing countries have many health problems, but allergies and asthma are not among them. Rates of these disorders are very low everywhere where parasitic infections is high. Children raised in rural households that raise stock animals have less asthma than children in urban households that include furry pets, and these children in turn have less asthma than children in urban households with no pets. As child-rearing has gotten much more fanatically anti-germ in the last thirty years, asthma rates have increased apace.
Kids raised on farms have less asthma than any other group. Thanks Mallory Simon* for the image.
The same cells (lymphocytes) that are most responsible for defending against some kinds of foreign microbes and worms are the same cells that get carried away in allergies. Immune systems don’t just do what they were programmed to do; they adjust to the threats they face. It appears that when the real threats become very rare, the lymphocytes don’t get enough practice regulating their own behavior and develop a tendency to get over-enthusiastic.
My condensation of all of this: Clean is good, to a point. Dangerous microbe exposures, such as from contact with sick people or people’s body fluids or feces, is absolutely best minimized. Encountering a varied selection of other sources of microbes that are less likely to be harmful – exposure to the outside world and healthy animals is actually beneficial. It helps train the immune system to regulate its own behavior to match actual threat levels.
Trying to be sterile during an operation = good. Trying to keep a kid’s life sterile; not so much.
Exercise, again
Cortisol is a hormone we release to help us deal with stress. One of its effects is to modulate the immune system. Too much cortisol is a negative for many reasons, with a suppressed immune system and inability to fight off infection among them. However, small but regular doses of cortisol do a wonderful job of both promoting appropriate immune responses by getting the defensive cells out wandering around where they’ll do the most good and calming inappropriately strong immune responses – like allergy.
The take-away here is simple. Bodies are meant to move and be used. Get them moving regularly and they work better. Anything that gets the heart rate up and breaks a sweat will do it.
Go play outside
Gosh my Mom was smart. She told us this so often… and was So Right! We got exposure to plenty of low-threat microbes that tuned our immune systems nicely, and we got those nice small and regular doses of cortisol. And had lots of fun. And learned things to do (look behind when walking in the woods so you know the way out) and not to do. (Don’t play William Tell with your little sister as the ‘son’ holding the apple on her head. You’re not that good a shot.) And kept Mom sane despite many children. (Relax; all of us kids together had fewer emergency room visits than many kids with asthma have in a single year.)
Playing outside is good for a person’s immune system, and so is anti-asthma.
It’s not too late
Asthma can and often does go away as the immune system improves its self-regulation. The methods for encouraging this are the same as for preventing its development in the first place. In fact, people who have the exercise-induced form of asthma but exercise anyway (they often need to use inhalers to make this safe, at least at first) often find their asthma fades away as they continue with a regular exercise program. I myself got a spot of an asthma-related problem when cancer treatment was irritating my lungs and my doc assured me continuing exercise as much as I was able was a good strategy.
* By Mallory Simon [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
** By David K from Dallas, USA ([1]) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons