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Exercise asthma prevention techniques - deal with those pesky asthma symptoms and enjoy exercising

What is exercise asthma? Basically, if you exhibit symptoms like wheezing, choughs, shortness of breath, etc while exercising, you may have asthma induced by exercise.

While asthma is usually associated with allergens such as pollen, in some patients, asthma is brought on solely by exercise.

So what's the connection between exercise and this disease? And more importantly, what asthma prevention techniques can you use to deal with this problem?

According to current research, there are several factors that contribute to the illness.

During exercise, breathing tends to be more rapid. As a result, air reaches the lungs before it has a chance to warm up sufficiently. If the patient has higher than usual sensitivity to temperature changes, this is often enough to trigger an attack.

This problem is compounded by the fact that during exercise, we often breathe through our mouth to meet the greatly increased oxygen requirements of the body. The result -- cold air gets pumped directly into the lungs.

The trachea lining and bronchial tubes get irritated by the cool, dry air. In response, the body automatically releases histamines which produce inflammation and asthma attacks.

Another contributing factor is that when taking shallow, rapid breaths, more allergens may come into contact with the air passages and lungs. That can set off an attack as well.

So what can be done to contain exercise induced asthma symptoms?

If you are an asthma patient, your doctor may have prescribed a bronchodilator inhaler. Use it about fifteen minutes before you start your exercise routine. This is the single most important thing you can do to prevent an attack from developing.

When you inhale the bronchodilator medication, your muscles surrounding the bronchial tubes relax. This can significantly cut down the risk of asthma attacks.

Use a face mask to prevent breathing in dangerous dust particles. If you are exercising in cold weather, the face mask will trap moist, warm air in the nose-mouth region and prevent cold air from going directly to the lungs. This will help reduce the other factor behind exercise induced asthma.

During cold weather, it is best to avoid exercising outdoors. The same goes for exercising during the pollen season.

Take care to warm up before you do heavy or stressful routines. This is highly recommended in any case, for many other reasons. Given an adequate warm up, the body can adjust much better to the coming breathing pattern changes. This will, in turn, reduce the risk of going down with an asthma attack.

And don't forget to cool down after you finish exercising.

These exercise asthma prevention techniques can be very useful in cutting down on the symptoms and even reducing the chances of an attack. Do follow your doctor's instructions and use commonsense guidelines.






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