DEFEATING DISEASE: BEATING ASTHMA
Asthma gets separate billing from COPD in the rogue’s gallery. But it’s also a lung disease. It’s also chronic. It’s also life-threatening. And about five million American men have it in one form or another.
Asthmatics have hyperactive bronchial tubes in the lungs that can be triggered into breath-robbing spasms by allergic reactions to things such as animal dander, mold spores, or pollen, or by environmental irritants such as smog, cold air, or tobacco smoke.
It doesn’t go away. If you have asthma, you live with it. But there are ways to make living with it a lot easier.
Pull the triggers. Asthma attacks don’t just happen. Something triggers them, and those triggers vary with the victim. They can be anything from dust to gases to allergies to viruses. The best way to get control over asthma, according to the American Lung Association, is to discover what conditions set off the attacks. Then avoid those conditions.
Ozone takes a particularly heavy toll on asthmatics, according to Dr. Bill McDonnell of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Asthma tends to be worse for several days following high-ozone days,” Dr. McDonnell says. “That might be manifested in more symptoms of asthma, more medication use, or more trips to emergency rooms.” But you may be able to avoid trips to the emergency room by limiting periods of outdoor exercise to times when ozone concentrations are low in your area, typically early mornings, adds Dr. McDonnell.
Take a dip. Exercise can sometimes trigger asthma attacks, but you can still exercise if you have asthma. Swimming might be the best way to do it because breathing warm, moist air at a pool is better for your airways than cool, dry air, says Dr. Mostow. Or you can try warming the air you breathe by wearing a scarf over your nose and mouth as you exercise. Longer warm-up-at least 15 minutes- might also help.
Milk magnesium. Long known for its ability to relax the muscles lining our breathing passages, research shows that magnesium may even help fend off an asthma attack, says Richard J. Wood, Ph.D., associate professor at the School of Nutrition at Tufts University in Med-ford, Massachusetts, and laboratory chief of the Mineral Bioavailability Laboratory. Get your magnesium from seeds, beans, nuts, and dark green vegetables such as spinach and Swiss chard.
Have a cup of coffee. The caffeine molecule is a lot like the molecules of the compound in the sprays that asthmatics use to relax the bronchial spasms. A cup of coffee isn’t as effective as a bronchodilator, of course, but it goes a lot better with the morning newspaper.
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