By Kiran Viramgama
With the holiday season fast approaching and with added travel and holiday
stress, a change in sleeping behavior may affect your asthma or chronic
obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Here are some helpful tips this
holiday season that may help prevent exacerbation of asthma or COPD. The common
symptoms of bronchial asthma are nighttime cough, wheezing and shortness of breath.
The common exacerbation cause of bronchial asthma is respiratory tract
infection, postnasal drip, gastroesophagel reflux disease (GERD) or heartburn.
1. Sleep adequately. You will want to sleep a little longer and go to bed
earlier by the start of the holiday season if you feel there will be sleep
deprivation on the weekend if you are planning to stay up late. Maybe, if this
is the case, you will want to start going to bed a half an hour to an hour
earlier from now on so that it helps the immunity and prevents infection.
2. Avoid junk food. Needless to
say, it is very tempting but it may be a good idea to replace junk food snacks
with good and healthy foods, thereby preventing bronchospasm, mucus formation,
and nighttime symptoms of bronchial asthma. Cookies, pasties, etc., have
refined sugar, which cause mucus formation and bronchospasm. Making sure
a high-fiber diet iscontinued during the holiday
season so there are normal bowel movements every day in the morning helps to
prevent bronchospasm. If one is not getting a high-fiber diet regularly,
he/she may benefit with starting one. Eating lots of fruits and
vegetables helps. Apples, pears, grapes, strawberries, carrots, cabbage, and
spinach to name a few, are good sources of healthy fiber. Understanding
the basics of the diet and what needs to be avoided on a regular basis may help
prevent exacerbation of asthma. Avoid dairy products such as cold food,
ice cream (produces bronchospasm and mucus), bananas (increases sputum
production and chest congestion), cold water or ice water or ice drinks also
increase bronchospasm and replace them with room temperature water or
drinks. Just like cold weather makes asthma worse, so do cold liquids and
drinks which create winter inside the body. It slows stomach digestion,
producing bronchospasm. We have seen in our practice that stopping this has
decreased the need of a rescue inhaler by more than 50% in about 6 weeks in
many asthma patients and in many after only a few months. It may help if
one is looking for ideas that help to decrease the need for rescue inhaler use.
3. Compliance with the treatment of
bronchial asthma. Continue the regular inhalers, nebulizers and other
medication as prescribed by your health care professional. Understand the
correct technique of the inhaler or nebulizer. Get familiar with the
medication and its normal dose, the maximum dose that is allowed and its common
side effects. If you feel that your are getting any of the side effects,
let your doctor know about it. Make sure you rinse your mouth after the
use of the inhaler or nebulizer to prevent oral thrush. Use the peak flow meter
to monitor the asthma symptoms and keep a log of it. If one is a smoker then
smoking cessation is the key to improve health, otherwise bronchial asthma or
COPD will not get better and with time it will get worse. Inhalers or
medication will not work with ongoing smoking. A person can end up with
respiratory failure and be on a ventilator with ongoing smoking if asthma or
COPD exacerbation cannot be controlled with nebulizers, steroids andantibiotics. Smoking cessation is key.
4. Exercise. Regular exercise helps to prevent the bronchospasm and chest
congestion. In patients with exercise-induced bronchospasm, they may need to
take the inhaler prior to work out. This is equally true for the patient
with Chronic Obstructive
Pulmonary Disease as well as bronchial asthma patients.
5. Yoga
and Pranayama. Pranayama are thebreathing exercises of yoga. One may learn Pranayama and many other exercises of
yoga to reduce stress from a local yoga instructor, which may help prevent
bronchospasm, chest congestion, and nighttime wheezing. Yoga exercise is
very different from a regular work out or aerobic exercise. After yoga,
one may feel more relaxed and calm. Both exercises have their own merits
and limitations and based on one's personality one may favor one over the
other. The goal is to do one or both rather than none at all.
In our
practice, we have patients with severe persistent bronchial asthma symptoms on round-the-clock inhalers and nebulizers with
multiple modalities of treatment and exercise. Yoga has shown such
improvement in some patients that they do not require a need of inhalers or
nebulizers. The point here is to say that yoga exercise and/or other
regular oraerobic
exercises do help if one does them regularly and helps the asthma
symptoms as well as overall health when done regularly along with medical
treatment.
Author : Kiran Viramgama
Dr.Kiran Viramgama is board certified Pulmonologist and been practicing Pulmonary, Critical care and Sleep Medicine in Gettysburg PA since... (show bio)
