There has been a lot of talk in recent years about the utility of exercises in treating and managing asthma. There are breathing exercises and posture exercises. I did a search this morning to see what, if any, help these can have. According to scientific studies, there are no especially effective ways to do it. By their measurements, no particular exercise is going to fully improve the condition. However, they do say that the exercises will help improve the quality of life for the person involved. If you think about it, it makes sense. Practicing deep breathing and proper breathing technique can improve the person’s ability to breathe safely and easily. This will increase the comfort and help to avert asthma attacks before they happen. This is part of what they call “preventative care”. There are many people with asthma and we shouldn’t think of all of them being treated exactly the same way, but using exercises can certainly help improve that situation.

When you have a continuing illness, like asthma, you can get through it on your own if you follow the right medication regimen. But you don’t have to! There are support groups that are locally-based and you can take a look at them. Look at that site or do a google search. Some of them are based around universities, others around medical centers, and others around other community organizations. The important thing is that they offer you a lot of support while you seek treatment or when you experience difficulties with it. Obviously, asthma isn’t the most serious illness you can have, but support can almost always help in those kinds of situations. This way, you wont feel alone, you can talk with people who understand your situation, and you can get valuable tips of how to deal with the illness in your daily life. The example that comes to mind was when I said I was having such-and-such kind of difficulty breathing. Another person in my group asked me whether I had a particular brand of spray cleaner for my bathroom. I said that yes I did, and she told me that she had had exactly the same problem and had switched to another brand that doesn’t cause asthma flare-ups. In other words, a person who’s involved in her own treatment and knows a lot about it was very helpful in my life!

When you feel the air is dry, it can be much more difficult to breathe compared to the usual case. Many people have complete difficulty functioning if the air is too dry. It’s just too uncomfortable and it can cause nosebleeds and other problems too. But it also happens to be true that humidity is easy to add into the air, even in the dry winter months. You can buy a humidifier, which essentially boils off water into the air, giving it a lot more water vapor than is usually in the air. This makes everything much more comfortable and can actually shorten the amount of time that a person spends sick with colds and such. All you have to do is plug it in and tell it to go (flip the switch). Then you’ll have to clean out the filter or replace it at some frequency, depending on how much you use it. Sometimes you might want to use distilled water, depending on what model you have. Consult the directions that come with your appliance and you’ll know for sure.

Asthma is a surprisingly common illness for many people. It’s not completely clear why it seems like the illness is around more frequently now than it used to be, but it’s probably one of the most common internal conditions in the country right now. It might be because of pollution or something that we all have in our houses and just haven’t known yet. Either way, the difficulty of asthma can be very serious. Generally, the condition is easy to treat and contain. But sometimes an asthma attack occurs, normally due to a particularly immediate cause, like a sudden patch of dust in the house or something. Then the airways in the lungs narrow a bit and it becomes hard to breathe. This can be accompanied by a wheezing sound. Another of the problems that happens at this point is that the person can panic and their breathing becomes yet more labored. At this point, unless you’ve been through this before and have a plan to deal with it, you should see a doctor or go to the ER. This is NOT official physician advice, so you should check with a doctor before acting on it. My main point was that to clarify what happens in an asthma attack, so that you can know more about it in case you suffer from one.

We talk a lot about the newest innovations here, but it’s also important to see where some of these products came from in the first place. One of the earliest modern respiratory aids was the iron lung. It was used primarily on polio victims who, at an early stage of polio, have a lot of trouble breathing. The muscles of the lungs and chest practically freeze in place. The iron lung is a pressurized object that is to help a person’s lungs expand and contract. It’s interesting to see what kinds of things were medically necessary back in those days and were the best way to save patients’ lives. Now, we have a lot of other products that are less intrusive and easier to use. CPAP machines, for example, can fill some of the function of an iron lung. Polio itself isn’t actually a problem in America anymore, but other parts of the world still struggle with this dangerous illness.

With all the continuing interest in Swine Flu, it seems helpful to go back to other recent pandemic scares, especially those that have to deal with respiratory system issues. One of the most difficult things about respiratory viruses is that they can be spread surprisingly quickly and easily. While the swine flu has turned out not to be such a big deal at the moment, it can still be transmitted through close contact with others, and it can become more potent, depending on how it morphs. But the last big pandemic like this was the SARS event, which occurred earlier this decade. It had very similar symptoms as influenza does, so it wasn’t noticed right away. It had a much more potent effect in the end, and it really takes the energy out of people. Though they haven’t found a cure or vaccine for SARS, they have found a way to isolate it quickly and treat it’s symptoms, as well as take care of some of the other infections that might come along with it. This reduces the chances of it getting really bad and it can shorten the amount of time it’s possible for the disease to spread. Read all about SARS here.

Breathing is the most important thing that people do. Eating is important, blinking your eyes is also important. But without breath, none of that’s going to happen. In hospital emergency rooms, certain situations arise in which the patient will need to undergo endotracheal intubation so that they can be put under anesthesia, or if there are other problems with the airway, etc. The process involved putting a tube down the person’s throat in through the person’s airway. For doctors in critical care positions, this process becomes second nature, even though it is hard because the doctor can’t physically see where the tube is in the person’s anatomy. But they learn how to “visualize” it, feeling out where it is in the person’s throat. It turns out that it only takes new doctors a few tries to get it right, based on this article from the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. So there’s no need to worry; the doctors have practiced thousands of times.

It never hurts to repeat this information for those of you who don’t know it or have missed it thusfar. Using an inhaler isn’t complicated but it takes a bit of practice to get it right. The University of North Carolina has lots of information about how to use an inhaler because many of their students might be away from home for the first time and don’t know exactly who to ask about how to use the thing. The first thing you will want to do is make sure that the mouthpiece is completely clear of foreign objects, particularly if the cap is not attached or if it’s dislodged. This prevents the accident inhalation of a small object. When you inhale, you can do it in two ways, depending on your medicine and the directions you’re given by a doctor/nurse. You can either use it open-mouthed or closed-mouthed. You can read the details of each one on the UNC site. The site also clarifies the difference between the different kinds of medication and what they are used for. It’s all very interesting and they summed it up well!

If you get discouraged while battling your own respiratory difficulty, you can look to many different examples of diseases that have been mostly eradicated or limited greatly in scope. In some parts of our country, one of the biggest local dangers was called Black Lung Disease. It was a major danger for men who worked in coal mines and was generally found with symptoms similar to those of bronchitis or pneumonia. It doesn’t actually refer to one specific disease, but to many different diseases that are associated to the long-term connection to coal dust in the mines. But over the last few decades, the number of people getting these diseases has decreased by a lot, because the equipment for mining and the process has gotten much safer. You never know when a particular disease will have a great leap forward in terms of treatment and prevention. Many of the respiratory aids that we have discussed are very helpful in moving toward the prevention and effective treatment of diseases.