Some Quick Tips on How to Overcome Asthma
For most of the people asthma may start as some cough and a little discomfort. However, you may slowly start hearing a whistling sound with every breath and may ultimately start to panic by seeing yourself gasping for air. There are a lot of people across the globe now suffering from asthmatic problems, and if you are not yourself and asthmatic, there are still high chances that you may not someone who suffers from chronic asthma.
What is asthma?
Estimated that more than 5.4 million people in the UK now live with asthma, which is basically a lung disease in which airways become constricted and inflamed with decreased respiratory function. This cause wheezing and deficiency in air intake and may sometimes even have very troublesome outcomes including death.
Traditionally, asthma patients are treated with inhalers and some oral medications to get the airway inflammations alleviated and help with the acute attacks. Many a times, the patients need to keep the inhalers handy with them to avoid frequent attacks or hospitalisations.
How to control asthma?
As discussed above, inhalers and oral medications are there to help alleviate asthmatic attacks. However, there are many lifestyle changes one can make to avoid exacerbation of asthma symptoms and have a good control over this disease. Here, we will discuss some such tips which you can try out overcome asthma.
- Ginger – Researches have shows that while combined with the inhalers and asthmatic medications, ginger has the capacity to improve airway dilation and help ease breathing. Ginger compounds also found to have a good impact on the smooth muscles by reducing the contraction of the muscles around the airways.
- Vitamin B6 – It is also known as pyridoxine, which has proven positive impacts on asthmatics who are largely dependant on steroids. Individuals who take Vitamin B6 are found to have better breathing capacity especially during early morning hours. Those who are found to have low B6 level, acute wheezing episodes are common, which is found to get reduced with B6 supplementation. Some studies also have shown no significant results, so it is ideal to discuss your plans with a physician before starting on Vitamin B6.
- Omega-3 fatty acids – There are proven results for omega-3 fatty acids on asthmatic patients whereas it helps increase the quality of life of people by being less reliant on the medications. The easiest way to add Omega 3 fatty acids to your diet is to add more walnuts mixed with raisins and carob chips, eat salmon, and pumpkin seeds.
- Practising yoga: Yoga is an ancient Indian meditation technique to gain control over body and mind, which is found to have a positive impact not only on asthma, but many such conditions. Deep breathing or ‘pranayama’ is a basic practice is yoga, which is found to produce significant results in asthmatic patients by reducing hyperventilation and improve the symptoms.
However, one thing you need to keep in mind is that the herbs and other supplements may also interact with the other medications you take, not only for asthma, but also for other disease conditions too. So, before administering any alternate therapies or supplements by your own, always check it with your primary care physicians and discuss the goals.