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Anyone here dealing with exercise induced asthma?

Mike_in_FL

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Minuteman
  • Feb 29, 2008
    1,597
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    Tampa Bay, FL
    It's a guess my primary MD and I are making. A prior primary care guy asked/told me he suspected that I had asthma as a kid. If I did, it was not severe enough to be diagnosed back in the stone age.

    He is giving me an inhaler to try and see if this is what I have going on or not. I'm just wondering if anybody else deals with this. The only symptom I can give you is a "burn" in the windpipe/esophagus when I run. I used to get a burn lower like on the bottom of the rib cage years ago, but that may have been unrelated.

    Any help or info would be appreciated!
     
    Re: Anyone here dealing with exercise induced asthma?

    Had it all my life.. inhalers dont really help me that much. I've found the only thing I cant really over-come is cold air. Warm humid air seems to be better for me. I used to run cross-country to manage it. The trick is to stay out of the redline, if it's burning like you are describing, back off and interval train. You can get better, but inhalers never really did that much for me.
     
    Re: Anyone here dealing with exercise induced asthma?

    I've had asthma all my life and never really been able to play sports or do any kind of running. The inhaler really won't help much but you want to use it prior to your exercise. I'm assuming you don't have it too bad or you would have been diagnosed with it at a much younger age. In my case I can't run more than a 1/4 mile without getting winded even when I was excercising every day when I was younger. As glockandroll said, try to keep from pushing yourself too hard and know your limits.
     
    Re: Anyone here dealing with exercise induced asthma?

    I have a little experience in this area, so here is my back story and .02:

    I have always been very active all my life and have been able to out do most people that I have met in the endurance sports(there have been a few exceptions). I was always one of the best at anything that would raise your heart rate to bouncing off the rev limiter whial I was in the Marine Corps. I still PT hard as hell lifting, running, and mounatin biking. Five years ago (I was 29) I was running and started noticing I was having a hard time getting air in and my times were dropping. I also started coughing, it got worse everyday. Shortly afer I started coughing up blood, small ammounts at first. I blew it off for a few months but I started getting sick (pneumonia). I was diagnosed with all kinds of BS for several months. I was finally told to get a CT scan. Long story short I had a tumor in my left lung. It was cancer and I ended up having 1/2 of my left lung removed. It took about a year to fully recover. When I was able to get back at PT 110% I was in pretty bad shape. Besides the increadiable pain in my side from surgeory I was having a hell of a time breathing. I was also getting sick (respiratory problems) every time I painted an engine after rebuilding it (I am a heavy diesel engine mechanic), fine dust particles were also making me sick. I would get sick with in 1-2 days after exposure and it would last for 3 days and come and go like a light switch. This all took place over the first 2 years after surgeory during which time I worked very close with my lung doc. He determined I had asthma and started me on my treatment of Advair 500/50 2x a day. It took a few weeks for it to work but I started seeing results. For the first time in almost 3.5 years I was able to PT hard with out almost blacking out and coughing my head off. The cold (I live in Maine) bothered me pretty bad also. So after I was able to push hard with out the asthma symptoms I decided to try and back my meds down some (I dont like being on meds). I was able to get down to Advair 100 during last winter, but I was not able to truely test the meds with a super long endurance type session b/c it was so damn cold out. This spring I felt the Advair 100 was working pretty well so i dropped to Flovent 100 and found out with in a week it did not work, I was sucking wind hard again! I went back up to Advain 100. At that time I started traning for a Tough Mudder and started seeing the asthma symptoms come back so I up my meds to Advair 250 and felt pretty good. The Tough Mudder I ran was at Mount Snow VT and the elevation went up to 3850 ft and I live at sea level. I had a bad asthma attack for about 25 min during that race. I spoke at length with my lung doc and we decided to max out my meds (Advair 500) because of what I do. I have felt very good sence and have been able to push hard! Last weekend I soloed a 12 hour mountain bike race. I was also riding a singlespeed. It was a long hard race with the air temps in the low 50s with rain. My asthma was not too bad during the race. I had a few minor flair ups but hit my albuterol rescue inhailer a bit and it pretty much kept it at bay.

    So my point is you need to see a specialist and work close with them. When you are telling the doc your symptoms dont hold anything back even the smallest detail can be very helpfull. Dont be stubborn about taking meds (like me) because it only sets you back. Also most meds take a few weeks to start working they have to build up in your system. Dont give up, push hard and work through it. If you keep a positive attitude and stay determined you will beat it!
     
    Re: Anyone here dealing with exercise induced asthma?

    I was born with asthma. And while I was in martial arts, I trained with many sufferers. Usually after 1 year of intensive training, they dump their inhalers, and could breathe freely from summer to winter.

    I believe the steriod in the inhalers only weakens you, because your lungs rely on them. The only way to overcome is to train gradually; slowly break away and be independent from inhalers.

    My lungs were so weak as I couldn't do 1/16 of a mile run. Now, I run 4-5 miles non-stop, then 7 sets of 12 pull ups. Never thought I could, but I can now.
     
    Re: Anyone here dealing with exercise induced asthma?

    Damn I wish that was the case I have tried and cant do it with out them. Good for you though!!
     
    Re: Anyone here dealing with exercise induced asthma?

    Perhaps try to build up gradually; a babystep at a time.
    Push a little harder by running extra 100 yards after your normal jog, even sprint till you can't feel your legs anymore. But first, build a comfort level, knowing that you can easily finish a mile or 2 depends on your lung and energy capacity.

    The achievement on your own body is far greater than building your badass rifle!
     
    Re: Anyone here dealing with exercise induced asthma?

    I have and cant get away from the meds. Two weekends ago I raced in a 12 hour mountain bike race. I raced solo and on a singlespeed bike and finished 4th in my class, turning 63 miles in 11H 57min. Im not as good as I once was but its sure not from lack of tring. I can run 5k in 20 min where I was sub 18 (several years ago now...) and can turn a 10 mile run holding right around 8 min miles but thats when my asthma dosnt kick in. If I am the least bit sick or have missed a dose or two in a short peroid of time I feel it hard! I guess my point to my post is just b/c you have asthma dosnt mean you cant do what ever you want, it just means you will have to work harder at it. DONT GIVE UP!
     
    Re: Anyone here dealing with exercise induced asthma?

    Some of you guys must have very mild cases of asthma, even when I was exercising everyday and in the best shape of my life I couldn't run more than a half mile without feeling like I was going to pass out from lack of oxygen.
     
    Re: Anyone here dealing with exercise induced asthma?

    See if taking a lot of vitamin C helps... I was given that hint (along with an explanation of why, which I can't recall), and it seems to help.
     
    Re: Anyone here dealing with exercise induced asthma?

    Need to improve your VO2 uptake to a point where you can overcome your asthma. I used to be unable to run 1K without wheezing and coughing despite "being in good shape". When i started training in a gas mask, both intervals and boxing, kicked it.

    The steroid based inhalers are only a tempoary measure, use them as required but be mindful of how often. Intentionally try taper off them.

    Definetly look into hypoxic training/with a gas mask/oxygen inhibitor.