5 ms·
Ilaksh, I seem to have touched a bit of a nerve here. I know, I used to respond the same way to similar advice. I wasn't assuming anything about anyone's condit
by kian 8y ago
Ilaksh, I seem to have touched a bit of a nerve here. I know, I used to respond the same way to similar advice. I wasn't assuming anything about anyone's condition - I was giving personal advice based on my experience. I say this as a person who grew up with extremely exercise-induced asthma - I used to run a slower mile than I walked (due to collapsing multiple times), went to the hospital multiple (6+) times a year (from ages 8-20), etc. Also, running in dry and not-salty humid climates is still a bad idea for me, or around certain kinds of trees. Running for 45 minutes was something I worked up to around the age of 25 - started with 5 or ten minute periods, interspersed with walking, until I was able to do another brief run, etc. When I stopped running for a few years, my issues came back, with multiple hospitalizations from 28-30, until I started up again around 30.
Part of the issue with exercise-induced asthma, for me personally, was also general nutrition and health - I found that as I earned more income, and switched to a diet higher in fats and vegetables and lower in carbohydrates, my condition significantly improved, providing a positive feedback loop with the exercise that eventually has brought me to being nearly symptom-free today (34). Your mileage may of course vary.
The main reason I focused so much on the running is because for most of my life I thought it would kill me, and always told myself that the reason that I didn't run is that it was bad for me. In the end it was exercising more and eating better (in a better environment) that saved me. Hopefully you'll find the trick for you - living with asthma is really unpleasant, to understate it.
- ilaksh 8y agoBut there is still the implication that my disease is the same as yours and that I just need to run out of it. I was extremely active throughout my youth including intensive training for wrestling and less intensive training for two other sports and in no way did exercise diminish my asthma throughout many years. So although I do look forward to becoming more active again, I will need to increase my medication dosage and use a rescue inhaler every day and I will never be symptom free. I am not like you.
- majewsky 8y agoFWIW, I did not interpret kian's account as suggesting that it works for everybody. I'm well aware that chronic diseases can have lots of different causes and mechanics depending on the person (especially true for my other chronic condition, atopic eczema).
- kian 8y agoI appreciate that. Something that might be interesting for you - I used to have horrible eczema between my fingers when I was younger. more fat in my diet (Along with switching to grass fed beef and eating more and fattier fish like salmon), paying attention to which foods made me feel ‘bloat’, and reducing allergen stress triggers (ocean air being a big part of mitigating those I couldn’t avoid) helped my eczema much more than exercising did.