What Are 3 Things I Can Do About Asthma?

The Mayo Clinic, representing more than 3,300 physicians, scientists and researchers, says that it isn’t clear why only some people get asthma. According to their research the cause of asthma is genetic and environmental. This means it is passed on through families and triggered by environmental exposure. Of course, there are cases that are purely hereditary and cases that are purely environmental. For example, a chronic smoker can get asthma even if they have no genetic disposition. For average people, the main concern is to eliminate the environmental causes of asthma, especially for young children who may develop the disease from exposure. There is actually 3 things you can do to greatly reduce the environmental exposure to irritants that cause asthma.

The first thing is eliminating toxins. The big ones are pet dander, Volatile Organic Compounds, such as smoke, and dust. The grand majority of dust is circulated through the home by the central heating and cooling air duct systems. This is where duct cleaning or proper window treatment and caulking goes a long way. This is a simple step that gets big results. Removing those pounds of dust is very effective and it is important to keep dust from coming in.

The second thing is looking out for is sulfates and preservatives, such as those found in shrimp, dried fruit, processed potatoes, beer and wine. In a healthy adult, with a mature liver, these foods are fine, but in growing children, for some reason, they are linked to asthma attacks. Most of those foods don’t look like anything a kid would eat, but food manufacturing companies have a nasty habit of sneaking in preservatives, such as mono sodium glutamate (MSG), under new and improved names such as glutamate acid and so on. The big red flag in the food preservation industry is the amount of salt. Table salt doesn’t really represent a threat, but the salt in food is usually linked with long chain organic preservatives such as sulfates that is shown to lead to more frequent asthma attacks. The moral of the story is: if you are buying groceries and you notice a high amount of sodium, sulfates are also likely present in that food.

The last and most important thing to avoid for asthma is cold or polluted air. Weird how very frigid air can provoke asthma, but a repeated strain on the respiratory system in the form of cold air does this. Then there is the obvious mainly considered reason: pollution! In terms of pollution, we have the most control by using electronic air filters for our indoor air and regularly changing air filters like in our cars. Those three things will give you deep, fresh breathing!