Suffering From Asthma? These Things Can Help!

I was diagnosed with asthma when I was 18 years old.  I never had it as a child, but all of a sudden in the fall of 1999, I started developing symptoms like wheezing, coughing and not being able to catch my breath.  The symptoms got worse at night, and a lot of times I would wake up out of a sound sleep because I couldn’t breathe.  One time I had an episode so bad, it sent me to the emergency room in the middle of the night.  They gave me a breathing treatment and sent me home with an albuterol inhaler.  Unfortunately, my asthma would be the reason behind many trips to the emergency room over the next 15 or so years.

Since then, my asthma has mostly been mild.  It would act up if I were running, but luckily I don’t do much of that, ha!  Sometimes I would get attacks when the seasons changed.  It stayed mild, with just the occasional use of my inhaler keeping it under control.  I carried it with me everywhere I went just in case, but only used it about twice a year.  This was the case until the Fall of 2015.  All of a sudden, my asthma got worse.  I couldn’t understand why, so in addition to taking my inhaler more frequently, I started eliminating things that I thought could be triggers.

I changed a few things in my home.  I swapped out my laundry detergent and cat litter for more natural options with less chemicals.  I exchanged my vinyl shower curtain for a cloth one, and bought a mattress pad for my bed.  All of those things helped but only somewhat, so now it was time to look into my diet.  I began by keeping a food diary and recording what I ate and tracking when I had asthma symptoms.  I also did a ton of research.  I learned that wheat is a trigger for asthma, so I eliminated that from my diet recently.  I also learned that certain vitamin supplements can help with asthma, so I went from taking virtually no vitamins, so quite the arsenal of supplements each morning.  Well, guess what?  It helped!  There was some trial and error, for example, magnesium was something that was said to help with asthma, that unfortunately didn’t help me much, the same goes for MSM…not much of a help, if any at all.

So as for what did help me?  First, I changed my breathing, I always breathe through my nose (not through my mouth) and I do some breathing exercises from the Buteyko breathing method (they are easy, you can do them anywhere!) Then, each morning I take 1 tablet of Vitamin C, 3 tablets of Lysine (which is supposed to be super for your immune system!), then 6 tablets of the superfood Spirulina (love this stuff, it’s amazing!!) and finally….drum roll please….who would have guessed that the number 1 thing to help alleviate my asthma symptoms is:  VITAMIN D!!  I take 2 soft gels of vitamin D every morning with the rest of the vitamins I listed above.  I hate swallowing pills (who doesn’t?) but it’s so worth it to not be hacking and coughing all day and night and have to constantly puff on my inhaler!

Apparently, most people have a vitamin D deficiency and don’t even realize it.  I had no idea that I was deficient in Vitamin D, but as soon as I started taking it, bam! my asthma symptoms improved tremendously.

If you’re suffering from asthma, think about giving these things a try, they could help, and they are a lot better for you and easier on your wallet than all of the asthma scripts you’re constantly filling at the pharmacy.  Trust me, I’ve been there.  Obviously, I’m not a medical professional, I’m just a radio chick that wanted to stop sounding like she had a smoker’s cough every time she talked or laughed on the radio.  I’m just a woman who wanted to get a full night’s sleep without being woken up multiple times a night to puff on my inhaler, and I’m a person that didn’t want to be a slave to the drug industry.  I will still carry my inhaler as a back up “just in case”, because asthma flare up’s can happen anytime, anywhere, but it’s an amazing feeling to be able to breathe without it’s assistance.  If you have suffered from asthma like me, there’s one thing that’s for sure, you never take breathing for granted, ever.