While exercise helps you maintain a healthy heart and lungs, experiencing exercise-induced asthma can keep you from staying fit. If you take air in through your mouth when you exercise, the air tends to be cooler and drier than what you typically breathe in. Cooler air can trigger spasms in your airways, causing you to cough, wheeze, have trouble catching your breath or feeling easily fatigued. By taking steps to reduce exercise-induced asthma, you can reduce your risk for experiencing these uncomfortable symptoms.
Step 1
Ask your physician to prescribe medications, such as fast-acting inhalers to open your airways, reducing the likelihood that your airways will contract while you exercise. You can keep these medications on hand when you exercise because they tend to be fast acting. These medicines also work for about four to six hours to prevent your airways from contracting.
Step 2
Obtain a prescription for a longer-acting inhaler if short-acting inhalers aren't enough to control your exercise induced-asthma symptoms. If you are prone to asthma attacks that are not exercise related, your physician may recommend long-acting medication. These last about 12 hours.
Step 3
Combine the longer-acting inhaler with a corticosteroid to help your airways stay open. In addition to the inhaled medication that keeps your airways open, this medication helps reduce the underlying inflammation that causes the lungs to constrict.
Step 4
Warm up before you exercise. This prevents you from rapidly taking in cool air. A short walk or light jog can help.
Step 5
Breathe through your nose instead of your mouth to make the air warmer.
Step 6
Drink warm to lukewarm water before, during and after exercising to warm the throat.
Step 7
Cool down after exercise by slowly bringing down your heart rate. Do this by walking slowly and doing stretches. This will prevent the air temperature from changing rapidly, which can trigger asthma.
