Keeping fit is an essential part of a healthy lifestyle. It keeps disease at bay, and leads to increased energy for physical and even mental activity. Living with asthma shouldn’t prevent one from having a fitness routine. Exercising might leave a person with shortness of breath, and may be dangerous to people who have exercise-induced asthma. However there are safe ways of keeping the body fit, without the risk of an asthma attack. Here are some of the activities suitable people living with asthma.
1. Walking. A moderate to brisk walk is a very safe way to get involved with exercise if you’re asthmatic. Studies have shown that people who walk 3 times a week for 12 weeks improved their fitness levels and controlled their asthma without provoking an attack. Try walking for 30 minutes at a tie with a 5 minute warm-up and stretching at the end. The warm-up is very important because, it improves tolerance and endurance levels, thus increasing the intensity at which you can walk.
2. Yoga. Yoga is a pretty relaxing form of exercise. It doesn’t involve a lot of physical exertion, but it involves lots of deep breathing. For this reason, it helps with breath control. Also all that breathing activates more areas of the lungs. than are normally used. A study shows that people who do yoga for about 2 and a half hours every were able to reduce the amount of asthma medication they had to take.
3. Volleyball. This is an ideal sport for the asthmatic because it involves short periods of exertion. Other such sports include gymnastics and martial arts such as Tai Chi and Capoeira. Racquet sports such as tennis, ping-pong and badminton also fall into this category.
4. Swimming. Swimming is the best from of aerobic exercise. It is also an endurance sport. Swimming is suitable for asthmatics because, it involves breathing warm air. Also, because the body is in a horizontal position, the mucus accumulated in the bottom of the lungs is loosened. The only danger in this activity is swimming in a pool with too much chlorine; if you can smell the chlorine, it’s too much.
Activities such as running, basketball, football, and other high exertion sports should be off-limits because they put you at risk of an attack. As with any health condition, speak to your doctor before beginning any exercise regime. Ensure that you carry out proper warmups before a session and allow your body enough time to cool down. Don’t exercise in the cold, because the body has to do more work to warm- up which exerts the lungs and heart. With proper care and treatment, you too can maintain an active lifestyle.