Asthma (allergy, infect, doctor, diet)

[AliceT]

This is for those who wondered the same thing.

When you have an asthma attack, doctors and other medical professionals encourage you to close your mouth and breathe through your nose. All fine and good.

People with asthma are discouraged from getting so winded or out of breath that they feel they need to draw in air with their mouths as well as their noses. The trick is to not get that over exerted and if that seems to be coming on, to slow down to a point that you can continue to breathe effectively through just your nose.

Now enter the nebulizer. Once upon a time, I was given the mouth piece or mask that covers mouth and nose and told to breathe through just my nose to inhale the medicated vapor. But nowadays, the mask is being shunned and the mouthpiece is touted as the way to take in as much of the medication as possible. The mouthpiece is something that goes into your mouth and you breathe through your mouth and only your mouth.

Is it just me, or is that a complete contradiction of what we have been told all our lives? But wait... there's more. Aside from using this mouth piece for the nebulizer, the old rules still apply - breathe only through your nose and don't get so winded that you can't effectively breathe with just your nose.

What gives?

[Future Trooper]

I have Asthma and always carry my inhaler with me at all times just incase. In 10 years they will probably say that you should take the inhaler through your nose for maximum affect.( rolls eyes)

[fracturedman]

The Reason for the inhalation of such medications through the mouth rather then the nose is because you have to take a forceful breath to get the medication where it is needed. Plus the amount (volume per dose) is too large of a dose to take in the nose in just one breath, the mouth provides for stronger, thicker, and beneficial amounts.

[stan4]

Is this for real?

[fracturedman]

Originally Posted by stan4

Is this for real?

If you are talking about my post, yes...I spoke to my doctor about it and he then showed me why it is done this way.

[AliceT]

Originally Posted by stan4

Is this for real?

Are you talking about the topic of this thread? Yes, it is serious. Asthma is a life-threatening disease and it seems that over the course of my life with it, medical practitioners cannot agree on the most effective way to get medicine into lungs via nebulizer. I am asking what other asthma sufferers have been told by their medical practitioners.

[InformationPlease]

I've suffered with asthma/allergies for years to a point where any new nurse I have who checks my lung capacity with that machine printout thing freaks out and thinks the machine is broken.

As such, I've never been encouraged to breathe through my nose by a medical professional. I'm 30 and went to my first allergist at like 7... so that's 23 years of on/off care.

In fact, I spend most of the year feeling unsatisfied with nose breathing. I just don't take in enough air... ever... and maybe that's why I've never been encouraged to do this outside of soccer camp. Ha. When I used to have run miles and miles with distance and sprints and then scrimmage, my teammates would tell me to breathe through my nose so it wouldn't hurt when I'd start to have pain.

Little did I know then, their compassion almost killed me since what I was feeling was an asthma attack that I didn't medicate and ended up doing serious damage to my lungs.

So, in conclusion, I've never had a doctor who recommended this method and have always been treated via mouth-pipe nebulizers or inhalers w/spacers. Limiting air flow when the problem is limited oxygen processing space in the lungs seems counter-intuitive... but I have no knowledge of protocol outside of my personal experience.

[BatmansBiach]

As a life-long asthma sufferer, I too have been encouraged to breath through my nose when winded or feeling short of breath. Treatment, however, has always been administered orally to maximize the dosage received in one inhalation.

For me, if I breath heavily through my mouth, it dries out my mouth, throat and bronchial tube, leading to the lining becoming irritated. This induces a slight cough. The cough further irritates my air passages and soon after, an asthma attack starts to loom on the horizon.

Maybe this does not happen to everyone, but once I am able to catch my breath, I use steam to ‘wet’ my air passages, drink some hot rooibos tea and occasionally breath into an enclosed area, like a cupped palm to provide some warmth and moisture. Only then, do I breath through my nose if its not stuffed up. I’m assuming it’s the drying of the air passages that has led many doctors to recommend breathing through the nose.

Clearly, if you need oxygen, you should breath in ANY WAY possible in order to catch your breath since the airways are usually inflamed by that point, making it more difficult to get air into the lungs. Breathing through the nose during the onset of an attack will NOT work in my opinion since you are in effect further restricting air flow. This, of course, is my personal opinion from personal experience as I am not a doctor. However, as an asthma sufferer since the age of 5 (I am now 37), I find the above method the best way to alleviate my own asthma and have fortunately not had to have used a rescue inhaler in over three years....a change in diet and elimination fo certain triggers also helped!

[yhwhshalomjr]

Alice:

Is it just me, or is that a complete contradiction of what we have been told all our lives? But wait... there's more. Aside from using this mouth piece for the nebulizer, the old rules still apply - breathe only through your nose and don't get so winded that you can't effectively breathe with just your nose.

What gives?

[/quote]

The concept has not changed, the only difference is that they have discovered that nebulizere tx's through an aerosol mask will not administer the maximum effective dose, unless a person can not use their mouthpiece
for whatever reason, it's obvious that the aerosol/ medication will escape through the ports in the mask, so I imagine the NBRC (National board of respiratory care) has mandated this new rule, I have both in case I have an allergic reaction, which by the way they keep calling asthma (COPD)at the VAMC. (veterans admin medical center)
actually the inhalers (MDI) are more effective than aerosol tx. on an outpatient basis for mild to moderate asthma/bronchitis; these supposed to deliver the most medicine to the bronchial tubes(maximum deposition). you can google this to see which makes more sense to you. I have not worked in the field for 9 years now, so a lot has changed since then I suppose, but the theory still should remain the same, unless research has proven something different or better.
hope some of this will help
My $.02

[ajzjmsmom]

Speaking of asthma when you are having an asthma attack are your oxygen sats really low? My 15 yr old was diagnosed with asthma at 5 but does not wheeze only coughs and it is only brought on by an upper respiratory infection. He got sick in Jan the doctor said it was asthma yet he was sating 97%. He saw an allergist when he was 7 and we were told his lung function tests were normal, he was only mildly allergic to a few things but did not need allergy meds. He is now having a problem with alot of post nasal drip so we are seeing an allergist on Tuesday to get him checked. He now says that his inhalers make him cough worse instead of helping, hopefully this allergist will have some answers for us. I think he needs a nasal spray but his primary won't prescribe one.