If You Believe Asthmatics Have Weak Lungs - Think Again!

There seems to be a myth that's been accepted by everyone and that is that asthmatics have weak lungs. Why is that and what if it's wrong?

I know from reading some stories of people, who have asthma, they feel that maybe they are inferior because they have to rely on their inhalers to keep up with everyone else. Not just in sport but also in everyday life. In one article I read, one young teenager used to use hide away and use his inhaler in private because he didn’t want anybody to know that he needed one. That it was a type of affliction. Why was that?

Was it because he felt that he’s was weaker or sicklier person for having asthma? Like one of those old Dickenson novels where a child coughs and splutters in the corner of the room and all the adults look over and mumble to each other... “tut, tut, poor Jimmy’s a weak lad and he’s just going to have to accept he’ll never be as good as the rest of the kids.” Is this still the way we think of asthmatics?

But I think that’s starting to change the more we are discovering about asthma and the more people we see in the news and from the sport world that have bettered them selves and have helped to do away with this stigma. Heck, it’s even become a bit cooler and more mainstream to use an inhaler in public, even the baddie in the last “James Bond – Casino Royale” relied on one.

But what if all that thinking was wrong? What if asthmatics actually are better than us, non- asthmatics? What if their asthma is just their body’s way to draw attention to something that needs to be sorted out urgently? But non asthmatics bodies don’t draw attention to this and just carry on. Could this be the true?

Believe it or not this seems to be the case. Did you know that the level of carbon dioxide in your body is just as important as the level of oxygen? We all assume that because carbon dioxide is a waste product of breathing it’s a bad thing and must be removed from the body. But the levels are very important for our breathing. The level of carbon dioxide in our alveoli of the lungs controls how long we can go between breaths. The higher the level the longer the space between breaths.

Your body was given a natural mechanism to control this but if we over breathe the level of carbon dioxide can go quickly down. Over breathing is when you breathe in more oxygen and breathe out too much carbon dioxide which puts the balance out of whack. Our body reacts to a lower level of carbon dioxide by closing down and narrowing the airways in the lungs to prevent any more carbon dioxide from escaping.

So what can you do to cut down on over breathing? Mouth breathing is usually the starting place of over breathing. Using the mouth rather than the nose allows more oxygen to enter the lungs and a higher amount of carbon dioxide to escape. The reason for this is that the nose has a smaller opening which limits the amount of air that can enter and exit. This could also be the reason why breathing through the nose is 50% harder than using the mouth as this extra resistance causes the body to slow down its breathing and stops the tendency to over breathe. Also mouth breathing allows the airways to cool down and lose moisture which can be a trigger for an asthma attack.

So rather than the idea of asthmatics having weak lungs it's been found that this natural mechanism works better in their bodies compared to everyone else. People with asthma have this mechanism in a high gear idea and they're bodies respond faster to sort this imbalance out, where as other people bodies continue on working on an unhealthy low level of carbon dioxide. (Some experts believe that this could be the link to where a lot of modern diseases and conditions have come from).