Re: Anyone here dealing with exercise induced asthma?
I have a little experience in this area, so here is my back story and .02:
I have always been very active all my life and have been able to out do most people that I have met in the endurance sports(there have been a few exceptions). I was always one of the best at anything that would raise your heart rate to bouncing off the rev limiter whial I was in the Marine Corps. I still PT hard as hell lifting, running, and mounatin biking. Five years ago (I was 29) I was running and started noticing I was having a hard time getting air in and my times were dropping. I also started coughing, it got worse everyday. Shortly afer I started coughing up blood, small ammounts at first. I blew it off for a few months but I started getting sick (pneumonia). I was diagnosed with all kinds of BS for several months. I was finally told to get a CT scan. Long story short I had a tumor in my left lung. It was cancer and I ended up having 1/2 of my left lung removed. It took about a year to fully recover. When I was able to get back at PT 110% I was in pretty bad shape. Besides the increadiable pain in my side from surgeory I was having a hell of a time breathing. I was also getting sick (respiratory problems) every time I painted an engine after rebuilding it (I am a heavy diesel engine mechanic), fine dust particles were also making me sick. I would get sick with in 1-2 days after exposure and it would last for 3 days and come and go like a light switch. This all took place over the first 2 years after surgeory during which time I worked very close with my lung doc. He determined I had asthma and started me on my treatment of Advair 500/50 2x a day. It took a few weeks for it to work but I started seeing results. For the first time in almost 3.5 years I was able to PT hard with out almost blacking out and coughing my head off. The cold (I live in Maine) bothered me pretty bad also. So after I was able to push hard with out the asthma symptoms I decided to try and back my meds down some (I dont like being on meds). I was able to get down to Advair 100 during last winter, but I was not able to truely test the meds with a super long endurance type session b/c it was so damn cold out. This spring I felt the Advair 100 was working pretty well so i dropped to Flovent 100 and found out with in a week it did not work, I was sucking wind hard again! I went back up to Advain 100. At that time I started traning for a Tough Mudder and started seeing the asthma symptoms come back so I up my meds to Advair 250 and felt pretty good. The Tough Mudder I ran was at Mount Snow VT and the elevation went up to 3850 ft and I live at sea level. I had a bad asthma attack for about 25 min during that race. I spoke at length with my lung doc and we decided to max out my meds (Advair 500) because of what I do. I have felt very good sence and have been able to push hard! Last weekend I soloed a 12 hour mountain bike race. I was also riding a singlespeed. It was a long hard race with the air temps in the low 50s with rain. My asthma was not too bad during the race. I had a few minor flair ups but hit my albuterol rescue inhailer a bit and it pretty much kept it at bay.
So my point is you need to see a specialist and work close with them. When you are telling the doc your symptoms dont hold anything back even the smallest detail can be very helpfull. Dont be stubborn about taking meds (like me) because it only sets you back. Also most meds take a few weeks to start working they have to build up in your system. Dont give up, push hard and work through it. If you keep a positive attitude and stay determined you will beat it!
