Introduction
Having asthma may be difficult to live with, but it doesn’t have to keep you from living a full life. With proper planning and management, you should be able to do all the exciting things that other people do who don’t suffer from asthma.
Proper planning and management includes things like keeping your nose and mouth covered while performing activities in frigid weather, taking a dose of your rescue inhaler 5 minutes before intense exercise, and when going out to eat, choosing smoke-free restaurants.
But even the best laid plans still sometimes fall short.
Leaving Home Without It
Did you ever see the effective credit card commercial with the tag line, Don’t leave home without it? It was effective because it reminded people of all the bad things that could happen when you’re away from home and unprepared.
No matter how well prepared you are, though, mistakes sometimes happen.
Have you ever found yourself in the midst of an attack when you’re away from home and unable to find your rescue inhaler? If so, you know how frightening it can be.
As scary as it may sound, knowing the right things to do could mean the difference between life and death.
What To Do
If you ever find yourself in the unfortunate situation where you’re in the midst of an attack and you’re without your rescue inhaler, take these necessary and effective steps to help take control of the situation:
- Don’t get anxious. Anxiety will cause your body stress, and stress makes you have to work harder to breathe.
- Ask someone to take you to your inhaler if you know where it is. If you cannot get to it because of distance or because it’s lost, have someone take you to the emergency room.
- While you’re waiting, sit down, close your eyes, lean forward and rest your head on your arms. This position will help relax you and expand your chest for more efficient breathing.
- Pace your breathing. Exhale 2 to 3 times longer than you inhale. This will keep you from trapping air in your lungs making it hard to take deep breaths.
- Purse your lips during exhalation. This will help keep your constricted airways from collapsing during exhalation and trapping air in your lungs.
Trapped air limits your ability to take deep breaths; using the techniques above will help keep this from happening.
Conclusion
The next best thing to using your inhaler during an asthma attack is to use the techniques of calming down, controlling your breathing, and exhaling through pursed lips. You’ll even recover a lot quicker if you use these techniques in conjunction with your inhaler.
Being prepared is essential to living a safe normal life when you have asthma. But no matter how well you plan, bad things sometimes happen.
If you ever find yourself in the midst of an attack without your rescue inhaler, knowing how to respond can potentially save your life.
Following the 5 steps outlined above will help you take control of a potentially bad situation. Remember, take control before IT controls YOU.