Hello hello,
Thanks for tuning into Monday Morning Breathwork today. I've been thinking a lot about asthma recently and I often have clients come in and tell me they have had asthma their entire life. It shows up on a lot of my intake forms and it seems to be common knowledge it is something you just have to live with. But is that true?
First off what is asthma and what causes it?
It's a swelling of the airways that makes it harder to breathe. Feelings of chest tightness and shortness of breath are typical symptoms.
We(the scientific community) don't seem to have a recognized singular cause for asthma according to the American Lung Association and the NIH.
It seems to me that swelling of the airways would be caused by inflammation. That inflammation is caused by a large variety of potential triggers.
Here's a few of my ideas on the causes of that inflammation:
Lack of Nitric Oxide
Food Allergies(Due to leaky gut)
Poor Air Quality and chemicals at home
I'm going to work backwards with this topic and start with #3. I have never really chatted about this topic so I want to spend ample time covering it. I'll go over #1 and #2 the next few weeks.
In the winter months for colder climates and during hot summers in crowded and busy cities our air quality tends to suffer. Typically we lock ourselves in our cozy houses and hibernate to wait out the unbearable extremes.
What we don't realize is that without proper ventilation and fresh air we are typically trapping chemicals, dust, dirt, bacteria, viruses, and lots of other undetectable irritants.
In this great little graph from Fullscript it gives you a play by play of what to do in each part of your house to try to best optimize your air quality.
The studies that have been done can be pretty drastic from kids having neurological issues, pregnant mothers and their babies having problems, and just the general allergie/asthma issue that plagues millions of people.
A couple other simple tips that can go a long way can be to use non-toxic house cleaners. Branch Basics is a great brand and is definitely one of the best. If you like certain products and have some attachment to them you can download the app Think Dirty and it has scores for almost everything.
Last idea for improving allergies in your home would be to pick up a good air purifier. Lots and lots to choose from but this isn't an area to go cheaper with. If you are in Ohio like me and spend 4-5 months with the windows mostly closed up, the high end Air Doctor would be a great choice.
If you are serious about cleaning up allergies and breathing issues some awareness into indoor air quality and making small improvements can go a long way. Managing symptoms includes understanding how your environment is helping or hurting you.
Breathe easy,
James Fryer
www.jamesfryernmt.com
Relevant shit that seems completely unrelated: Anxiety sounds a lot like an inability to breathe properly aka asthma. Normal kids today have about the same levels of anxiety as psychiatric patients in the 1950's