Dealing with a chronic lung disease like asthma isn’t easy. Whether it’s mild or severe, asthma impairs your day. It makes it difficult to get your breath back from simple activities like walking up stairs, running in the cold, or picking up heavy items. And in some cases, an attack from it can be deadly.
But what if I told you that a few tweaks to your diet could minimize the damage that asthma does to your day?
Because asthma mainly affects your lungs, most don’t think about how food could affect the disease. However, I recommend that you do! While changing your diet won’t cure you of asthma, it can boost your ability to breathe and reduce your chances of experiencing asthma symptoms.
So, take a look at these five asthma dieting tips to see how you can avoid the worst of asthma!
Tip #1: Eat foods with vitamin D.
To start your diet change, look for foods rich in vitamin D. Why? Well, that particular vitamin is great for boosting your immune system. And it’ll also help enhance the health of your lungs and airways!
Some research even indicates that vitamin D can reduce asthma attacks and increase your body’s defense against acute respiratory infections.
But where do you go about getting all that nutritious vitamin D? The best way is through the following foods:
- Fortified milk
- Salmon
- Orange juice
- Eggs
Tip #2: Consider enhancing your diet with the chemical compound tocopherol.
According to the American Lung Association, another vitamin you should focus on in your diet is vitamin E. This vitamin can help further reduce your chances of encountering asthma symptoms with the help of a chemical compound it contains called tocopherol. This natural antioxidant is capable of decreasing your body’s risk of inflammation and stress without any painful side effects.
You can find this antioxidant in the following foods:
- Almonds
- Raw Seeds
- Swiss chard
- Mustard greens
- Kale
- Broccoli
- Hazelnuts
Tip #3: Don’t forget to keep taking your asthma medication.
After changing your diet and seeing how it helps decrease your symptoms, it can be easy to forget how much asthma can affect you. But it’s still important to remember that this disease is with you for the rest of your life. So you need to make sure you’re managing it properly with your medication as recommended by your doctor. That likely means you should still be taking it even as you change your diet.
Worried about the expense? That’s completely understandable. After all, America has some of the highest prescription prices. And unfortunately, people with asthma need two prescription medications (one for long-term asthma attack prevention and the other to calm down an asthma attack).
There is a way to make your medication more affordable, though. Medications from pharmacies outside the United States are generally much more affordable, so just ship the equivalent or generic version of your medication from a licensed pharmacy referral site like Canada Drug Warehouse, is most trusted Canadian prescription service providers offering great discounts. Visit their site today.
Tip #4: Avoid certain chemical compounds.
Asthma can be quite a sensitive disease at times, even with the stability that medication management offers. And unfortunately, that sensitivity can extend to what you put into your diet. So you’ll want to avoid adding foods with certain chemical compounds in your diet if you can.
The first chemical compound to watch out for is sulfite. Typically used as a preservative to prevent foods and drinks from browning or losing color, this chemical compound can cause a number of negative side effects for those with asthma, such as mild wheezing or a severe asthma attack.
But you can avoid this interaction by reading all the food labels found on items you consume. So if you spot the following on a food label, make sure you do not consume the item that the food label is on:
- Sulfur dioxide
- Potassium bisulfite
- Potassium metabisulfite
- Sodium bisulfite
- Sodium metabisulfite
- Sodium sulfite
Next, consider avoiding the chemical compound, salicylates. Much like sulfite, this chemical compound is a naturally occurring one, so you can find it in a variety of foods. You can even find it in a number of well-known medications like aspirin. This ubiquity can pose a problem as the chemical compound can trigger asthma attacks.
But you can avoid this issue by minimizing your intake of the following items:
- Instant coffee
- Soy sauce
- Tomato paste and sauce
- Beer
- Honey
- Aspirin and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs
Tip #5: Reduce how many carbohydrates you consume.
You should also try to avoid consuming carbohydrates excessively. While tasty, they tend to create more carbon dioxide, which can make it more difficult to breathe. The American Lung Association suggests that you consume fewer carbohydrates and more healthy fats to ease your breathing.
In short, keep your diet in mind as part of your asthma treatment. There are many ways it could be affecting your asthma symptoms, and controlling it is one of the easier steps of asthma management.
RD Neha Kava
Latest posts by RD Neha Kava (see all)
- Your Fitness Bucket List for 2024 - July 26, 2024
- 7 Home Workout Exercises for Stay-at-home Moms - July 25, 2024
- 7 Health Supplements Every Man Should Take - July 23, 2024
