New to Asthma

[Aidan8]

Hi there,

this is my first time posting here, I’d like to share my experience with Asthma and would also love to hear some of your experiences and how you deal with this. (I also know I can’t ask for any medical advice)

I had exercise induced asthma as a toddler, but grew out of it pretty quickly and for 20 years was free of any issues.

That unfortunately changed a few months ago, and out of nowhere I started to experience some constriction and tightness in my throat and upper chest area. As if the windpipe in my throat/upper chest & tunnel for my breath to go through is very tight & constricted. I can still breathe like 70% normally, but it's definitely affecting my energy and causing mental fog.

It’s a very different experience to my exercise asthma I used to have, as it doesn’t seem to ever really get worse or better. And I haven’t experienced any acute attacks.

As I mentioned earlier I am hoping some of you might want to share your experiences. In General, I'd also love to know if anyone has ever experienced this before. as this is all mostly new and unfamiliar to me. Maybe this isn’t asthma and something else completely, but my suspicion is that it is related. (It actually all started after I took a supplement called Glutathione, which is known to cause issues in people with stable/mild asthma.)

Thanks for reading! And good luck to you and your health journeys as well.

Aidan

[hilary39]

Welcome Aidan. Has anything changed in your home, community or work environment? New pets, allergens, pollution, anything you can think of?

Asthma can and often does get worse with age. Mine was pretty manageable until I was 29 then it's gotten a lot more severe since (I'm 41 now).

Have you seen your GP? Do you have an asthma action plan? What meds are you taking? Answers to those will help me better answer your question about how I cope.

The archives on this site are chock full of great posts and threads--it's a good place to start

[Poobah]

Hi Aiden8. I believe that Glutathione is sulphurous and may cause problems for some asthmatics who have a sensitivity. Normally by eating enough cruciferous veggies we'll get sufficient glutathione in our diet and they will probably be better tolerated than taking a processed supplement.

I'm always looking at ways that I can improve my health but sometimes I can make the wrong choice. A few years back I thought that I would swap soya milk in and ditch cows milk after hearing that dairy is mucus producing. Things were OK for a short while but then my controlled asthma just got bad, and I felt like I had a bad chest infection. My doctor prescribed two lots of Prednisolone and antibiotics, however on my third trip to see him things had become so bad I could barely walk across a room. The doctor suggested that I may have changed something like shampoo or laundry product as he was beginning to think I was being exposed to an allergen. As the soya milk was the only thing I had changed I ditched it and was back to normal in days. Turns out I'm very sensitive to omega 6, an essential fatty acid. Who knew! Having AERD I knew to avoid salicylates but didn't realise that we should also avoid omega 6.

I only share this as you suggest that your symptoms coincide with taking glutathione, but I would have thought that stopping that supplement would result in recovery, be it a week or two.

The only way you can be sure you have adult onset asthma is to see your doctor and have some lung function tests. As your symptoms are persisting it would be prudent to get checked out in order to eliminate other causes of breathlessness/constriction too.

In the meantime you may be interested in the Buteyko breathing method, especially as as a child you had exercise induced asthma. Breathing exercises are a good and well tolerated way to help with any poor breathing habits that we may have picked up along the way. You'll find information about Buteyko on YouTube from qualified practitioners.

All the best and keep us posted on your progress with your doctor.

[Js706]

Sorry to hear you’re having problems at the moment. It could be your asthma flaring up, but also may not be (especially as you said it feels quite different to asthma you’ve experienced in the past), there are a lot of conditions that can present really similarly to asthma and are commonly found alongside asthma.

One is vocal cord dysfunction (and it’s common in asthmatics), which tends to be associated with throat tightness. It also tends to make you feel like it’s difficult to breathe in, whereas asthma generally causes difficulty breathing out.

Things like allergies, post-nasal drip (often due to allergies) and acid reflux can also cause symptoms in the throat and can make asthma worse too if they’re not managed. I don’t know if you have a history of any of these?

Asthma U.K. have a page with more info on a lot of these: asthma.org.uk/advice/manage...

Either way it’s probably worth trying to either speak to your GP, your GP’s asthma nurse if they have one or the asthma U.K. nurses for some advice! And hopefully they’ll be able to help figure out what the problem is and suggest some things to help