PODCAST - New Asthma Diagnosis_ Here’s Exactly What to Do First
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Athlete with Asthma Show. I'm your host Johnny Ha, an ultra runner endurance athlete, and yes, a guy who's had an inhaler prescribed since birth. Despite doctors telling me I could never play soccer nor run a marathon, let alone a hundred K ultra. I prove them all wrong. This show is where I share everything I've learned from breathing techniques to mindset shifts to help you become the athlete and the person you truly want to be.
So if you're ready to achieve your goals, despite limitations, let's get started.
Don't panic. I got you. I've had asthma for more than three decades, and today I'm gonna share with you exactly what I would do first after being newly diagnosed with asthma. I've had asthma for 30 plus years, [00:01:00] and when I was first diagnosed. I was in shock. I had no idea what to do, and I was terrified because I thought that I would have to stop doing the things that I love.
I love playing soccer, love playing with my friends on the playground. I was diagnosed when I was four years old, even though I most likely had asthma since birth. And when I found out these were the things that were important to me. And today, I am an ultrarunner with asthma. I have one a hundred kilometer ultra marathons, even though I have asthma.
And I know that you, even if you are very scared right now because of your new asthma diagnosis, I know that you are going to achieve amazing things as well. A friend of mine was recently diagnosed with asthma and she finished her first High Rocks event, and I'm actually gonna be doing my first High Rocks event later this year.
I'll be sharing more about what High Rocks is and my High Rock's journey as we get there throughout this year, but let's get to it. You've been newly diagnosed with asthma. What do you do next? Well, I have three [00:02:00] steps that I highly recommend that you start doing, integrating into your life today. And the first one is understanding your asthma triggers as much as asthma may feel random to, I believe that it.
Isn't, and I have a whole video and podcast episode ride detail exactly why asthma is not random. You and I have a lot more control over our asthma than you think. Especially being newly diagnosed. It may seem terrifying 'cause you don't know when it's gonna happen. Well, let me give you a sneak preview of that podcast episode.
When we talk about understanding asthma triggers. Really it comes down to a few things. The first thing is environmental factors. Depending on what your environment is, maybe there's a lot of dust in your house. Maybe there's mold in your house. Maybe you don't even know if there's dust or mold in [00:03:00] your house.
If there is, then that can have a negative impact on your asthma can cause more inflammation and just inflammatory responses in our bodies. Maybe we are looking at the weather starting to become colder. Maybe the air quality is bad. These things can impact you and I or asthma. When it's colder outside, I tend to make sure that I'm breathing more through my nose or that I'm breathing through an neck warmer or something to warm the air before it hits my lungs with air quality.
If it's smoky outside, that may potentially cause an asthma flare up. So you really wanna look at environmental factors. Another thing as I go through this is these things stack. So if you have multiple things, multiple triggers that are happening in your life. You are more likely to have an asthma attack, an asthmatic response.
Now, I'm not a [00:04:00] healthcare professional. I am an athlete with asthma who has had asthma since birth, so I've had a lot of experience with this over the years. I highly recommend that you work with your healthcare professional. You talk to your healthcare professional about what I share with you today. The next one is diet.
Diet can have a huge impact on you and I or asthma. There are some basic things that are gonna cause more inflammation in our bodies. Now, asthma really is an inflammatory response. It's an inflammatory response of our lungs. So if we have less inflammation in our body, from environmental factors, from dietary factors, then we are more likely to avoid having asthma attacks.
So when it comes to diet, there are specific foods that are inflammatory to anyone. Fried food, for example, dairy with a lot of hormones and all this. Bad stuff in it. Alcohol, these things, inflammatory foods are inflammatory to everyone. Now. There are also foods that may just be [00:05:00] inflammatory to you. For me, I've had a severe peanut allergy since I was very little.
First found it out around one or two years old and my dad was eating peanuts on the patio. And I looked at 'em and I stared and I pointed him like, I want one, and my dad gave me one. And uh, soon enough I had hives all over my body. I don't really remember what happened next, but I am alive today. Point is I have multiple food allergies, random ones too, like peanuts, nuts.
That's kind of one we all hear about now. Random once I just, a couple of years ago was taking a run and I started feeling my asthma flare up. I started getting itchy in the face. I was very confused, didn't know what it was from, and a couple days later it happened again, and I realized that both of these days I had eaten asparagus and I don't eat asparagus that often.
I loved asparagus growing up. But later in life, I have developed, at least for this. Season of life, an asparagus allergy that creates more inflammation in my body. So there are [00:06:00] inflammatory foods that are inflammatory to really everyone. And there are allergies that you may have, or even if you don't believe you have allergies, you may have a food sensitivity.
And like I said, you could have. A sensitivity to something where you don't typically feel a reaction, and then it could be really poor air quality outside and those two things could stack, and then you have an asthma attack. Understanding your asthma triggers is really the first thing you need to do when you've been newly diagnosed with asthma.
Let's go through a couple more. Being sick. This is the biggest one for me. If I'm sick, I am so much more likely to have an asthma attack really anymore at this point in my life. Since I've progressively overloaded my lungs, which I'm gonna talk about a little bit later on, how to strengthen your lungs since I've done that over the years.
Really, I only need my inhaler when I'm sick, and it's really when I'm sick and I'm eating something I'm allergic to or something inflammatory like dairy. When you [00:07:00] stack these two things, I tend to need my inhaler. More likely to have an asthma attack than just stress in general. Now, there are different types of stress, and maybe you've been newly diagnosed with exercise-induced asthma.
Well, exercise is a type of stress in the body. I believe it's a. Good type of stress. But if you have asthma and you have exercise induced asthma, then you need to be very careful with this stressor. And really, you need to be careful with stressors in general, because that is the whole thing. You have asthma that is induced by stress now.
To be fear. Environmental factors, when it's cold or outside, that's higher stress in your body, higher stress in your lungs. Air quality. If the air quality is bad, that's higher stress in your body, higher stress in your lungs when you're putting inflammatory foods, foods that you're allergic to, insensitive to into your body, that is a higher stress on your body.
Really, asthma is a stress response being sick. Higher stress on your body. Your body's fighting off a sickness. Now if you have exercise induced asthma or not, you wanna have your [00:08:00] inhaler with you at all times. And the rest of this podcast episode and YouTube video is gonna help you so much building up your lungs and really dealing with exercise induced asthma and asthma in general.
What else? Poor sleep, dehydration. When our bodies are thrown out of homeostasis, which is really when they're working very well, everything's working really well, our systems are firing, our lungs are firing, all this stuff. When our body is firing all cylinders, you're less likely. To have an asthma attack.
When you start introducing stressors, these different factors into your life, into your body, you are more likely to have an asthma attack. What I invite you to do is figure out what are the triggers for your asthma. You may start seeing a pattern, and if you start seeing a pattern that is great knowledge for you to have so you can start having some more control over your asthma.
Let's move on to number two. Doesn't it feel a little better having some knowledge and control over why and when [00:09:00] and how your asthma comes about and hits you? I think so. And the second piece that you can start integrating into your life today with your new asthma diagnosis is learning how to breathe.
It may sound simple. And guess what? It is. I've done so many different breathing techniques over the years, and I invite you to experiment with some as well. 'cause you may find a breathing technique that works for you so powerfully that it lessens the chance that you're gonna need to use your inhaler.
That's how it worked for me. I was four years old, learned that I have asthma, and even though I'm gonna dig into how I was able to build up my lungs back then, it wasn't until I started climbing 14,000 foot mountains in my twenties that I figured out the breathing technique that works for me. And this is what it is.
Deep, loud, audible, exhales. That's it.
And make them as long as possible, but focus on [00:10:00] the audible part. What you're doing is you are pushing air out of your lungs. You're pushing CO2 out of your lungs, and by doing this, you are opening up your lungs, making room for your lungs to take in fresh oxygen. The other thing you're doing. Is you're creating a connection between your brain and your breath.
One thing that has happened for me over the years, especially in my early years of having asthma, is I would start panicking when my asthma attacks would come along. 'cause I was afraid I was gonna stop breathing. Right? This is what we're warned from doctors, from parents, from teachers, everyone that cares about us, is that when you have an asthma attack, you wanna make sure that you don't stop breathing.
Well, how I do this? Is by focusing on my exhales. That's it. I just focus on, and it slows down my inhales. It gives me something audibly to focus on as much as physiologically the feeling in my body. [00:11:00] I use this while racing. I use this to calm myself down in so many situations, but the research on this shows that when you focus on deep audible exhales, your body is becoming more efficient with energy output, and it makes sense because you are allowing yourself, you're empowering your body to take in more oxygen.
By powerfully expelling CO2. That's part of what happens with an asthma attack is the CO2 starts building up and you start freaking out, and it's this vicious cycle. But when you can interrupt it, by
then you start forcing deep inhales. You start calming your body, learning how to breathe. I invite you to find a technique that works for you. For me, it is deep, loud, audible, exhales, or just think of audible. Exhales, and I don't know about you, but I care a lot more about my health and my wellness than upsetting someone because I'm breathing too loud and I believe that you should feel the same way.[00:12:00]
Focus on that audible exhale. Don't worry about what other people think. Tell them that you are a powerful human being that cares about your health, and that's it. Let's move on. To number three, this is what I started doing as a 4-year-old that empowered me to strengthen my lungs, to go from having to take my inhaler multiple times during soccer practice, to not having to take it at all during an entire weekend of soccer games.
And number three, build your lung. Strength. And how I like to do this is using something called progressive overload. After meeting with multiple healthcare professionals as a preschooler, I found one, well, my parents found one that taught me how to strengthen my lungs, and they didn't call it progressive overload.
This is the term that I've learned later in life, but how they explain it to me. As I had this one integrative medicine doctor that told me, Johnny, what [00:13:00] you need to do is instead of taking your inhaler before. The physical activity. You're gonna do soccer in this case, or going to the playground and playing with your friends.
Take your inhaler with you, but wait five to 10 minutes. Give yourself some time without the inhaler. I'm like, okay, that's interesting. I didn't fully understand it as a 4-year-old because in my head I take the inhale. My lungs feel good. I go and I play. I go play soccer, and if my lungs start flaring up again, I take it again, and I keep doing that.
I feel better. Welcome to medicine in the United States. You're not feeling good. Take this, you'll feel better, but it might cause all these other issues. Well, not saying that inhaler's caught has a bunch of issues. I'm not a healthcare professional. Talk to your healthcare professional. What I am saying though.
And what I learned is that by taking my inhaler, before putting my lungs through anything was creating a crutch. It was giving my [00:14:00] lungs something that they didn't need yet. It's kinda like, you know, have you ever heard if you. Sprain your ankle and you keep it wrapped for too long, you are actually hurting it.
It's a similar thing if you wrap your ankle for too long. If you wear a knee brace for too long, you don't give your body the chance to repair itself, to strengthen itself. And the same thing here. So you gotta be careful. You always wanna have your inhaler with you and run this by your doctor please. But how it works is what I did is next soccer practice I showed up at, had my inhaler in my back pocket, went, ran around for five, 10 minutes, felt asthma symptoms come on a little bit, took my inhaler.
Great. Did that for a couple weeks after that. I waited a little longer, 10 to 20 minutes. Did that for a couple weeks, waited a little longer, then did 20, 30 minutes. Did that for a couple weeks. I kept doing that to the point where I didn't need to take my inhaler at all during practice. Now practice is a little less intense than games, so I had to do the same thing with games, and I eventually got to the point [00:15:00] where I wouldn't need to take my inhaler at all.
Playing an entire 90 minute soccer game, playing multiple entire 90 minute soccer games, starting playing the entire time. In the same day, or five or six in the same weekend. Now it took a couple of years to make this happen and it took consistency. So when we're talking about building your lung strength, we used a constant of progressive overload.
It's the same thing as like lifting weights. If you progressively over time, increase your weight, then you're gonna progressively get stronger. Same thing here. Progressively over time, give your lungs the opportunity to strengthen themselves instead of relying on your inhaler all the time. Your inhaler.
You always still want to have it with you 'cause it can really get you out of some tough places. Look, progressive overload would be, you know, increasing your weight over time, increasing the amount of time that you don't use your inhaler. But if you do this and then you stop training your lungs or you stop training your biceps for even a couple weeks, maybe even a week in [00:16:00] some cases, then.
You may fall back, and that's what happens to me if I stop training. So progressive overload, great. I've gotten to the point where I can run a hundred kilometer ultra marathon and not use my inhaler. I'll tell you this, if I don't keep up strengthening my lungs consistently. So you have to consistently, progressively overload is how.
We strengthen our lungs. Be patient with this friend. You've been newly diagnosed with asthma. I feel for you. I highly recommend that you come back to this video, this podcast episode. Understand your triggers. Learn how to breathe, focus on, on that audible, exhale, and focus on building. Your powerful lungs progressively and consistently, and you got this.
And if you want some more tips about how to live a happier and healthier life, I have my three pillars of Healthy Living Guide linking to it in the show notes and in the description below. I highly recommend you grab a copy. Can also go to athlete with asthma.com/healthy Living guide to grab your [00:17:00] coffee.
I'll see you in the next episode.
Thanks for tuning in to the Athlete with Asthma Show. I hope today's episode inspired you to overcome any perceived limitations you may have. Remember, your health and wellness journey isn't about perfection. It is about progress. So I invite you to take a small step right now towards your goals, and if you found something helpful here, make sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share the podcast with others on a similar path.
Until next time, keep challenging yourself and redefining what's possible.
