Living with Asthma

Keeping a Journal Critical in Helping me Live with Asthma

image © rider thompson

BY KRISTEN HOGAN

Growing up, I was embarrassed to have asthma.  When I was having an attack, it made me feel weak physically which translated into feeling weak emotionally.  The reason for this is how my family responded to me having asthma- as a tremendous inconvenience.  That being the case, for years I suffered in ways that I did not need to.  Not being able to breathe well most of the time was something that became normal in my daily life.  When I say this, I do not mean that I was having asthma attacks on a daily basis, but that I constantly felt like my breathing was constricted.  That I was not breathing to full capacity.  At times I have asked myself, “is there a right way and wrong way to breathe”, and perhaps the problem is that I am not breathing properly.  I will get back to that at a later date

Only within the last few years have I come to realize that this does not have to be the case.  I came to the conclusion that I can take active steps in order to control my asthma.  What I thought was completely out of my control, now I know is not.  I would like to share some of the steps I have taken to figure out what was triggering my asthma and how I went about changing in accordance to these discoveries.

The first step I took was writing in a food journal.  Okay, here me out on this.  It is a pain, I will acknowledge that.  It is just another thing to remember along with “did I lock the door when I left the house this morning” and “do I have anything in the house to make dinner with”.  What I suggest is to buy a notebook that looks nice so that you will want to bring it out to write in.  Also, it should be small so that you can take it places.  Finally, it should be exclusively used as a food journal.  This last part I cannot explain… it just seems to work better.  Maybe it’s a psychological thing, I don’t know.

Anyways, this whole journal keeping thing was a big step for me since I have never kept any type of journal in my life and it took me some time to write in it every day and without “forgetting” everything that I ate/ drank.  Let me tell you, this journal not only helped me keep my asthma in check, but was also is a great way to honestly look at what I eat and drink during the course of the day.  For instance, having a coffee shop on each block in Rhode Island (where I was living at the time) was bad on my wallet.  I have come to realize how much money I have spent over the years buying coffee.  It is sinful.  Anyway back to asthma, I realized that I ate at fast food restaurants on a bi-weekly basis.  Since going to fast food joints was a frequent occurrence, but not so frequent that it would be a desperate struggle each day, the first step I took was to stop eating at these places.  I immediately noticed a difference.  First, generally speaking, I began to breather easier.  Second, I realized that I really did not like fast food.  Wow, so far this journal is really paying off.  I knew that this was the first of many steps of figuring out how much food impacts how well I breathe.  I also realized that although this very step was relatively easy… future changes may be much more difficult.

So basically, my first suggestion is to start small.  It will take some time to understand all of the things that effect your breathing. Therefore, start with something you are relatively comfortable with letting go, because you will be more likely to stick with “the plan” as a whole.  There are obvious exceptions to this of course.  If you eat something, and have a full blown asthma attack from it…. don’t eat it again.  Ever.