# Asthma and Jogging

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asthma-and-jogging/359164>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [June 2, 2006, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asthma-and-jogging/359164 "2006-06-02T17:25:23Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\
**Post date:** [June 4, 2006, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asthma-and-jogging/359164/21 "2006-06-04T11:49:43Z")

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[QUOTE=Merijeek]  
Well, I’ve recently started jogging. Amazing how out of shape one can get in a couple years without really noticing.

Thing is, I quit smoking almost two years ago. Oh, and I picked up asthma. That one’s new to me. The muscles can handle the running, and the ankles aren’t giving me any problems.

The difficulty turns out, of course, to be lack of lung capacity. As soon as I start running, each breath contains less and less air to the point that I feel like I’m holding my breath after a couple minutes. Then I need to walk for a few minutes until my lungs recover.

I can’t be the only person with asthma trying to get some more exercise. And my doctor isn’t particularly good - if antibiotics or cortisone cream won’t fix a problem he’s not really good for anything.

Anyone out there have any advice? Any particular way I should try breathing? Anything I should eat, drink, or do beforehand to make the breathing easier?

[/QUOTE]

I may be getting into trouble here, since I’ve only gotten as far as the OP, but —

GO SEE A DOCTOR WITH EXPERTISE IN ASTHMA!

That’s an allergist, or a pulmonologist. You don’t need to breathe differently, you don’t need to eat or drank some substance, or _avoid_ some substance. What you need to do is GET YOUR ASTHMA PROPERLY TREATED.

You may need to take daily medication either for awhile or long term. You may need to medicate just prior to exercising. Regardless, you need _medicine_. Yes, it’s a pain in the backside but so is not being able to breathe. Get this _properly_ taken care of you will no longer have this sort of “I can’t breathe” problem when trying to exercise. Failing to treat this can leave you open to all sorts of really unpleasant, nasty complications. No to frighten you, but asthma can kill. Get this taken care of.

The other possibility here is that you don’t have asthma, but some other lung disease. Well, you’d still need to get that treated, anyhow. Bottom line - you need to see a competant doctor with some knowledge/expertise in this area.

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