Podcast - How to cure exercise induced asthma naturally-2
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[00:00:00] Today on the show, I am going to share with you how I have been able to cure my exercise induced asthma throughout the years, naturally,
maybe like me, you have had asthma since birth, both exercise induced and just regular asthma in your daily life. Well, when I was four years old, I was really starting to get into sports, specifically soccer, but I was having a lot of trouble playing soccer. My lungs. were not supporting me how I needed them to.
I would pretty quickly in practice and definitely in games find myself wheezing, find myself having shortness of breath. And as a four year old, this was very scary. I mean, at any age, this can be a [00:01:00] scary phenomenon. to encounter, especially when doing something that you love. Growing up, soccer was my sport.
I loved soccer. I love it to this day. And if you were going to tell me that I would not be able to play soccer, it would completely crush me. Well, my symptoms were not improving. So I had to go to the doctor and my doctor told me that there was really no way I was going to be able to play soccer at a high level in my life.
And whenever I, would play soccer, the highly recommended that I not only take my inhaler before a game, before practice, during practice and after practice. And if I wasn't getting the results that I needed,
My doctor told my parents ~and myself that ~I would need to take multiple puffs of my inhaler, [00:02:00] getting more albuterol into my system.
Well, as a four year old, I didn't really understand what any of this meant. The only thing that I heard is, I take this inhaler and I will be able to. soccer. ~So I'm like, okay,~
so if it was up to me, I probably would have just taken my inhaler and been good to go. My parents though had other ideas. My mom was starting to study to be a nutritionist and my dad was a hardcore cyclist.
And both of them knew that this wasn't something that was going to be sustainable for my entire life. And it also sounded like if I was going to continue taking my inhaler that I would become more and more dependent on it. So what they did is they took me to different ~natural kind of ~alternative integrative medicine specialists, and they had another [00:03:00] story for me.
And that is where the basis of what I'm talking about today comes from. Because I went from a four year old being told that he would never be able to play soccer without dependence on his inhaler and never be able to play soccer at a high level to not only being a very, very strong soccer player in my youth, playing for the varsity team, scoring tons of goals, being an ace defender, and now, you I am a professional ultra marathon running athlete with asthma.
Welcome to the athlete with asthma show. I'm your host, Johnny Havey, 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 [00:04:00] run a marathon, let alone 100 K ultra. I proved 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.
Now, in order to cure or manage our exercise induced asthma naturally, we really need to look at it from two perspectives. And the first one is that Asthma can hit us even when we're not exercising. Okay, now I did not only have exercise induced asthma, [00:05:00] I had asthma that would just hit me when walking outside and some sort of inflammatory element would enter my body.
like outdoor induced allergies, like there'd be certain foods that I would eat. Okay. I grew up with a severe allergy to peanuts and other nuts would also cause a allergic response in my body. To this day, I'm allergic to peanuts. Okay. So what we need to do is really break it down and look at asthma as just asthma that can hit us in our daily lives, just doing any normal activities
and then we need to look at asthma from the perspective of when we are exercising, when we are working out, when we are running, it could hit us as well. Because in those situations, we are putting strain on our cardiovascular system. So when we break asthma down into these two parts, [00:06:00] what we really need to do is provide solutions and strategies to tackle asthma in these two different ways.
Now, asthma is a very serious condition that, uh, if you have asthma or a loved one, that suffers from asthma, we need to make sure that we have our inhalers with us at all times and any other prescriptions that our doctors give us. And that brings me to a disclaimer. I have a disclaimer written in the show notes and if you're watching this on YouTube in the YouTube description.
Okay, I'm not a medical doctor. I'm not a health care professional. So you need to check in with them and run anything that I share with you by them in order to make sure that it works for you to protect yourself. So definitely always consult with a medical professional before [00:07:00] integrating any of this into your life.
Okay, so considering these two things, just asthma hitting you in your normal day to day life and asthma hitting you when you were exercising, exercise induced asthma, I have three steps that you can take to help cure your exercise induced asthma. And it really starts with setting ~a base, ~a foundation.
~Okay. ~Now we want to tackle asthma as a whole before we actually tackle it from an exercise perspective. And this is what I've done in my life. Everything I share ~with you on my channel and in this podcast ~is based on my own experience and what I've done to manage my asthma throughout my life and become an ultra runner.
Okay, so the first thing that I have done is I have decreased and eliminated to a large degree inflammatory foods from my diet. Now growing up, I shared with [00:08:00] you, I had a severe allergy to peanuts and to this day I have to. take Benadryl and have an EpiPen just in case I interact with peanuts or some sort of nut that causes an intense allergic response.
And even there's times when I have to go to the hospital to make sure that I'm okay. Well, growing up, it was even worse. And there were moments, I remember actually at a soccer practice one day, I had a Bad allergic reaction. I ate something before soccer practice. Can't remember what it was, but it definitely had almonds or nuts or something in it, maybe peanuts.
And I was at the practice field this day and I was breaking out all over. I was getting shortness of breath and I realized that maybe this wasn't just asthma, this was something a lot [00:09:00] worse. So I ended up. calling 911 and an ambulance came and picked me up and I went to the hospital and they gave me everything I needed to get over my allergic reaction.
So at an early age, I really started to learn that there are certain foods for me and for all of us out there that cause inflammation in the body. And inflammation can really impact your asthma. There's like a compounding effect. Now this is a very extreme example because there are certain foods for me specifically that cause a extreme response in my body.
So, that was peanuts and nuts growing up. With that being said, there are other foods in my life that have caused an inflammation response, a much more minor inflammation response, but compounds with my asthma. For me, this is foods like dairy, sugar, fried foods.
Yeah, [00:10:00] even the Kroger burgers that I like to eat. I have to be careful because that's dairy and fried foods. And, I'm sorry friend, alcohol also is one of those substances. Now, all of us also have innate allergies of some sort, or even if you don't believe that you have allergies, you probably have some sort of sensitivities that cause excess mucus and can cause other inflammatory responses in your life.
So what you really need to do is figure out what these foods, what these substances are for you, because we're all different. You are different from me. You are different from your friends, okay? Maybe one of your friends has asthma, and you have asthma too, and certain foods affect you differently. Now, If you have an extreme allergy to something like me, then we're not even [00:11:00] just talking about asthma here.
We're talking about a extreme inflammatory response which could even send you into anaphylactic shock, which is a extreme situation that we need more than just, an inhaler, Benadryl, even an EpiPen to manage. That's when we really need to make sure we get to a hospital or someone that can really take care of us.
But even if you don't have an extreme situation, decreasing the amount of inflammation in your body is going to show some sort of. positive impact on your asthma. For me, it has helped almost completely eliminate my asthma symptoms outside of exercise. At this point in my life, asthma really only hits me when I am sick, when I get a cold.
Okay. And. I will also feel [00:12:00] symptoms come on when it's colder outside. So during the winter when I'm exercising, I definitely feel a much different response with my body because when it's cold outside, that can also impact our asthma. Even so, I have taken a lot of these inflammatory factors out of my diet. Like dairy. I have drastically decreased the amount of dairy I have. I only have dairy maybe once a week and I use that to get my ice cream. craving fulfilled. And when the kurder burger is on the menu at Culver's, which thank God is only for a week or two a year, I will spend it on getting that kurder burger, knowing that the inflammation that that is going to cause my body is going to have some sort of an effect.
So I need to be more mindful of my asthma and just how my body is feeling when I ingest that food. Alcohol, on the other hand, I have completely eliminated it [00:13:00] from my life, as of recording this episode, I do foresee potentially having it here and there,
but the benefits I have felt by completely eliminating alcohol from my diet for the past six plus months is Amazing. Now, sugar is another story. I love ice cream and I don't know if I can ever see myself completely cutting ice cream or homemade tiramisu or pie or any of these things. things completely from my diet, but by drastically decreasing the frequency of having these different foods has had a extremely beneficial impact on not only my asthma, but my life in general.
So I highly recommend that you look at your sugar consumption, especially your processed sugar consumption. And if you are looking at sugar, then you should really opt for fruits and natural [00:14:00] sugars instead Fried foods is another one that's been hard for me, because I love french fries, and I love chicken tenders. But, even so, I have drastically decreased the amount of fries and chicken tenders and other fried foods that I intake in my life.
And this has had a extremely beneficial impact not only on my asthma but on other health factors in my life. Now the one thing that you need to keep in mind is while we can kind of say that decreasing sugar, decreasing fried foods, decreasing alcohol, and even decreasing dairy universally is going to have a positive impact on you. We all are different. Some people may not have as an extreme response to dairy and depending on where you live, the dairy that you're eating may have a different impact on you as well. When I was studying abroad in London, which I did for about six months when I was 20 years [00:15:00] old.
I went to Italy for a couple of weeks. And when I was eating dairy in Italy, when I was eating pizza, when I was eating pasta, the dairy did not have an extreme impact on me. Instead of getting ~all, instead of getting ~all mucousy, like I do with most of the dairy products I eat in the US. I wasn't having this issue at all.
So it really does matter on how high quality the dairy is as well. And the sources of where you are getting these different foods. So just know that if you're in Italy and you're listening to this or watching this on YouTube, and you're like, I eat dairy all the time. And it doesn't affect me at all.
There may be a reason for that. So, that brings me to the last part of this whole inflammation part of our strategy here, is different foods are going to affect us differently, okay? Last year, I was randomly having negative effects by eating [00:16:00] asparagus. Now, asparagus, in general, is a very, very nutritious food for people, okay?
And for years, I got away with eating asparagus and getting the health benefits from it. But for some reason, last year, I found myself having an inflammatory response to asparagus. I would eat asparagus, I'd start getting itchy throat, I'd start getting hives, And along with having allergic reaction, I definitely felt wheezing coming on and asthma like symptoms.
So I had to cut asparagus out of my diet. So just know that there may be certain foods that your body negatively interacts with and creates inflammation. And you are going to want to diagnose those. by either doing a simple test of you eat the food and being mindful about how you feel after eating the food, or actually going to your doctor and asking them to run a full allergy test for [00:17:00] you. And remember, even if you don't have what a doctor would call an allergy, you may have food sensitivities that are creating inflammation in your body that are not only impacting your asthma, but impacting your day to day life in one way or another. So that's step one, decreasing and eliminating inflammatory foods and substances from your diet. Nice second step to helping you cure your exercise induced asthma and just managing your wheezing and your asthma when it comes about during exercise.
is to increase anti inflammatory foods in your diet. Remember, we are tackling asthma as a whole here before actually even going out and doing that run, doing that workout, okay? Because by managing asthma in general, We're going to build a strong foundation for ourselves when we go out there on the trail [00:18:00] and start running or go to the gym and start lifting or we go to that group fitness class, okay anti inflammatory foods in your diet, you're going to bring the inflammation down in your body even more and promote the health of your lungs and of your cardiovascular system in addition to so many other health benefits you will see outside of improving your asthma. For me, growing up, it was pretty easy for me to find myself eating anti inflammatory foods because it was really all I knew. Because my mom was a nutritionist, so my parents bought really high quality foods, bought organic, bought lots of vegetables, high quality meats, and we would eat.
salads and greens and vegetables with almost every meal, along with high quality protein options. So I really didn't know any other way [00:19:00] until I became a teenager and I discovered that I could ride my bike to the McDonald's that was, ~uh, ~you know, two, three miles from my house. So that's what I would do. I would Be like, Hey, mom and dad, I'm going to go for a bike ride.
And, uh, I didn't really tell them where I was going. I just told them I was going for a bike ride. And like a lot of us do, I was like, Hey, I'm working out. I'm going to burn some calories. I didn't know much about caloric intake ~and. ~and output at that point in my life, but I knew that exercise was probably good for me.
I was told that by multiple doctors, regular doctors and integrative medicine doctors. So I'm just like, you know what, I'm going to go and check out McDonald's. So I would bike to McDonald's. I take the bike path, actually the same path that I run on to this day for my training for ultra marathons. Jump on the path, bike to McDonald's, and I [00:20:00] would get two large fries and two Big Macs.
And I would eat all of it. And it was amazing. Okay? Now, I realized later on in life that eating this type of stuff really threw me off. But growing up, I was used to eating all these natural things. When I went to college, yet again, I would opt for having the french fries at the cafeteria. I would opt for having more unhealthy foods, right? I mean, I grew up without it, so I was trying to make up for lost time. ~I was Not eating all the pizza and all these things ~So when I finally was able to eat these things and I wasn't around all the natural foods I kind of went a little overboard. But I eventually realized that all this unhealthy food that I was putting in my body was having a negative impact Not only on my asthma, but on my health So today, what this means for me putting anti inflammatory foods into my diet, it means having [00:21:00] leafy greens. I try and have as many servings of leafy greens a day as possible.
That means that I'm probably having somewhere between two and four cups of leafy greens per day. And I get this in different ways. First of all, one of my big strategies with all of this is if there's something that is going to have a positive impact on your body that you are going to eat, you need to get it in as many different ways as possible.
So what I'll do is I'll actually hide these things in my smoothies. So I love smoothies. I love having strawberry. blueberry and cherry smoothies. Okay. And I'll use that to mask the flavor of these other things. So almost every single morning, I'll use one of these three fruits, which is another great thing to actually eat is berries for their anti inflammatory properties and as a amazing substitute to get that sugar itch that you have, you may as well eat a strawberry versus any sort of processed sugar. So I highly recommend [00:22:00] that you look at berries as a replacement for your sugar cravings. What I'll do is I'll take strawberries, then I'll add some leafy greens, usually a couple handfuls, which equates to being a couple cups of leafy greens, which includes spinach.
~You know, ~chard, radicchio, baby redleaf, baby greenleaf, ~you know, we have ~kale, all these different things, arugula. I love arugula. I know what I said wasn't just leafy greens, but these leafy vegetables, these spring greens, these mixed greens, I add them to my smoothie, okay? I also will eat lots of salads. I try and have at least one salad a day, and I'll put amazing things like sun dried tomatoes, which I just thing. Tastes so good.
Olive oil. I'll add some lemon, some goat cheese. Cause goat cheese for me is much less inflammatory than cow cheese. So that's how I get my dairy in. Okay. Now I'll also add some seeds. I'll add some beans. I add these things to a [00:23:00] salad, but I really try and get as many servings of leafy greens as I can a day
for their anti inflammatory properties, and for all the fiber and antioxidants that they add to my body. That really improves my health overall, helps me maintain a very, very healthy weight, which is also a very strong thing for asthma. If you have asthma like me, managing our weight is very important to managing our asthma.
Hey friend, I wanted to take a moment to ask you a quick question. Are you struggling to lose weight due to your asthma? If so, I get it. I used to run marathons and still kept gaining weight. It wasn't until I learned about the three pillars of healthy living that everything [00:24:00] changed.
So I put together a healthy living guide that you can access absolutely free by clicking the link in the description. This guide shares these amazing three pillars of healthy living that you can easily integrate into your life to start losing weight and live healthier today. Click the link in the description or go to Athlete with asthma dot com forward slash healthy dash living dash guide to grab your free copy.
Now, let's get back to the rest of the show.
~Okay. ~The second thing I like to add is cruciferous vegetables. Now, cruciferous [00:25:00] vegetables are so good for us. As long as you don't have a sensitivity to one of these vegetables so, there might be a specific vegetable that you have a sensitivity to that actually creates inflammation in your body and an allergic response. Which is why, thank God, there's a lot of different options. So, for cruciferous vegetables, the main ones are really going to be cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, and kale. Okay? For me, I try and get either cabbage, broccoli, or cauliflower into my body every single day. And I'll do this with a similar strategy.
I will actually add a cup of broccoli to my smoothie in the morning. Or a cup of cauliflower or cauliflower rice to my smoothie in the morning. I love red cabbage, so red cabbage is a lot easier for me to get into my body because I just really like eating red cabbage with anything. I'll put it on my salads, I'll put it on tacos, I'll put it in a stir fry.
But really, [00:26:00] you want to get the benefits of these cruciferous vegetables into your life. They have amazing antioxidant properties, immune system support, which is really important if you have asthma like me, because when we get sick, the better our immune system is supported, the less the sickness is actually going to impact our bodies and our asthma, okay?
Cruciferous vegetables also have cancer fighting properties, detoxification properties for our liver, really getting the toxins out of our body. It's also great for cardiovascular and heart health. And really the list goes on and on. Cruciferous vegetables provide brain support.
All these different things, so I highly recommend that you look at adding cruciferous vegetables into your daily life. , trying to get one serving of cruciferous vegetables in, like one cup, would be ideal.
And the third element that I've added to my diet are chia and hemp seeds. Okay. Chia and hemp seeds really are superfoods and what they'll do [00:27:00] is not only pack your body with fiber, which is just so good for you. There's also Omega threes. Omega threes are really, really. valuable for brain health. Okay, very, very valuable for our bodies overall.
So hemp and chia seeds are my go to keeping in mind that I'm allergic to nuts. So there's a lot of nuts that have amazing properties as well. There's also a lot of nuts. that are actually bad for you. Going to want to make sure that you're eating the right ones. Like walnuts, uh, here are extremely good for you. I've never actually eaten a walnut knowingly because I, like I said, have an aversion to nuts. It creates inflammation in my body and some nuts even cause such an extreme reaction in my body that I have to go to the hospital to get that treated. But chia and hemp seeds are amazing. I also eat lots of other vegetables and we've gone to a plant based diet for about 80 percent of our [00:28:00] diet. Now, we still do eat as high quality of proteins as possible, like organic, free range chicken. Same thing with eggs. Same thing with different types of seafood, you know, shrimp and salmon and even sardines. And here and there, we will have beef in our diets, but we really have decreased beef as much as we can. So what you need to do is figure out what diet works the best for you. So first, decrease and eliminate those inflammatory substances and foods best you can And then increase your intake of anti inflammatory foods in your diet.
So maybe pick some of the ones that I brought up today. And maybe do your own research and figure out what you like and what you can integrate into your diet safely. Okay, remembering that we all have different sensitivities. Okay, so once we tackle asthma as a whole, [00:29:00] Okay, now we need to tackle asthma as it comes up when we are exercising.
How do we deal with exercise induced asthma? Well, by setting a foundation by really decreasing the inflammation in our body and fueling our body with the nutrients that we need, we are setting a strong foundation for our workouts, for our runs, for the exercise that we do. But that doesn't mean that we're going to completely cure.
are exercise induced asthma. So, step three is using your breath to calm yourself down and alleviate your symptoms. Okay, what do I mean by calming ourselves down? Well, the double edged sword of asthma is when you start feeling asthma symptoms and then you start freaking out and getting anxious about asthma.
And it getting worse, [00:30:00] or if you go into a run or a workout, even with the thought in your mind that, Oh my God, I hope asthma doesn't hit me today. This actually increases your chances of having an asthma attack. It also increases your chances of your asthma getting worse after you're already having an asthma attack.
Okay, so what we really need to do is calm ourselves and the best tool we have is our breath. Our breath is our superpower. If you have asthma or if you don't have asthma, our breath really is our superpower in calming our body, calming our minds and becoming even more efficient with our energy output.
~Okay, so I have an entire episode about how to relieve So, ~I have an entire episode on how to relieve asthma symptoms, the three best breathing techniques. So, I highly recommend that you check that episode out.
Regardless, the basics here are by taking control of our breath. In a [00:31:00] workout, even before we feel asthma, symptoms is the best strategy. So what we want to do is really focus. on our exhales. By focusing on our exhales, our inhales are going to get better. By focusing on our exhales, we are going to create more room in our lungs to take in fresh oxygen. By focusing on long exhales, The longer our exhale, the longer our inhales are going to become, and the more oxygen is going to come into our body. Now, how you do an inhale is going to really depend on you, okay? Best practice is to do an inhale through our nose, but depending on how much inflammation you have in your body and how stuffy your nose is, Depending on if you're sick, depending on if it's [00:32:00] cold outside, if it's warm outside, there's a lot of factors that are going to impact your ability to feel comfortable and confident inhaling through your nose.
So inhaling through your mouth is fine, even though best practice is through your nose, because your nose is not only going to warm up. The oxygen and the air that comes into your lungs, it's also going to protect your lungs even further from different toxins from entering your body. So best practice is definitely inhaling through our nose and then you can exhale through your mouth. But if you find yourself inhaling through your mouth, if it's cold outside, you're going to want to. Inhale through something to protect your lungs. Just focus on your long audible exhales Why audible exhales well Research shows that audible exhales make your body more efficient with energy output Okay, your body [00:33:00] becomes a machine Okay, audible exhales also give your mind something to focus on.
Think about it. When you're just doing an exhale and you can't actually hear it, your mind doesn't have something to start focusing on. But when you start focusing on the sound of the audible exhale, you're going to start calming your mind. And then what you want to do is really get into sequential breathing, which is really creating a pattern.
So we breathe.
Now I talk about this in multiple episodes. on this channel and on the podcast about how you can use music to help yourself with sequential breathing. The key here is to just get into a pattern to make your breathing innate, to make your breathing easy to go into a sequence so that your [00:34:00] brain doesn't even have to keep thinking about it.
Okay. So you're
So now instead of freaking out that you may have exercise induced asthma hit you today, instead of freaking out that you're having asthma hit you, you are calming your mind. You are focusing on your breath. You're starting to alleviate your asthma symptoms. Now, if your asthma starts getting really bad, this is why you always want to make sure you bring your inhaler with you and anything else that your doctor tells you to manage your asthma. Because you want to make sure that you are safe in an emergency. Really, I always have my inhaler with me for emergency reasons. Because I wanna make sure that I have a tool with me to protect me from a life-threatening asthma attack. That's why I always make sure I have my inhaler with me, even though I always go to my breath techniques when I am having exercise induced asthma or any sort of asthma.
Hit me. Okay, so you always want to use [00:35:00] your breath first stacked on top of these dietary changes that we've made to manage our asthma. And only in extreme circumstances is when I go to using my inhaler. But yet again, you need to figure out what works best for you.
Now, if you want additional breathing techniques to help you with your exercise induced asthma or your asthma in general, I highly recommend you check out my episode, How to Relieve Asthma Symptoms, the 3 Best Breathing Techniques. I'll talk more about focusing on long exhales. I'll even talk more about sequential breathing, and I will talk about the double exhale, which is a more advanced technique that can really bring our breathing to the next level.
Now the last thing I want to share with you is my three pillars of healthy living guide. Now I've created this guide because back in. 2022 I [00:36:00] was actually 40 pounds overweight and I was not only having issues with my asthma.
I was having Performance issues with my running. I was running One to two minutes slower than I really wanted to during my training I was also having a lot more injuries because of the extra weight. I had more inflammation in my body and all these These things, these challenges that were starting to stack up and I knew that I really needed to Start living even healthier than I was while I was eating pretty healthy.
I was eating too much I wasn't tracking things. So even though I thought I was eating healthy. I wasn't tracking what I was eating I was moving a lot, but I was exercising I was running But I wasn't getting the results that I needed. So what I did is I developed my three pillars of healthy living, movement, tracking and accountability.
And by integrating these three pillars of healthy living into my life, I was able to lose 40 pounds, keep the weight off, [00:37:00] which has created lots of benefits in my life, including helping me manage my asthma even more and becoming a professional ultra athlete with asthma. So what I did is I packaged these three pillars of healthy living into a guide which you can easily grab in the show notes.
And if you're watching this video on YouTube in the description below this video, And it's only going to take you a couple minutes to read, and then you can start integrating these three pillars of healthy living into your life today. You can grab your copy in the show notes, in the YouTube description, or go to www.
athletewithasthma. com forward slash healthy living guide to grab your free copy today. I'll see you in the next episode.
Thanks for tuning in to the Athlete with Asthma show. I hope today's episode [00:38:00] inspired you to overcome any perceived limitations you may have. Remember, your health and wellness journey isn't about perfection. It's 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.
