What is asthma?

Conventional medicine regards asthma as a respiratory disease triggered by chronic allergic inflammation of the bronchial tubes. In the event of an asthma attack, the bronchial tubes constrict and are often accompanied by edema, extra mucus and bronchospasm, such that very little air can pass the bronchial tubes, causing shortness of breath, wheezing, chest tightness, coughing, and suffocation.

Typically, doctors prescribe steroid-based medicine to asthmatics as a bronchodilator to temporarily open the obstructed airways in the form commonly referred to as inhalers.

What’s wrong with Inhalers and Why?

The inhaler can not cure asthma.

It is used as a passive and temporary relief when an asthma symptom occurs. However, its key issue is that its frequent application could turn a mild asthma to become progressively worse!

The reason, according to Dr. Buteyko, is that the bronchospasm from asthma is in fact a protective mechanism of the body trying to prevent you from over-breathing, such that the CO2 level in the lungs not becoming too low to affect normal body functions.

Dr. Buteykop proved that such a deficiency of CO2 is also the precondition for allergic inflammation of the bronchial tubes to appear or to flare up.

The use of an inhaler tries to neutralize this protective mechanism, causing the body to fight back again and again with more intensive bronchospasm, making asthma worse and worse.

So the inhaler at best is a temporary relief of asthma symptoms, only at the cost of more severe asthma symptoms later on.

Science and Evidence-Based Asthma Prevention

Science and Evidence Related to Asthma:

• •  According to Dr. Buteyko, Over-breathing (hyperventilation) is the root cause of asthma. He believed Asthma is a defensive reaction of the body to prevent over-breathing rather than a disease, thus asthma can be prevented and curable by reducing breathing.
  • Buteyko Breathing has cured hundreds of thousands of severe asthmatics that drugs could not cure effectively.
  • One of the key triggers of asthma is breathing in sustained large amounts of cold and dry air.
  • The most effective asthma monitoring tool is spirometry.

Prevention Strategy:

Based on the science and evidence we know, an effective strategy for asthma management and prevention includes:

• • Avoid breathing in sustained large amounts of cold and dry air during exercises, especially in winter.
  • Use the diaphragm to breathe through the nose 24/7 and close the mouth whenever you can.
  • Control the breathing volume according to your metabolic rate: Do not over-breathe.
  • Practice Reduced Breathing daily to increase the CO2 level in the lungs and blood and develop healthy breathing patterns.
  • Perform spirometry testing regularly to monitor your asthma status and guide your treatment and exercise activities accordingly.

AYO Breathing Trainer and Breathing Exerciser – A Dream Tool for Asthmatics

 
AYO Breathing Trainer and Breathing Exerciser is an Australian invention designed for providing a holistic breathing tool to help you breathe better.

Inspired by Buteyko Breathing, AYO Breathing Trainer and Breathing Exerciser is particularly designed as a tool to practice reduced breathing using the diaphragm via the nose. What makes it stand out from various breathing devices on the market is that it provides accurate breathing measurement and monitoring, in situations including rest, walking, running, cycling, and common workouts via mobile phone Apps.

The App is so designed that it makes Buteyko Reduced Breathing easier and more precise which will help greatly for anyone to practice reduced breathing, especially for asthmatics.

Very importantly for asthmatics, AYO Breathing Trainer and Breathing Exerciser provides spirometry testing for frequent and effective asthma monitoring.

AYO Breathing Trainer and Breathing Exerciser can be configured in the following models, thanks to the modular structure invented by Aimwell:

• • AYO BT – an entry-level breathing exerciser for reduced breathing.
  • AYO BT+ Boost – the full-featured configuration of AYO BT+ advanced breathing measurement.
  • AYO BT+ Essential – a reduced-feature breathing measurement configuration for sports breathing training.
  • AYO BT+ Lite – a reduced-feature breathing measurement configuration for non-sports breathing training.

In summary, AYO Breathing Trainer and Breathing Exerciser can:

• • Trains reduced breathing using the diaphragm via the nose – getting the fundamental breathing mechanics right.
  • Warms and moistens cold and dry air by design – a key trigger to asthma.
  • Reduces breathing with an adjustable air inlet as a reduced breathing exerciser – preventing over-breathing the root cause of asthma.
  • Measures the volume of the air you breathe, so you know for sure how much air you reduce during your training for reduced breathing – normalizing the CO2 level in the lungs to stop allergic inflammation of the bronchial tubes from happening and train for healthy breathing patterns.
  • Performs lung function testing for asthmatics: Forced Lung Capacity (FVC), Forced Exhalation in One Second (FEV1), FVC/FEV1 ratio, and Peak Exhalation Flow (PEF) – preventing asthma before it ever occurs.

Essentially, AYO Breathing Trainer and Breathing Exerciser works as an effective asthma preventer without the use of inhaler drugs.

Most likely, you probably can’t find any suitable solution to keep your airways warm and moist on a cold and dry winter morning when you jog outside.

Exercise-induced Asthma Management via AYO Breathing Trainer
How to Unblock a Stuffy Nose with AYO Breathing Exercise Device
Pursed-lip Breathing Replacement with AYO BT

Over the past 9 years, Apple has continued to improve it, with recently added features to track your medications, share your data with your doctors, see your sleep stages, etc.

One of the great features of the App is that it facilitates and encourages innovative third-party health and fitness apps to pass their sensed data to Apple Health.

Examples of data from third-party Apps include heart rate and walking steps, which many brands of sports watches are able to provide. Apart from many other types of health information, Apple Health App provides data types covering all five vital signs for human health:

• Heart rate
• Blood pressure
• Body temperature
• Breath rate
• Spirometry

The top three are widely obtainable from many products worldwide, however, Apps with Breath Rate and Spirometry data are hardly available.

The Great news is that Aimwell AYO BT+ Breathing Measurement and Exerciser can do just that! A great innovation in breathing training and measurement, this Australian invention stands out from the rest in offering these vital data to Apple Health. Spirometry, in particular, is specifically important for asthma and COPD management.

What is Spirometry?

Spirometry is an objective physiological lung function test, and it is one of the most important tools for pulmonary physicians to diagnose lung and airway conditions accurately.

What Conditions Can Spirometry Test Diagnose?

Typically, spirometry testing is used to diagnose asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and other conditions that affect breathing. In asthma, spirometry is used to detect obstruction, the degree of obstruction, and the variability of obstruction.

If you’ve already been diagnosed with a chronic lung disorder such as asthma, spirometry may be used periodically to monitor your lung and airway condition and check whether a treatment for your asthma is helping you breathe better, or whether your breathing problems are under control.

What Does Spirometry Measure?

Simply put, spirometry measures how much air you inhale, how much you exhale, and how quickly you exhale.

How to Prepare and Perform a Spirometry Test

To Prepare:

● You may need to stop using your inhaler beforehand. Check with your doctor.
● Wear loose clothing that won’t interfere with your ability to take a deep breath.
● Avoid eating a large meal or drinking alcohol before your test.
● Avoid smoking for 24 hours before the test.
● Avoid heavy physical effort or exercise for at least 30 minutes before the test.

To Perform:

● Sit in a chair with your back straight.
● Follow the instructions to put on a breathing piece.
● Take a deep breath in as far as you could, then hold your breath for a few seconds before exhaling as hard and complete as you can into the breathing piece.
● Repeat the test three times to make sure that the 3 test results are consistent, then record the highest value.

Spirometry Criteria For Normal Condition

The normal/health range of the spirometry results varies from person to person, they’re based on your age, height, race, and sex.
You can find your estimated normal values from relevant medical sources. Typically, for FVC, FEV1, and PEF, a ratio value of >= 80% of the estimate is considered normal. For FEV1/FVC, >= 70% is considered normal.

How to Use Spirometry to Diagnose and Manage Asthma

● To manage your asthma, we recommend that you perform spirometry testing periodically based on the severity of your symptoms.
● You could first find out your normal range for FVC, FEV1, and PEF.
● Record your spirometry results of FVC, FEV1, FEV1/FVC, PEF.

Spirometry Criteria for Asthma

● If the ratio of FVC, FEV1 and PEF results to your corresponding normal values are below 80%, or FEV1/FVC ratio below 70%, it is an indication of asthma.
● You should discuss with or visit your doctor for treatment or adjust the existing treatment.

The Causes

If you are an asthmatic and also a sports person, especially often participating in high-intensity exercise, you may be aware of or even suffer from exercise-induced asthma.

The causes of asthma can be many, such as

• Family history / genetic
• Airborne allergens, such as pollen, dust mites, mold spores, pet dander or particles of cockroach waste.
• Respiratory infections, such as the common cold.
• Physical activity.
• Cold and dry air.
• Air pollutants and irritants, such as smoke.

In the Exercise-induced Asthma context, Physical activity, Cold and Dry air are the more likely causes.

Our airways are naturally accustomed to warm and moist air. At rest, we normally breathe gently via the nose in low tidal volume and slow breath rate typically around 500ml and 12 breaths per minute respectively. When cold and dry air passes the upper airways through the nose, the air gets warmed and moisturized before traveling to the lower airways and lungs where airways are narrower and more sensitive to cold and dry air. Thus normally when ventilation is low, the upper airways work well as an air conditioner to ensure the lower airways are not experienced with cold and dry air.

However, when we do high-intensity exercise, we often breathe more quickly via the mouth, where tidal volume increases dramatically such as to 2.0 liters or more, and the breath rate can go up to 40 breaths per minute or more. The minute ventilation at high-intensity exercise can be 15 times or more than that at rest. At such a ventilation volume with cold and dry air, the upper airways simply cannot cope, leading to the cold and dry air reaching the lower airways and lungs, causing inflammation and contraction of the small airways making them narrower or even blocked. When the situation is severe enough, it triggers an asthma attack.

How to prevent it?

Most people with Exercise-induced Asthma continue to exercise and remain active by treating the symptoms with asthma inhalers, which are typically steroid-based prescribed medicines. All medicines can have some side effects. Common side effects of asthma medicines include: 

• A faster heartbeat
• A hoarse voice
• A sore throat
• fungal infections of the throat

Most asthma inhalers work as an anti-inflammatory drug, and this is a passive strategy in that, it mitigates the effects caused by the cold and dry air but does not address the source of the issue directly.

The good news is, there may be ways to prevent Exercise-induced Asthma at the source without using asthma inhalers. AYO BT is one of them when used correctly.

In the previous post, Exercise-Induced Asthma Management via AYO Breathing Trainer. It concluded that Physical activity, Cold and Dry air are the more likely causes of Exercise-induced Asthma.

If we think slightly deeply, it is easy to pinpoint that the culprit for Exercise-induced Asthma is too much air entering the lungs. Thus the most effective strategy is to limit the air intake to the lungs in the first place. This is exactly what AYO BT is designed for.

Furthermore, the mask of the AYO BT is designed to extend the natural airway, where some CO2 from each breath is retained in the mask and then rebreathed, this helps increase the brain’s tolerance to CO2 which makes you have less desire to breathe.

The mask can also help keep some of the warm and moistened air from each breath, which conditions the cold and dry air before reaching the lungs.

In summary, AYO BT is very effective to reduce air inlet, helps warm and moisten the air to breathe, promotes nose breathing, and train for diaphragmatic breathing. When used correctly, it could dramatically reduce the likelihood or severity of Exercise-induced Asthma.

HIIT is a very effective and popular training for elite athletes or experienced sports enthusiasts. However, HIIT naturally demands a high level of breathing, which would put an extra burden on asthmatics whose airways are already more sensitive to a large amount of air, especially cold and dry air.  

The strategy of this program is first to use AYO BT to condition breathing with a smaller air intake at warm-up, then wear AYO BT but adjust it to a higher level of air intake for the actual HIIT, and finally after the HIIT, resume the smaller air intake setting for a cool-down. Here is the program:

Condition the breathing before HIIT

• Adjust the air intake Dial to Levels 2 – 4.
• Wear the AYO BT and do a warm-up jog for 10 – 15 minutes.

During HIIT

• Adjust the air intake Dial to level 6 or higher.
• Wear AYO BT throughout the HIIT.

Cooling down after HIIT

• Adjust the air intake Dial back to Levels 2 – 4.
• Wear AYO BT for a 5 – 10 minute cool-down jog.
• Reduce breathing with AYO BT right after the HIIT session allowing quick recovery from the workouts while helping prevent Exercise-induced Asthma.