Asthma Treatment Guidelines

The best description that people sometimes give of suffering from asthma is that it feels that they are trying to breathe through a straw. The portrayal is perfect as it is pretty much what happens. When you suffer from an asthma attack, airways in the lungs narrow down; making it impossible to breathe air in. This, together with the airways becoming inflamed and filled with mucus, suppresses the airways even more. If not provided proper and timely treatment asthma can be extremely serious - even to the point of being fatal. Here are some asthma treatment guidelines which if followed properly will make these attacks lesser frequent if nothing else.

1. Magnesium is known to help in the process of relaxing the even muscles that line the airways. People who are usually in the habit of deriving magnesium from the foods that they are eating are usually less to have wheezing and hyper sensitive airways. You can have foods like whole grains, beans, nuts and seeds to have as much magnesium as possible.

2. Vitamins C and E, the trace mineral selenium and beta-carotene, found in orange and dark green leafy vegetables, have some sort of mysterious ways to soothe your sensitive lungs. Consuming at least 1,000 to 2,000 milligrams of vitamin C, 400 international units of vitamin E and up to 200 micrograms of selenium a day through diet and supplements, is the best way of staying away from recurring asthma attacks.

3. Dust mites and cockroaches trigger asthma, no matter how ridiculous it sounds; the fact of the matter is that it is true. When you have loads of these bugs in your vicinity to tend to inhale microscopic cockroach parts and dust mite feces, which starts an asthma attack. Some people say that it is almost impossible rid your house of dust mites, found in every house and in almost every possible corner of it. Same goes for those awful cockroaches which just don't seem to go away. What you can do is that you can start storing food in the special bug-proof tins or the refrigerator, always remember to clean up crumbs right away and never leave cat or dog food out for long specially in the dark. You should have minimum damp spots in your house, since mites require high humidity to live, so fix up the leaks as soon as they occur.

4. You should try to avoid acidic foods as the same backflow of stomach acid into the esophagus can bring on asthma as well, especially if you are lying down. You can see that in the cases where people are normal during the day but cough a lot at night. You should take acid-suppressing drugs at night especially if you have been suffering from night cough a lot.

5. You can take the help of weekly 15-minute upper body massages which has actually reported drops in chest tightness, wheezing, pain and fatigue. It will take care of the stress in your life, which more often than not makes the asthma problems worse in your life.

6. You can try to exhale for twice as long as you inhale. This breathing technique comes from yoga; you can start this by breathing in normally, then exhaling normally. This will take care of your asthma breathing problems to a great extent as well.

So by following the above asthma treatment guidelines you can actually make your life easier and asthma free!