1 yr. ago • 93%

Running with asthma - Advice?

Hi c/Running,

I would like some advice on how to overcome/circumvent asthma-induced pain, while running.

I'm an avid runner, but I struggle with asthma for which I do take well-adjusted medication. I have difficulty running more than a couple minutes at a time. Whenever I start running, my lungs quickly begin to hurt (it's not my sides, my muscles could do so much more, but it's actually my lungs hurting), the pain becoming so bad, that I have to pause for more than five minutes after just two, three minutes of running. It takes between 20 to 30 minutes of this stop-and-go to finally "acclimate" myself enough to be able to run normally. As you can imagine, this can get very annoying and frustrating and makes running with a group nearly impossible.

On a side-note: When I am running outside, I experience this no matter which season it is or where I am running (forest, urban, field), but when I am running on a treadmill at the gym, I usually don't experience it so severely. Maybe something with the AC?

Do You have similar experiences and can You share what helped you?
What can I do to reduce the time it takes me to start-up?
What can I do to have no/less asthma-induced pain, when starting to run?
What kind of training schedule would you recommend for people with asthma? Are normal training schedules just stretched out regarding the increases in intensity over time or do I need a completely different approach?

Thank You for any advice on the matter!

13 comments

Hi! I too have asthma and recently started running. I did experience some lung pain but only when I wasn't actually breathing properly or had trouble adjusting my breathing to my running pace. Are you sure your pain is asthma-induced? Have you talked to a doctor about this? Asthma normally would make your bronchi swell up and so you'd feel asphyxiated, and your muscles would give out due to the lack of oxygen. That's how it manifests when exercising. If your lungs hurt but you don't really experience any breathing difficulties, and you even feel like your muscles can continue, that doesn't sound like something asthma would cause. Sorry I don't really have any advice but as a fellow asthmatic runner, I'd look for another cause for that pain.

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- I am sorry, I forgot to specify that the pain comes from breathing. It's not making breathing difficult enough to make me stop running because of that, it really is more the pain from breathing that makes me stop. And I do not experience pain, when holding my breath and running.
  
  Since I have asthma, it's the first culprit to suspect, but you are right, I should talk with a health professional about this. It just seemed so normal to me by now, that I didn't consider it a health issue and more a nuisance.
  
  Thank you for your input and making me realize that this might not be normal despite having asthma!
  
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  I also have asthma and have run and played sport for many years with it. It's quite likely my asthma is milder than yours, but still I have to agree that this sounds like no asthma attack or sensation I have ever experienced. Asthma for me is like a warm, itchy crawling feeling up through my chest and neck. I can feel my breathing being restricted in my upper chest as I suck in air, and hear the wheezing intensifying. There has never been any pain, though. I think speaking to a qualified medical professional is definitely a good idea before you try anything else.
  
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  You're welcome, and I hope the pain goes away!
  
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Disclaimer that I don't have asthma or have experienced this type of pain, I'm just trying to troubleshoot with you.

Do you do breathing exercises and have you noticed any difference in your routine when you do them?

Does this pain in your lungs also occur when you walk for a duration? Do you ever power walk or anything to work up to running or jogging?

The gym note you mentioned is interesting, ACs are natural dehumidifiers. do you live in a very humid area and have you ever traveled to a drier place and not felt the pain in your lungs when you jogged?

Is the pain specifically occurring when you run or does it happen with any sort of heavy exercise where you have to breathe deeply or strenuously?

If this is too many questions, don't worry about it. I'm just curious in seeing if we can pinpoint a cause or circumstantial correlations at least.

Is the pain in a specific part of your lungs or is it just all over a general aching in your chest?

Since it does go away when you start breathing and take a break, you really might want to look into different breathing exercises and try them before and while you're running.

Another factor could be your pace. Maybe you're just running too fast from the get go for your lungs to catch up, have you tried jogging slower and noticed any difference in the severity or frequency of the onset of your lung pain?

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- Thank you for taking the time to troubleshoot this with me!
  
  I do not do breathing exercises, never considered doing some tbh. I usually just immediately run with no warm-up. I remember having had less to no problems with my asthma during runs, when I was younger, thus I have an image of a normal way to run, which is modeled after my young adulthood. That is probably one of my mistakes now that I am older.
  
  The lung pain occurs in the lower lungs and doesn't happen in other situations than running/jogging/sprinting.
  
  Humidity might be a possibility, but I have the same problem during high summer as well as deep winter. I live in a temperate climate zone.
  
  Your questions bring back an idea that I had some time ago, which was, that I might not use my full lung volume, when breathing normally, and that, when I am running, I might take deeper breaths accessing the lower lung volume, where the inflammation of the asthma may be more severe (?) thus causing pain? Unfortunately I do not remember if a gasping breath didn't reduce/alleviate the pain or if I just didn't find this the right way to breath, when running.
  
  Jogging slower helps, but I think, that is more due to me breathing more normally.
  
  Your approach makes me want to measure the on-set, frequency and context of my asthma pain during runs and come back to you in a couple months to share my insights with you! :D
  
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  I'd probably start with the breathing exercises for what you're saying, just because those are so easy to change in a short time.
  
  I wouldn't be surprised if you're right on the nose with not breathing fully, and that coinciding with your pace is at least part of the trouble.
  
  When I used to run in high school I couldn't figure out why it was so difficult because I ran every day, and I could jog for a very long time without stopping. But I felt like I was always pushing myself and I felt like it should have been easier considering how often I jogged.
  
  Long story short, I started looking at my pace, which was way too fast to be able to breathe comfortably through my nose, with a lot of top runners do, died usually be heaving breath in and out through my mouth because I was just pushing my body too hard for no reason. And I never improved. I just sort of plateaued at what my body could handle because I was just taking it to 100% as soon as I started running.
  
  So I just jogged a slow as I could jog comfortably breathing through my nose, and I actively practiced slowing down my breaths, and it worked for me. And then when I was 25 I read this great book by Christopher McDougall called'born to run", this expose on a running tribe in South America who's famous because they're 90-year-olds can run marathons without a problem and he was like 36 and his knees were already breaking.
  
  And a lot of the stuff he found out when he went down there and met with the tribe and learned how to run from them. Has to do with running comfortably and if you run comfortably then you'll get faster naturally instead of trying to run it a speed you think you're supposed to and then pushing your body so that it can't improve because it's focusing on not falling apart.
  
  The book's an amazing piece of journalism even without the running, but I would recommend it specifically for the chapters on when he talks about the mechanics and breathing exercises that this tarahumara tribe teaches him.
  
  After I realized that running was not supposed to be difficult is when I really began to enjoy running.
  
  Anyhow, I'd be really interested to hear how your experiments with breathing exercises, pace and running form affects your chest pain, I'd be shocked if you weren't able to ameliorate those symptoms to some degree.
  
  I'll say that running at a pace I could comfortably maintain while only breathing through my nose was the biggest change for me. I think maybe the first two times I ran I was noticeably slower I was like. Oh my gosh I'm going so slow, But by like the third day it might even have been the end of the second run breathing differently, I was already feeling like I could keep up my new pace, that did gradually get faster as the week went on, as long as I wanted to, and eventually just did marathons that I set up on map my run because I just kept running farther and farther.
  
  Let me know how it goes. I'm glad to discuss this stuff, I'm literally just walking around the neighborhood typing this before my evening run haha.
  
  Shoot sorry I just thought of something else. The other major piece of information that stuck with me from when the Mexican tribe was teaching this guy how to run was that they never leaned very far forward when running, They preferred to bounce up and down on the balls of their feet while moving forward. Just pushing slightly forward with each bound but they were using their ligaments more like rubber bands instead of reservoirs of energy that they used up. Like instead of using a finite amount of energy that cost way more energy and used more oxygen, they were more bouncing using the biomechanical advantages their ligaments afforded them.
  
  That made me more conscious of how much energy I was using on each step when I was pushing off and how much air I need to take in to maintain the level of oxygen I was using up.
  
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I tend to struggle a lot more when it’s exceptionally humid or dry. I have a pretty small window of “this is great” weather. And my “too humid” is probably a lot lower than most since I live somewhere typically not humid.

Start your runs slower, and see if it stops. I struggle with it too, but I’ve learned if I start my runs, at like 9:00 mile, and then on mile two, speed up a little, then mile 3+ I’m free to run 7:30 (or faster sometimes, when I’m lucky) without issue.

My allergist suggested inhaler 30 min before a run, but obviously that can’t be every day. So if I know it’s going to be exceptionally high in pollen or humidity, I do that. It helps a little.

Also, do you have allergies? Is there a coronation between high pollen days?

It sounds to me like the conditioned air is providing relief from either temp (it takes me a while to acclimate to season changes), pollen or humidity

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- Thank you for your input! Others have suggested humidity too, which I had considered, but eventually discarded, because symptoms occurred both during humid and dry weather, which seemed contradictory. Thanks for sharing that you have a similar issue and point to humidity because of this "window" of acceptable humidity.
  
  I tried inhaling Salbutamol, when pain started, but found the relief lacking.
  
  Yes, I do have allergies against several types of pollen.
  
  Thanks for the run times. I'll try those next time.
  
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I have cold induced asthma and allergy induced asthma. I take my rescue inhaler, then walk 5-10 minutes, gradually ramping up the pace, then jog lightly for 5 minutes to acclimate, then I'm good to run. I carry my rescue inhaler with me and usually use it 1-2 times during a run. If I need it a third time it's time to stop and walk. Good luck!

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Wim Hof method.

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- By the gods... what did I just experience?! This was incredible. Thank You so much!
  
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  Noprob.
  
  The method helped me greatly during my Covid recovery, and I prefer to think that it helped me combat it better.
  
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