Close to 28 million people in the United States have asthma, a chronic inflammatory lung disease that causes your airways to tighten, swell, and fill with mucus, making it difficult to breathe. An asthma attack — also known as an exacerbation or symptom flare — typically consists of:
While knowing how to treat a symptom episode is a vital component of any effective asthma management plan, the primary goal is to prevent such attacks in the first place.
As Dr. Ran D. Anbar and our seasoned team at Center Point Medicine know, one key to good asthma control is trigger avoidance, or steering clear of anything that irritates your lungs and prompts a symptom flare. For many people with asthma, that means learning how to deal with emotional stress.
Whether you’ve recently been diagnosed with adult-onset asthma or you’ve been living with the disease since childhood, you know it’s always with you. You also know that asthma attacks only happen when something bothers your lungs.
Asthma triggers can be any condition, activity, or environmental factor that irritates and inflames your airways, prompting a symptom flare. Common asthma triggers include:
Another major asthma trigger? Strong emotions and stress.
Determining what causes your symptom flares is a crucial first step toward successful asthma control; often, that means learning how to better cope with emotional stress.
Strong emotions and stress aren’t just limited to the mental realm; their effects can cause physical changes that you feel in your body. Breathing changes are one of the first physical impacts of intense emotions and increased stress.
Even for people who don’t have asthma, strong emotions often lead to increased muscle tension, a faster heart rate, and shallower respiration. For people with stress-induced asthma, symptoms can flare or worsen with strong emotions like:
Stress and strong emotions can trigger an asthma attack via several pathways, starting with increased muscle tightness in your chest and faster, shallower breathing. Anxiety, fear, or stress can also cause you to react more strongly to other asthma triggers, like respiratory illness or allergen exposure.
Finally, chronically high stress levels can create a state of low-grade systemic inflammation in your body that increases your risk of more frequent — or more severe — asthma flares.
Your asthma action plan contains detailed recommendations and guidelines to help you manage your condition and prevent symptom flares. In most cases, this means:
For people with stress-induced asthma, stress management and emotional regulation are vital components of effective asthma control. This means understanding how heightened emotions affect symptom emergence and developing coping skills to support symptom control.
At Center Point Medicine, we use both counseling and hypnosis to help you learn how to relax in the face of increased stress and strong emotions. These tools can also teach you how to cultivate a more positive outlook regarding your symptoms, helping you stay calm during the onset of an asthma attack, so your emotions won’t make it worse.
Remember, just as increased stress, anxiety, and even depression are associated with poor asthma control, effective stress management and stronger emotional coping skills support better asthma control.
Learning the right strategies is all it takes to gain the upper hand over stress-induced asthma, and we’re here to help. Call or click online today to schedule a visit at your nearest Center Point Medicine office in La Jolla, California, or Syracuse, New York.
