How Diet Affects Asthma

If you suffer from asthma, you must have experienced certain food items to be taking a toll over your asthma attacks and others making you feel relaxed. Quite contrary to what is believed, studies have shown that food cannot be blamed for asthma symptoms unless you react to some of them.

Being allergic to food can bring about severe symptoms and asthmatics can experience the extremes of these symptoms. What you must do if you are allergic to certain food items is stop eating them. Learn everything that you can about food allergies and how they react with asthma.

The most common food that cause allergic reactions in people include:

• Cow’s milk.
• Eggs.
• Soy.
• Peanuts.
• Fish including shrimp and shellfish.
• Wheat.

How to find out if Asthma Attack was Triggered by Food

While it may not be easy to detect the impact certain food may have had on asthma, we can go by what follows commonly. Usually, if an asthma attack is triggered by food allergy, the individual will manifest the allergy with some of the common food allergy symptoms such as coughing, difficulty in breathing, wheezing etc. Allergy symptoms that stay even after a couple of days include rash, hives, nausea, diarrhoea and vomiting. If you experience symptoms of asthma that are not accompanied by allergy symptoms, it may not be an allergy because of the food, but the preservatives that are building up the distress. The preservative may be additives such as potassium bisulfite, sodium bisulfite, potassium metabisulfite, sodium sulphite etc. These additives are commonly found in wine or beer, potatoes, lemon juice, bottled lime etc. To avoid developing an allergy to certain food items, watch out for their label before purchasing.

How to Avoid Food Allergies Causing Asthma

If you know that you have an allergy to a certain food item that you think triggers asthma attacks, the best defence would be to avoid it completely. It may be difficult to do this, especially if more than one food item triggers the attacks, but the fact of the matter is that avoiding allergy causing food will help you keep from dire consequences in the form of anaphylaxis.

Take allergy shots. This option may not be fun, but if you choose to get accustomed or immune to allergy causing food, you will have to train your immune system, which is possible by way of immunotherapy or allergy shots.

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