Asthmatics and Hiking

DeserveVictory

As you can probably tell from the title, I am asthmatic. It was really bad when I was younger and slowly with time, diet, and exercise it is slowly getting better. Hopefully I will be able to quit using a steroid inhaler one day! I love being outdoors and want to take up hiking. But my lungs do not tolerate any type of an incline. It has taken years to be able to climb stairs without being completely winded.

So I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced this? And if anyone has suggestions and success stories on how to work with this?

Right now I do short light hikes (aka difficult walking trails), I take the stairs at work (4-5 flights up), and I increase the incline on the elliptical at the gym.

peleroja

My husband has asthma and we did a week-long, 115 km hike at up to 16,000 ft in altitude in the Andes in Peru in September. It's possible.

First, he's got his asthma well-controlled on his two inhalers, which is obviously crucial. If yours isn't well-controlled day-to-day I think the first step needs to be to work with your doctor to find a better treatment plan for you.

Second, it just comes down to conditioning for him. He's done a lot of strength training, especially in his lower body, to help make stairs etc. easier for him, and he's done cardio (mostly short treadmill runs) at a comfortable pace (not pushing himself to sprint but jogging with his heartrate not elevated too high.) Both of these things make hiking a lot easier for him because he's had a lot of practice controlling his breathing during exercise. He's strong and well-muscled with low body fat and that helps a lot too.

The third thing that he is very careful to do while we're actually hiking is to slow down or stop well before the wheezing starts. We take pretty frequent breaks and he is careful to breathe as slowly and deeply as possible so that it doesn't get out of control on him. He tries to stay aware of it well before he starts to struggle and not worry about if he's going fast enough or keeping up with me or whatever. I walk behind him now so he doesn't feel pressured to follow my pace and can just keep trucking along at a speed that doesn't make him pant for breath.

DeserveVictory

Hi Peleroja,

Thank you for the response! Its very reassuring to know that someone else has done this. I get a lot of nay-sayers that tell me that I'm dreaming of the impossible. I suspected that strength training would help take some of the stress off my lungs. And I know I need to work on my discipline, I'm not very good at keeping a slow steady pace.

Has your husband found cardio endurance training to be helpful? Or the buteyko breathing?

PS - Your trip sounds amazing!

peleroja

DeserveVictory wrote: »

Hi Peleroja,

Thank you for the response! Its very reassuring to know that someone else has done this. I get a lot of nay-sayers that tell me that I'm dreaming of the impossible. I suspected that strength training would help take some of the stress off my lungs. And I know I need to work on my discipline, I'm not very good at keeping a slow steady pace.

Has your husband found cardio endurance training to be helpful? Or the buteyko breathing?

PS - Your trip sounds amazing!

I'm not familiar with the breathing mentioned, but he doesn't do any long cardio sessions. Just easy runs of a couple miles a couple times per week. He mostly focuses on strength training, and having a lot of strong muscle in his legs does mean he doesn't have to work as hard on stairs or uphill hiking. I do suspect longer runs would be helpful for him too, but he doesn't enjoy them so he rarely bothers.

Debmal77

I have experience this too. Anything to do with exercise would be really hard. I usually had a couple puffs of Ventolin before doing any physical activity and that really helped a lot. My asthma has changed a lot. No so much bother by exercise now but still on Advair on a daily basis which helps to keep inflammation down and asthma under control.