Getting stuck
in the hotel
pool in Tenerife
was the final
straw – I didn’t
realise weight
loss would help
my asthma, tooWhenever Carol Kelly took
her mum out for the day,
she’d drive around the town
centre looking for a space
as close to the shops as
possible. But it wasn’t for
87-year-old Mabel’s benefit.
It was Carol who would
wheeze and gasp for breath as
they walked along. The mum-of-two
found her asthma had become increasingly hard to
control as her weight crept up to 17st 1½lbs. Yet, like
many people, Carol hadn’t realised the difference her
size was making to her symptoms.
‘Growing up I’d played team sports and never
had asthma attacks,’ says Carol. ‘But I put on
weight in my 20s and as my condition worsened,
I needed a nebuliser at times. By the time I reached
my 60s, Mum could walk faster than me and even
looked younger, which really got me down.’ Wearing
size-24 clothes and with a painful arthritic hip,
Carol needed to take her reliever inhaler just to get
from A to B. ‘At the office where I worked as an
administrator, just climbing the stairs or walking
to the photocopier left me breathless. And, because
I expected to get out of breath, I started to avoid being
active more and more, so it became a vicious circle.’
Taking the air
Carol is one of 4.3 million adults in the UK who are
being treated for asthma, a chronic condition where
your airways are sensitive to certain triggers such
as pollution, allergens, viruses or cold weather.
When the airways come into contact with these
triggers, they contract and become inflamed,
making it hard to breathe – something measured
by health professionals using a peak-flow test, which
checks how quickly you can blow air out of your
lungs. Most people with asthma should be able to
control it with a daily dose of a preventer inhaler
(usually brown) to prevent inflammation, and will
keep a reliever inhaler (usually blue) on hand to
relieve symptoms of a temporary flare-up. Asthma UK
Breathing
easy
Losing more than 6½st made all the
difference to Carol Kelly’s asthma.
Read on for expert advice on keeping
your lungs working at their best
advises that anyone who needs
to use their reliever three times
a week or more should see their GP –
and by this point, Carol was using
hers more than three times a day.
Studies by Asthma UK have
found that being in the obese body
mass index (BMI) category can
increase the risk of developing
asthma in the first place, particularly
in children. While being overweight
can worsen existing symptoms.
‘One reason we think this happens is
that it can cause extra inflammation
in the airways,’ explains Dr Andy
Whittamore, clinical lead at Asthma
UK and a practising GP with specialist
interest in respiratory medicine. ‘On
top of that, excess weight seems to
make asthma harder to treat. It’s
associated with respiratory and chest
symptoms, being less fit, and with other
conditions, like gastric reflux, which can
worsen asthma symptoms.’
Carrying too much weight around
the middle may also cause breathing
issues in people who don’t have asthma.
‘It can have a physical effect,’ says
Dr Whittamore. ‘Being overweight
changes how the lungs work and, in
some cases, the pattern of breathing,
too. The airways can also be more
irritable.’ He believes lung health is
something we should be aware of,
whether or not we’ve been diagnosed
with a specific lung condition. ‘If oxygen isn’t getting
into your muscles, heart and joints effectively, you’ll
feel unfit, tire easily and have less energy,’ he says.
‘This has an effect on your general wellbeing and
what you are able to do. It can also have a knock-on
effect on conditions like heart disease and diabetes.’
The good news is, losing even a fairly small
amount of weight can have a real benefit. ‘If someone92 SLIMMING WORLD MAGAZINE