How can obesity cause asthma

So what's the solution? Losing weight can be hard for anybody and might be particularly challenging if asthma makes it difficult to exercise. The ACRC is hoping to research ways that might help people with asthma lose weight. In the meantime, eating a healthy diet and avoiding a lot of fat in your diet might be helpful. Some research suggests that eating food high in fat worsens airway inflammation in people with asthma.

Walk more, try to get some exercise every day — it will help your weight and it will also help you breathe. This November your donation goes even further to improve lung health and defeat lung cancer.

Double Your Gift. Your tax-deductible donation funds lung disease and lung cancer research, new treatments, lung health education, and more. The association between asthma and obesity has been shown in many studies, but asthma is a complex disease and there may be many reasons for the link.

We often think of asthma being associated with allergic triggers and atopy have allergy symptoms like runny nose and eczema , but obesity does not appear increase the severity or incidence of allergies.

Asthma control assessments are based on how often symptoms, such as shortness of breath and inability to take part in physical activity, happen, and how severe the symptoms are. Obesity itself can cause many of these symptoms due to the mechanical changes caused by having more abdominal fat on the lungs.

Many of the reasons why obese asthmatics feel that their asthma is under poor control may not be from an increase in airway inflammation or lung function. In fact, some studies have shown that there is little difference between the lungs of obese and slim patients, but obese patients overuse their rescue inhalers e. This shows that they think differently about their asthma control although their lungs are working in the same way.

Although obesity may not cause asthma in many cases, there is clear evidence that obesity changes how people respond to chronic and acute asthma treatments. Obese asthmatics need more intensive treatments when they are hospitalized. Inhaled steroids are less effective in controlling obese asthmatics than non-obese asthmatics.

Clinicians caring for obese asthmatics need to be aware that there are different types of asthma, and treatment is not "one size fits all. Obesity is associated significantly with the development of asthma, worsening asthma symptoms, and poor asthma control. This leads to increase medication use and hospitalizations.

In , the obesity rate among adults with current asthma Obesity rates differ from state to state. Obese 2-year-olds have a 75 percent chance of still being obese by age 35, and obese year-olds have an 88 percent risk of being obese by 35, according to a pooled analysis of data on more than 40, children and adults in a report published in November in The New England Journal of Medicine.

While some kids with asthma may outgrow the condition as they get older and their lungs get stronger, this happens less often with severe asthma , according to the Mayo Clinic. Severe asthma defines cases of the lung condition where symptoms appear more frequently twice a week or more and require more medication to control. Data shows that obese children and adults are more likely to have severe asthma than healthy-weight individuals, according to a report published in April in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

Obese people with asthma are also less likely to improve with standard medicines prescribed to keep symptoms under control, according to that study. Researchers are currently investigating the mechanisms that would explain exactly how asthma might cause obesity — or how obesity might cause asthma. But they do not yet have a completely clear answer.

Excess weight around the chest and abdomen might constrict the lungs and make it harder to breathe, according to the American Lung Association. Fat tissue also produces inflammatory substances that could impair lung function and lead to asthma.