my lungs are burning

[baratron]

Ouch. Remember on Monday I said how I'd bought The Observer on Sunday? Well, it would appear that I am terribly allergic to it. Not in terms of politics or so on - but for some reason it's giving me really bad asthma. I think it's fumes from the ink. So I can't breathe properly, my lungs feel full of crud - and I can't read my newspaper!

Damnit! Damn allergies! It would seem that I am now allergic to: milk, caffeine, feathers, some animal fur, some kinds of pollen (don't know which), some perfumes, air fresheners, shoe polish & now ink. All of these things give me asthma, except for the milk and caffeine. Air fresheners and shoe polish are the worst (the only time I've ever been to hospital with asthma was thanks to a plug-in air freshener). At home, we use one very expensive non-aerosol spray in the bathroom, as it's the only air freshener I've found that doesn't make me wheeze. What else? Smoke (well, duh). I'm allergic to cigarette smoke, very allergic to cigar smoke, and only slightly allergic to pipe smoke. Very very allergic to marujuana smoke, but it's dense enough that I can see it in the air to avoid it, and it takes a long time to spread out. Besides, none of my close friends smoke anything these days.

And my peak flow meter is lying to me. It declares that I am huffing at 460 L/min, which is unlikely when my lungs are hurting and I feel dizzy from lack of oxygen, when the best I ever manage in a doctor's surgery is 440 L/min. Huh.

Comments

[damerell.livejournal.com]

440? Gosh, you do have it bad. I've been unhappy lately because I'm down to 500 (which really makes me feel miserable) from 650ish.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's not as bad as you'd think, because for some reason there is a tremendous difference in expected lung capacity between men and women. A 25 year-old woman of height 160cm should have an average peak flow of 470 L/min, whereas a 25 year-old man of height 160cm should have a peak flow of 600 L/min. At 175cm, predicted peak flow for 25 year-old women is 492 L/min whereas it's 622 for 25 year-old men. A peak flow of 500 L/min for a man of average height would be much worse than a peak flow of 400 L/min for a woman of average height - and I'm considerably below average height.

For someone of my height, age and gender, my expected peak flow on asthma medication should be around 460 L/min, whereas the best it ever gets to is 440. This is, however, a conscious choice. I could take a higher dose of the "preventer" steroid medication, but that would give me more side-effects - I'd rather be on a lower dose and just avoid things like smoke which set it off.

There. Possibly more than you ever wanted to know about peak flow :)

[damerell.livejournal.com]

Actually, that was quite useful; thank you. As an asthmatic cyclist, I can't really know too much about this kind of thing. :-)