Let’s be honest. When you’re young, the harmful effects of cigarette smoking can seem far in the future. The health problems caused by inhaling smoke may take years to develop. But if you have asthma, a lungful of smoke (first- or secondhand) may trigger or worsen asthma symptoms right now — not to mention what it will do down the road.

Smoking as an asthma trigger

Tobacco smoke is a mixture of harmful substances, including carbon monoxide and formaldehyde (the chemical often used to preserve the frogs dissected in biology class). If you have asthma, your airway is already sensitive to many of these irritants. Inhaling smoke can trigger an asthma episode: your airway may tighten and swell, and your body may produce excess mucus, making you fight for breath through a blocked and clogged airway.

But I don’t smoke!

Even if you’ve never had a cigarette, you’ve most likely been exposed to tobacco smoke. Breathing secondhand smoke can be as harmful to your health as smoking a cigarette yourself. In other words, when you stand next to someone who smokes, you’re smoking too. In fact, kids whose parents light up have a higher risk of developing asthma, because secondhand smoke increases their sensitivity to irritants in the air.

Smoking and asthma

Before you light up another cigarette or let friends smoke near you, think about how cigarette smoke can make it harder to live with asthma:

• If you’re already having an asthma episode, tobacco smoke in the air can make your symptoms worse.
• Smoking can keep your inhaler medication from working the way it should. Smokers who have asthma may develop a resistance to their inhaler medications, according to the American Lung Association.
• Once you’ve had a serious asthma episode, tobacco smoke can keep you from getting better. One recent study tracked kids who were hospitalized for asthma. After their release from the hospital, the kids who lived with an adult smoker had recurring symptoms more often than the kids who lived in smoke-free homes.

What if my friends smoke?

You know that smoking is harmful and can trigger asthma, but it’s hard to ask friends to smoke elsewhere when most of them think it’s no big deal. The next time you bite your tongue instead of speaking up, remember this: Your friends care about you. If they tease you about having asthma, they obviously have no idea what it’s like to have an episode. So explain to them what an asthma episode feels like — the sense of breathing through a straw that keeps getting smaller and smaller. Asthma may not seem so funny anymore. If you begin to wheeze when a friend lights up nearby, don’t hide it. He or she might not even realize that the smoke is bothering you. The bottom line is, no good friend would continue to smoke in front of you when it clearly makes you sick.

Smoking is a dangerous habit whether you have asthma or not. So take a stand on smoking. Your lungs will thank you for it, today and throughout your life.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 at 6:35 am and is filed under Teens. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.