Diet For Asthma - 5 Basic Rules

2024 Author: Josephine Shorter | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 21:43

Diet for asthma

A disease such as asthma is a chronic pathology. Her treatment is lengthy, often lifelong. It is important not only to fight existing infections, but also to eliminate allergens from the environment of a sick person, which, among other things, can be found in food. This will strengthen the immune system and direct its forces to resist the disease.

Doctors recommend that people with asthma stick to diet table number nine. Thanks to the compiled diet, it will be possible to reduce the number of relapses of the disease, relieve the severity of symptoms, and normalize metabolism. The energy value of the diet is within the normal range, that is, a person receives from 2300 to 2500 kcal per day. This allows you to regulate carbohydrate and fat metabolism, not to gain excess weight and prevent the development of complications of the disease.

A diet for asthmatics involves avoiding any foods that provoke allergies. If they are not so established, then the general dietary rules for allergy sufferers should be followed.

What should be excluded from the menu:

• Table salt is under strict restrictions. Its amount per day should not exceed 6-8 g.
• You need to give up all types of nuts, especially peanuts.
• Chicken eggs, and sometimes poultry, especially goose and duck, are a strong allergen.
• The ban applies to seafood, sea fish, caviar.
• The restriction includes mushrooms, citrus fruits, raspberries, strawberries, tomatoes.
• Allergic reactions are provoked by chocolate, coffee, confectionery, carbonated drinks and honey.
• It is necessary to give up all seasonings, from products with a sharp taste and smell - this is horseradish, radish, radish, etc. All histamine-like substances can cause an exacerbation of the disease, this list also includes spices such as onions and garlic.
• Fatty beef and pork should be removed from the diet.

• The diet for asthma involves the rejection of foods with thiamine and histamine, since they release allergy mediators from target cells. Most of these substances are found in alcoholic beverages, cheese, canned fish, sauerkraut and raw smoked sausages. That is, in those products that have been fermented. In this regard, canned food, pickles, marinades, smoked meats are prohibited in any form.

Content:

• Elimination diet for asthma
• Diet rules for asthma
• How to make the right menu for asthma?

Elimination diet for asthma

An elimination diet involves avoiding foods that are potential allergens. To make it easier to identify them, a person with asthma is advised to keep a food diary. In it, you need to record what was eaten during the day, at what time it happened and whether there was any allergic reaction from the body to this or that dish. This will allow you to accurately identify the allergen without giving up many foods. For example, if a reaction occurs to buckwheat porridge with butter, then most likely the porridge containing gluten is the allergen. At the same time, you can not refuse oil by adding it to other dishes.

They refuse buckwheat completely for up to 3 weeks. If there is an improvement, then they make another attempt to enter the product into the menu, but this is done very carefully. When the unwanted reaction is repeated again, the product is considered problematic and discarded. Naturally, such a test system is protracted in time, but it is it that makes it possible to compose an individual elimination diet, which cannot be obtained in consultation with any allergist.

A nutritional plan drawn up in this way will reduce the manifestations of food allergies to a minimum, which means a decrease in the risk of an exacerbation of the disease. At the same time, excessive stress will be eliminated from the immune system.

Diet rules for asthma

1. Allergic reactions are caused by chemical additives that are widely used in the food industry. It has been proven that the course of asthma is negatively affected by such substances as: tartrazine, salicylates, benzoate, sodium nitrite and sulfate, sodium glutamate. Therefore, patients with bronchial asthma should make it a rule to minimize the consumption of any canned food, confectionery, semi-finished products - all those products that have a long shelf life. Indeed, often, in addition to the chemical additives stated on the packaging, these products contain traces of antibiotics, peanuts and other potential allergens.
2. The cause of bronchial asthma is often a high sensitivity to molds. They are found in cheeses, cottage cheese, vegetables and fruits. Therefore, the next rule for asthmatics is to consume only fresh food that has been stored in the refrigerator for no more than a day. Vegetables and fruits must be carefully processed before eating.
3. The third rule for people with asthma is competent cooking. Products can be stewed, boiled, baked. But it is worth remembering that broths on meat, fish and chicken provoke allergies more often than just boiled fish, poultry or meat. Therefore, it must be changed at least three times during cooking. You need to give up fried foods completely.

4. The fourth rule is to maintain the normal functioning of the digestive tract. It is important that the intestinal barrier function is not disturbed, and the organ allows allergens to freely pass through the intestinal-hepatic barrier. This will allow them not to linger in the body, which means that the risk of developing unwanted reactions will be minimized. Fermented milk drinks, such as curdled milk, kefir, yogurt, are useful in this regard. The same applies to dietary fiber, which normalizes intestinal motility and stimulates local immunity.
5. The last but the most important rule for patients with bronchial asthma is a varied and complete menu. Poor nutrition negatively affects health as much as the use of unhealthy foods. With a limited supply of nutrients, the work of the respiratory muscles is disrupted, gas exchange suffers, and the immune system does its job worse.

How to make the right menu for asthma?

The calculation of the daily ration should be based on the height and weight of a person's body, on his age and physical activity. The main recommendation is as follows:

• Protein - up to 80 grams per day (but not less than 70 g). 50% of them must be of plant origin.
• Fat up to 70 g per day (but not less than 50 g). The amount of vegetable fats is 40 g.
• Carbohydrates - 300 g per day.

It is possible to remove inflammation from the bronchi due to the rejection of carbohydrates, which are quickly absorbed - these are sugar, jam, honey, etc. It is important that there is a sufficient intake of natural antioxidants in food. These are products containing selenium, vitamins C, E, A. Most of them can be obtained from vegetable oils, vegetables and fruits.

Be sure to include brown rice, legumes, green vegetables in the diet. They contain magnesium, which helps to normalize the tone of the muscles of the bronchi and reduces their excessive activity.

An example menu might look like this:

• Breakfast: rice porridge with sugar, baked pear, tea.
• Snack: squash pancakes with currant jam.
• Lunch: vinaigrette with vegetable oil, steamed veal cutlets with mashed potatoes, rosehip broth.
• Snack: banana and dried fruit compote.
• Dinner: rabbit stew, stewed cabbage with onions, green tea.
• Before going to bed, a glass of kefir or other fermented milk drink.

It is impossible to provide a single food menu for all patients with bronchial asthma, since food allergens are individual. Nevertheless, the described prohibitions and rules are the most common and, adhering to them, you can draw up a diet that is most adapted to a particular person for asthma.

The author of the article: Kuzmina Vera Valerievna | Endocrinologist, nutritionist

Education: Diploma of the Russian State Medical University named after NI Pirogov with a degree in General Medicine (2004). Residency at Moscow State University of Medicine and Dentistry, diploma in Endocrinology (2006).