to wonder why asthma isn't on the list of disabilities for paralympic sports

[SilentAllTheseYears]

Just that really, my sister's son has severe asthma and does competitive swimming but is up against people without asthma but she says he can't get a disability classification because asthma isn't a disability.

Asthma is not classified as a disability for swimming though, or for Para olympic sport, that's the point of this thread.

Amy Van Dyken was a severe asthmatic as a child and excelled at free and fly - it may just be that they will never be his best strokes, or that he hasn't perfected technique for these strokes yet.

I know I said the same at the start of the thread. But another poster seemed to apply it wasn't a disability at all which is what I was disagreeing with.

This is an interesting thread, I never knew so many top athletes were asthmatic. It's probably something that your nephew would be interested to know, you should see if you can find any interviews with any of the Olympians talking about how they managed their asthma when they're competing.

Whether asthma can be classified as a disability in general life would depend on it's severity though? Mild asthma which still requires the use of an inhaler doesn't qualify you for an NHS flu jab.

This is an interesting article.

Thing is - where would it end?
Pretty much everyone is disadvantaged against someone else in swimming (or other sports) for all sorts of reasons - shorter, smaller feet, smaller arms, less natural float ability, etc etc.
we'll end up having a race only for eg 'those who are 5 foot, eight stone with arm length of 50, and mild asthma'. Otherwise it's not fair on someone whose arm length is 49.
I think I read somewhere that Michael phelps had THE perfect body for swimming - tall, big feet, big wing span. Anyone racing him could say it was unfair.

I guess the thing is that sports-wise there are three(?) categories of asthmatics:

People whose asthma is well controlled with drugs. They can compete in the "normal" categories - they just need to jump through the correct hoops to have their medication certified so they don't fail drugs tests.

People whose asthma isn't well enough controlled with drugs to do every sport, but who do sports which don't trigger it. Again they can compete in "normal" categories.

People whose asthma isn't well controlled with drugs and who can't compete at a high level as a result. I'm not sure how you could deal with this - wouldn't any sort of special category just be a "who got lucky this week and hasn't had a bad reaction recently?" lottery?

I don't think anyone who was registered disabled due to asthma would be likely to be able to compete safely in a physically demanding sport anyway.

Midnite that could well be the case, he is her PFB after all

I think because it's not a disability for most sufferers. I'm asthmatic and have been since I was diagnosed at 9 but for the most part it is well controlled.

If I remember correctly didn't Michael Phelps or Ian Thorpe start swimming because they were diagnosed with asthma? Paul Scholes I believe had pretty severe asthma.

I don't think you could classify the severity of the sufferer well enough to have it in the Paralympics.

And definitely this..
I don't think anyone who was registered disabled due to asthma would be likely to be able to compete safely in a physically demanding sport anyway.

DD (15) is a swimmer and has asthma, it doesn't bother her much in swimming but she still has to come up for breath more times than others, it's more the hockey thats the most difficult to manage.

Not sure how true it is, but I've heard that kids with asthma are often encouraged to take up swimming as the warm, moist air is much less likely to trigger an attack than if they're doing vigorous exercise outside.

I think thats true sky, as swimming is a low impact sport. DD was already a swimmer before she was diagnosed (dx at 10) but their are quite a few swimmers DD knows that are asthmatic. Like I mentioned above, DD does hockey, that triggers more attacks than swimming does.

Swimming (and playing certain musical instruments!) also requires control of breathing which can help asthmatics learn how to control their breathing apparently

DS has severe asthma. We try to keep him as fit as possible.

Swimming, singing and playing the bassoon all help him with better breath control, particularly exhaling - asthmatics tend to hyperventilate ie. keep breathing in during an attack. He's worked hard at ways to breathe out in a more controlled way.

He also plays a lot of rugby although that's more to help his sanity than anything else!

A lot of athletes with asthma actually have exercise-induced asthma due to the strain their lungs are put under whilst competing at top levels. It's something to do with how you breathe when doing intense exercise, shifting from a resting pattern of breathing which is quite light, to an inhale-focused pattern of breathing that can trigger it.

So actually the swimming may be helping your nephew but I imagine that at the moment he's "panic breathing" when he can inhale rather than focusing on the outward breaths and then taking a calm in breath when he comes up. His swim teacher may be able to help him with that but he needs to practice doing it whilst swimming slower than normal to get the habit right, and then it will come naturally when competing.

I'll try and find the paper but there are exercises he can do out of the pool to avoid the really intense breathing style even when pushing yourself that can also help mitigate effects - lots of sport and playing wind instruments is also quite effective too.

The other issue would be categorising people - when you get a para classification you are seen by physios and your degree of impairment is assessed. Conditions which have ups and downs are generally excluded (MS for instance) as you could be assessed on a bad day, but then compete in a good phase - and this would be particularly difficult for medication managed conditions such as RA and asthma where the unscrupulous might allow themselves to get bad for the assessment.

Anyway, its not like you get an allowance for being categorised. You either compete in regular classes, or seek out the few para events. For instance, there were two para triathlon events which weren't international elite in the UK last year.