Asthma & swimming.....Yes/No

[sunny71]

Both DC have Asthma, DD8 has been treated for last 2/3 years. DS 4 has been treated for 1 year and although he is official too young to diagnoise the inhalers have helped greatly.

Both have bad coughs of late and been on course of anti-biotics (2 weeks ago), Ds had 3 day course of steroids also. The cough on both of them just doesnt seem to be shifting, although GP has checked chests and lungs are clear.

Any advice why they are both still coughing, especially night time.
They both desperatly want to go go swimming today, my head says No. Will this make it worse?

Sorry to ramble

Have they got post-nasal drip too? (gunk dripping from their nose down the back of the throat) that can go on for ages, both after colds and also part of allergies. I think it quite commonly goes hand in hand with asthmatics.
We have found that clarityn has helped massively with dds post-nasal drip cough. Might be worth talking to your gp or pharmacist.

i'm sorry, I don't know about the swimming question.

I am asthmatic, and so is DS2.

I would agree with Pixie that antihistamines might help, it is hard to know at this time of year what is a cough and what is allergy.

As long as chlorine doesn't set their asthma off then I would let them go swimming, but keep a close eye on them and keep their inhalers to hand.

Thank you for all your comments, Im going to get some anthistamines today.

You have just made a happy girl & boy!

I find the warmth and humidity of swimming pools helps a lot. Chlorine does seem to have an affect but it's a bit of a delayed reaction for me, fine when I'm in the pool. Luckily for me my local pool is uv filtered with only tiny amounts of chlorine.

The chlorine smell from swimming pools is not chlorine but a chemical called trichloramine. This chemical irritates the lung tissue and can cause asthma.

However if you have a good pool, combined chlorine less than 0.2, no smell in atmosphere, no sore eyes in the water, then such a pool will help asthma.

Under no circumstances use a chlorine free pool, the disease risk is too high