Forgot to look earlier but they covered asthma in the podcast but not really much detail:
Itās Pulmonary Functions Test, I take a deep breath and rapidly exhale and continue to do so for a given amount of time.
I think they do it to get a baseline and see how things change year-to-year. I did go in once when I was dealing with an exacerbation and if I recall it was around 100%. Since they had my baseline of 115-120% they could verify what I already knew.
Asthma since birth, now 53, exercise, allergy and cold induced. Symbicort (budesonide) changed my life. I donāt like to take it full time so only go on it when I feel a bit irritated or congested lung wise. Sometimes when I ride very hard (MTB) its like I am not even asthmatic. Sometimes If I am off the meds and or am irritated from being around dogs and catsā¦it is brutal and I just have to take a pass on those days or haul on my rescue inhaler (Fenoterol) repeatedly. If I were on the Symbicort 100% of the time it would never be an issue.
How is your baseline over 100%? Isnāt 100% your baseline. Shouldnāt you be measuring when you triger your breathing problem? This is what I use to track:
Seems like measuring more often would be helpful
You mean when your lungs are empty? (well, as far as you can empty them)
The 100% is a measurement compared to what would be considered a person with fully functional lungs in the same age group as me. Iām not the person that created this stuff, itās just what happens when I go to the asthma dr.
I guess since Iām an aerobically trained individual my lung function while I feel awful, coughing and full of mucous is about the same as a seemingly healthy person. However, a healthy breathing me has been 115-120% of baseline general population.
Its a prediction that has a wide standard deviation
