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Q: Any suggestions on how to avoid frequent colds from getting into my chest and lasting a long, long time?
A big thing that helps me is to make sure I'm up on my asthma medicines. Talk with your doctor about putting together a plan for what to do when you get sick.
My "sick plan" includes scheduled salbutamol (every 4 hours), regardless of whether or not I need it at the time and an increase in my inhaled steroid. It's a little bit different from my normal yellow zone plan in that I don't increase my antihistamine, but I do increase most of my other meds. Also, I add more inhaled steroid to my regime than I normally would with my yellow zone plan, and I schedule my salbutamol. With this, I've turned colds from six weeks of misery into about two to three weeks. That's still about twice as long as a normal person, but it's a lot better that it was.
I still get sicker than a normal person with a cold, and for a longer period, but most of the time, I now avoid acute bronchitis (where before, I'd get it 3/4 of the time I had a cold), and I recover much faster than I used to.
I'll be following this thread closely myself, because if anyone else has some good suggestions, I'd like to hear them. If I can prevent the cold I currently have from keeping me under the weather for the next two weeks or so, I'll be a happy asthmatic! :)
I've had asthma more than 20 years with many many colds turning into sinus infections or bronchitis. I've also tried many different supplements to see what helps over the years. One that does work for me is vitamin D. A couple years ago My Dr. sent me for a vitamin D blood test and my levels were too low. I was shocked because I have light skin, do not live up north, spent time gardening, and the test was done in the late summer. If my levels were too low then they probably had been really low almost every previous winter. It had never been tested before. I take D3 5000IU each day and it seems to me that I get over the colds faster than I used to. Dr. still tests the vit. D level every six months or so when I have to get other stuff checked anyway. There are some interesting articles on this site about vit. D as it relates to asthma and colds, just do a search for vitamin D. A person can have too much vit. D so a Dr. should be involved.
Also when I feel I'm having a cold I've learned to carefully manage the stuffiness or congestion with otc decongestants and mucinex because letting it go for a while allows it to progress into infections in my experience.
About vitamin C. I don't have stomach sensitivity to citrus but I've heard you can get supplements of buffered vit. C in time release forms that are supposed to be easier on the stomach. I've taken time release tablets of vit. c (not buffered) and they seem to help me a little with asthma symptoms. I don't think they work for my colds though.
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