Ray wrote:
Oh I see, competing in the Winter Olympics gives you asthma.
Care to try again?
You are certainly an alert dufus
Anecdotal evidence from a number of elite athletes tells me there is an advantage. Research says no. I'm not ready to say one way or the other,
But the numbers I posted are interesting. I also agree that chlorine exposure is not good. I wouldn't equate to exposure to mustard gas. And, if it causes the incidence of asthma to rise at that rate, then concussions in football are not the biggest issue in sport safety, swimming is.
That's correct, winter olympics training in cold weather *will* cause asthma in those susceptible to it. So will training in dry air - *if you're susceptible to it* (Hicham el Guerrouj, high mountain air training). Medal winners in summer olympics have twice avg asthma rate, and gold medalists twice again. Why? Because on average they push harder and train harder.
Look, why don't you just try ventolin yourself and see if it helps you. Then you can argue your case with real data rather then "anecdotal evidence" from jealous athletes. I've tried ventolin 3 times before races and gave up. Not because there was absolutely no difference in performance: my peers who normally beat me still beat me, the ones i normally beat, i still beat by the same amount. But with Ventolin i felt like pot-of-coffee sick and jittery and hated it. I now only take it after a race if i still have trouble breathing 30-60 mins later. I do take anti-inflammatory steroids on wakeup/bedtime, but these are not broncho-dilators, in fact, one of the side affects is that it briefly makes your breathing worse and you would *never* take this before a workout. This stuff has no muscle building ability, and is the same as spreading corticosteroids on excema, rash or hemorrhoids, it just dampens immune response. The lungs, after all, are considered to be outside our body, because they are in direct contact to the air.
Asthmatics get the last laugh, literally, because of their over-amped immune system they have lower rates of cancer and may outlive you...assuming they don't die of an asthma attack.
Ideally you should have sometone give you fake ventolin and real ventolin without you knowing so you don't get placebo affect. I await your reply with earnest, seriously, it will be fun and informative for the rest of us.