0 Question: If you had children and a history of asthma in your family, what would you do to minimise them getting it? Keywords: asthma, disease Asked by mohall to Stef on 16 Mar 2013.
Stefan Piatek answered on 16 Mar 2013:
Great question. From what we know, around about half of your chance of asthma is due to your genes, so would be from your parents. The other half is your environment so in theory you can cut your risk by half or more!
The simplest thing would be to live on a farm, basically we’re probably a little bit too clean compared to what we’ve evolved against. Whilst this is really good because we don’t get fatally ill, our fighter cells get a little bit bored and start attacking normal things like house dust mite. Here’s an article on recent research on the lack of asthma and allergy from people who grow up on farms. http://www.healio.com/allergy-immunology/asthma-lower-airway-diseases/news/online/%7B473fbb05-69fc-4a98-ab35-a1e631eee5c8%7D/childhood-asthma-related-allergies-found-less-likely-in-farm-environments
Failing that, just let your children play in the dirt!
More than that, not smoking around them would help them out, and probably taking vitamin D too!
smoking http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/mar/24/smoking-asthma-children-health
vitamin D http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120713080022.htm
Hope that helps, in general though, as long as it’s not severe asthma we can control most of it well!
Comments