Looking at the causes and symptoms of exercise induced asthma

But for a child - or an adult - with asthma, exercise is all too often an enemy rather than a friend. It triggers attacks in 80 to 90 per cent of people with asthma.

Exercise-induced asthma is chronic asthma. It is not a type of asthma, an 'asthma-like' condition or a separate disease. It is diagnosed when you have an asthma attack 5 to 15 minutes after beginning or ending physical exertion.

Although frequent attacks may be a sign of inadequate asthma control, the main cause of exercise-induced asthma is not really known.

Researchers suspect that it is related to the loss of heat, water or both from the lungs during exercise.

This occurs because of the common tendency to breathe through your mouth when you are exercising, so that you take in cooler, drier air that has not had a chance to pass through your nose (which warms and moistens the air).

Confusingly, exercise may also trigger exercise-induced bronchospasm (EIB), a common but frequently undiagnosed problem that often affects athletes, in which the bronchial airways temporarily go into spasm 5 to 10 minutes after starting vigorous exertion.

Unlike exercise-induced asthma, however, EIB has no inflammatory element. Both amateur and professional athletes have particularly high rates of EIB, with studies finding that between 11 and 50 per cent are affected.

The breathlessness and wheezing that you experience after exercise may be the only symptom of EIB, leading people to think that they simply get out of breath easily.

That may also explain why one study found unrecognized exercise-induced bronchospasm in as many as 29 per cent of the athletes studied.

By contrast, asthma is a chronic disease that requires treatment on a regular basis, not only when symptoms occur. When you take exercise, watch out for shortness of breath or wheezing, decreased exercise endurance, chest pain or tightness, cough, sore throat, and upset stomach or stomach ache.

If you experience any of these symptoms, you should stop exercising and allow your breathing and heart rate to return to normal. Generally, the 'attack' will last only a few minutes, but it can be as scary as any other kind of asthma attack, often leading otherwise healthy people to avoid exercise altogether.

The only way to know for sure if your symptoms are related to asthma is to consult an asthma specialist, who may conduct an 'exercise challenge' test to confirm a diagnosis.

The test usually involves evaluating your lung function before and after you have run on a treadmill or used an exercise bicycle for about 10 minutes.

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