Asthma And Your Bedroom

We think of the bedroom as a refuge, but for some asthmatics the bedroom is the most dangerous room in the house. It contains that dreaded piece of furniture that strikes fear in the lungs of asthmatics—the bed. You spend about a third of your life in bed and, while you sleep, you are shedding skin. Shed skin serves as dust-mite food. As we have seen, asthmatics have a major problem with dust mites. Unfortunately, dust mites are a fact of life and have nothing to do with how clean you keep your home. As long as there's skin, there will be dust mites. Not only do we sleep in dust-mite heaven, every time you or your loved one makes the slightest movement, your mattress, box springs, pillows, sheets, and blankets get ruffled and release dust-mite allergens into the air.

 

What can you do? Because a concrete bed probably isn't appealing to you, I suggest covering your pillows, mattress, comforters, and box springs in special fabrics called "encasements," which are designed to minimize the amount of dust-mite allergens released into the air. Even "hypoaller-genic" bedding needs to be encased as it is not dust mite-proof. Encasements used to be made of plastics that were noisy and uncomfortable, but now there are quality cotton and polyester encasements that are quiet and soft.

 

One study examined twenty-four children with asthma who encased their mattresses, blankets, and pillows and treated their bedroom carpets with tannic acid, which kills dust mites. After eight months, there was a significant reduction in bronchial hyperreactivity. Another group of researchers studied twenty asthmatics who encased their pillows, mattresses, and box springs, while simultaneously washing blankets, mattress pads, and curtains every two weeks. Their bedrooms were kept as clean and dust-free as possible and, after one month, there was a significant difference in asthma symptoms. Those with dust-free bedrooms had fewer days on which they wheezed, took medication, or had an abnormal peak expiratory flow rate. Specifically, wheezing was recorded on only 2 percent of the days, compared to 27 percent in the control group; days on which medication was required dropped from 30 percent to 2 percent; and low peak flow occurred on 1 percent of days, versus 28 percent in the control group. The dust-free group also had a fourfold increase in their ability to tolerate histamine. The authors concluded that "a dust-free bedroom diminishes bronchial irritability and is a practical and effective method for decreasing asthma in children with house dust or house dust mite allergy."

 

By the way, breast-feeding mothers should consider avoiding common allergenic foods for the first twelve months of their infant's life while keeping their child's solid diet free of dairy products, eggs, fish, nuts, oranges, wheat, and unhydrolyzed soya for the first nine months. One study reported that these interventions helped protect infants from asthma.

 

One additional asthma problem may be hanging in your bedroom closet. Dry cleaners often use perchloroethylene, an organic chemical that may cause cancer. If your clothes have a strong chemical odor after dry cleaning, return them to your cleaner for proper care. If your asthma is triggered by the smell of dry-cleaned clothing, have your clothes washed rather than dry-cleaned.