Different Breathing Techniques for Asthma and COPD Inhalers
Problems with breathing can arise from asthma, pneumonia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or emphysema. Today there are several different types of treatments that are used to treat breathing problems: inhalers, oral medications, and nebulizers. They all work but share one objective: to get medication to the lungs to help you breathe better.
People who have asthma or other lung diseases that make it hard to breathe may use an inhaler to get the medicine they need into their lungs. Inhaled medicine works faster than the same medicine in a pill. An inhaler also lets you take less medicine than you would if you took it as a pill.
Depending upon the inhaler devices and types of medicines, there are different breathing patterns. Metered dose inhalers (pMDI) need slow and deep breathing and Dry powder inhalers (DPI) are breath actuated devices and they need deep and fast breathing.
Common Mistakes made while inhaling MDI and DPI are:
MDI
- Breathing in too fast
- Breathing out so hard that you cough
- Breathing in through your nose, instead of your mouth
DPI
- Breathing in too quick and shallow
- Breathing out into the inhaler
- Not holding the breath after inhaling
- Spacer device helps to get the medicine into your lungs more effectively. A valve in the spacer mouthpiece opens as you breathe in and closes as you breathe out.
To avoid these critical mistakes while using your inhaler, Use-inhaler has come up with a learning tool called – How to Inhale, this tool explains step by step the correct breathing techniques with the animated breath bar and the breathing sound. Once you sync your breath with the bar, you can easily gain control on your breathing pattern while using your inhaler.
Use-inhalers.com helps you to learn and understand the correct breathing pattern required for your inhaler to get maximum drug into your lungs for effective treatment outcome.
Source: www.cdc.gov