‘People with asthma sleep less, watch more TV’

NEW DELHI: People with asthma sleep less, watch more television and are less active in comparison to people with no respiratory disease, found a small study done

NEW DELHI: People with asthma sleep less, watch more television and are less active in comparison to people with no respiratory disease, found a small study done at Vallabhbhai Patel Chest Institute and Lady Hardinge Medical College.

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On average, asthmatics watch TV daily for almost two hours as compared to 1.5 hours for non-asthmatics. “Television viewing is also associated with unhealthy snacking habits, example, consuming foods high in calories and overeating,” said Dr Raj Kumar, head of National Centre of Respiratory Allergy, Asthma & Immunology at Vallabhbhai Patel Chest Institute

They only get an average of 4.12 hours of sleep as compared to 5.38 hours of sleep that healthy people get.

“People with asthma must take their medicines regularly and manage their symptom because breathlessness and wheezing prevents them from getting a good night’s sleep,” said Dr Kumar.

The study also shows that, on average, people living with asthma participate in sports activities for 0.58 hours a day as compared to 0.78 hour a day in the healthy control group.

“People with asthma prefer to stay indoors to protect themselves from various triggers but this might lead to respiratory deconditioning, meaning the person would have a lower threshold for exercise-induced symptoms. This is a vicious cycle because the less a person exercises, the less the body would be able to tolerate it” said Dr Kumar.

On a scale of 1 to 10, 0 being no stress and 10 being highest level of stress, the people who were living with asthma scored 5.62 on average as compared to 4.16 among the healthy people.

The study included 125 people, 55 women and 70 men, between the ages of 6 and 40 years who had been diagnosed with bronchial asthma. A control group of 125 healthy individuals with the same sex ration and age group was selected. The socio-economic status of people belonging to both the groups was similar. The study was published in the current issue of Pneumologia i Alergologia Polska .