Best Practices for Asthma-Proofing Your Home
Asthma is quite a widespread phenomenon, and there are lots of available medications that are able to treat it. Sometimes, it can be a genetic condition, and other times its prolonged symptoms can be caused by environmental factors.
A large part of what triggers asthma can be attributed to one’s living situation. If you or any family member has this respiratory disease, there are ways that your home may actually be triggering it. Thankfully, there is also a way to prevent attacks from happening by making adjustments to your home environment.
These are some of the ways you can implement best practices in asthma-proofing your home:
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Keep dogs outside
Your furry friends may provide you with a lot of love and emotional nourishment; however, the hair that they shed is often an asthma trigger as well. You can balance quality time with them, and at the same time keep them away from the family members who are especially sensitive to this trigger. You can isolate the people who have asthma by keeping the dogs outside instead of letting them roam around freely in the house, which also reduces the amount of fur they shed indoors.
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Perform daily or weekly cleaning and sheet changes
The accumulation of dust is one of the most common ways asthma attacks are triggered. Dust mites, pet waste, dead insects, and random dander also contribute to this. Bed sheets, which come in close contact to your skin and affect your respiratory system via amount of exposure can all elicit asthma attacks when not regularly changed. Make sure you schedule cleaning and changing as needed.
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Consider mold removal and other prevention measures
Mold, caused by trapped moisture in your home, can also cause asthma attacks. Exposure to mold is harmful to everyone, not just to those family members who have asthma. Make sure that your plumbing is always working properly. There should be no leaks causing water to get trapped in places it isn’t supposed to be.
You can also hire some experts if you need to clean out your rain gutters in Tucson to make sure that excess moisture isn’t being unnecessarily absorbed by your structure. All these things contribute to preventing mold from forming in your walls, basement, attic, and other surfaces.
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Install an air purifier
If you are living in the middle of the city, where pollution is unrestrained, you may need to take extra measures to ensure the air quality in your home. Installing air purifiers can help ensure that the air that you and your family are breathing are as clean and breathable as possible, filtering out the dust, allergens, pollen, and other unwanted particles in your indoor air.
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Ensure proper ventilation
Indoor air is dirtier than outdoor air, mainly because there is limited ventilation. Make sure that air is circulating properly in your home, and that it is neither too hot nor too cold inside – these weather extremes being strong asthma triggers as well. Put on air conditioning, air circulators, electric fans, and heating when needed; open the windows when there is not much pollution, and keep the air circulating as much as you can.
These are some tried and tested ways to make sure your home stays as asthma-proof as possible for you and your loved ones. Even these small adjustments can already make a big difference in your breathing environment in a short period of time.