Monday, January 30, 2012

Breathing Easy

As I've written previously, the winter months up here have limited my excercising options somewhat. During the weekdays, it's dark in the evenings, so I don't mind being at the gym. But during the weekends it's great to be able to be outdoors and see something other than the back of another sweaty T shirt. The main thing holding me back, has been the cold. Obviously enough. The other weekend I trotted out for a jog on a lovely Saturday morning when it was -15 deg C outdoors. I didn't think it would be that much of a problem, but it was. Taking in way more air than one normally would when walking around town, I ended up having some unexpected and unwanted breathing problems. First of all, I started to feel my lungs rattling quite a bit while I was running. Irritating, but not disabling. The problem started about an hour after I came home when I started having trouble catching my breath. It continued for probably 2 or 3 days afterwards before everything came back to normal again. Obviously that can't have been very good for me. I knew that there just had to be a solution to this and in the end I found that there were practical alternatives for people who liked to be active outdoors during colder tempertures.

After digging around on-line, I decided to look at at 2 options that are sold in Sweden. The first was a product called Lungplus, which basically looks like a sawn off mouth organ. It is about 5cm long and has a flared end. You place the flared end in your mouth between your teeth and lips, and off you go. The second option for me was called Airtrim, which is a nose/mouth mask with a filter. Like a normal dust filter mask, the Airtrim is held in place by an elastic strap.

Both products operate on a similar principle. When you breathe out, your breath passes through a fine honeycomb filter, warming up the walls of each honeycomb cell on the way out. When you suck in the new cold air, that air passes through the same (but now warm) honeycomb cells, warming the air up before it enters your mouth and lungs. A basic heat exchange system. The claims by the manufacturers are pretty bold. If you breathe in air while running which is minus 10 degrees Celcius cold, it will have warmed up to plus 19 degrees by the time it reaches your face. Bold claims.

Now, I have to say that neither option is particularly flattering to the eye. On one hand you can choose to look like you got half way through eating a hot dog and it got stuck in your mouth and then froze there. Or you can choose to look like a balding, middle aged, overweight Darth Vader. Either way you're likely to scare off the local wildlife and frighten small children. There is a price and availability issue, which made it a bit simpler for me. I suspect that the Airtrim is a superior product. It seems more complete and thorough. However, it costs about 100NZD and wasn't available to buy up here from a store. That was important for me, as I was worried about how comfortable it would actually be to wear. And I still had the option of going to the gym, so this was really a luxury item. The Lungplus could be bought from the local pharmacy, and cost about 30NZD. Much more affordable if it ended up being a "used it once then chucked it away" type purchase. So that made the decision for me.

Come Saturday morning it was a balmy -13 degrees outside. Another perfect day for a morning run in the woods. Another reason for me choosing the Lungplus was that I could quickly pop it into my pocket if I met anyone along the way. As if I didn't look odd enough. That idea disappeared after about 5 minutes, when I no longer cared what people thought. The Lungplus got a good work out. I was a bit worried about the effort of holding it in one's mouth. But I needn't have worried. Once it's tucked behind the lips, it kind of just hangs there. No effort needed. I was also worried about not being able to breathe normally, or get enough air into my lungs. I'm no lightweight, so I do take in quite a bit of air when I'm on the move. Here, I was quite surprised, and rather impressed. Even when running up a reasonably steep hill, when I'm sucking in several litres a second, I found that I was able to breathe just fine and got all the air I needed. So it worked well in that respect. The only downside, and it was a little annoying, was the amount of moisture that dribbled out from the open end of the filter. I found myself taking it out of my mouth and giving it a quick wipe on my trousers probably every 5 minutes or so. I gave it a good hot wash when I got home, so hopefully it'll stay reasonably bug free. While the Airtrim has replacement filters, the Lungplus is all one piece, with no moving or removeable parts. I don't know if that's an advantage or a disadvantage. It did get me to wondering how the full face mask Airtrim deals with the issue of condensation. I might dig further on that.

Of course the big test was how my lungs and airways would stand up to the cold temperature. I was wearing good thermals, so I was pretty confident that my lungs wouldn't be cold from the outside. I have to say that, from the initial one hour work out, the Lungplus came up a winner. Not a sound from my lungs while I was running, and no breathing problems in the 24 hours that followed. Obviously it's going to need a few more field trials, but so far I'm impressed for a cheap, no nonsense, product. I'll have an ask around and see if anyone has an Airtrim that I can borrow. Then we'll be able to benchmark them properly. I'm mostly pleased now about having an alternative to the gym which doesn't destroy my insides. Life finds a way.

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