9 tips to improve respiratory health

Although stopping smoking is at the top of any list, here are another nine tips that will have you doing less huffing and puffing, as well as protecting your lungs from damage and disease.

1. Make sure you get enough omega-3. Most airway problems, including asthma, are related to inflammation. Omega-3 fatty acids reduce inflammation.
2. Make spaghetti sauce tonight, tomato and basil salad tomorrow night and roasted tomatoes over the weekend. British researchers found that people who ate tomatoes three times a week had improved lung function and experienced less wheeziness and fewer asthma-like symptoms.
3. Work in 10 to 20 crunches a day. Your abdominal and chest muscles allow you to suck air in and out. Strengthen them, as well as practising your deep breathing, to get the breathing power of a professional opera singer (or at least close).
4. Take your medicine and listen to your doctor if you have asthma. There's some good evidence that people with asthma eventually develop chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, a lung disease that strikes people aged 65 and older. There's also evidence that keeping your asthma under control can prevent the disease from developing.
5. Look on the bright side. When researchers followed 670 men with an average age of 63 for eight years, they found that the optimists had much better lung function and a slower rate of lung function decline than the pessimists.
6. Get at least seven servings of fruit and vegetables a day. A study found that the high amounts of antioxidants they contain, including vitamin C, vitamin E, selenium and beta carotene, meant better lung function – even in smokers.
7. Have a glass of wine tonight. Drinking wine, particularly white wine, both in the recent past and over your lifetime, seems to help your lungs, possibly because of wine's high antioxidant levels. It has to be wine, though; researchers found no such correlation when they looked at the effects of other forms of alcohol.
8. Brush your teeth twice a day and floss after every meal. Researchers found that patients with periodontal – gum – disease were one and a half times more likely also to have COPD. The worse the gum disease, the worse the lung function, suggesting a direct correlation between the two.
9. In hot, dry or very cold weather, or in dusty or polluted air, breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Our nasal passages are designed to filter the air and regulate its temperature and humidity. If you breathe in through your mouth, everything – like dust and coldness – goes straight on into the lungs.