Can you go skydiving if you suffer from Asthma? Let me start with one word – YES.
I’ll go on to qualify this positive note and also offer some notes for instructors and students alike. There are three main factors to making this work. You, your AFF instructor and your Doctor/General Practitioner.
Working with your Doctor; You need to have a supportive Doctor who will support you through your quest. Your AFF instructor will certainly never recommend you going against the advice of your Doctor. It’s therefore up to you to get your GP on-side in this matter. While doing this, the attached paper on Asthma which is produced by the BPA may be of some help. The original can be found on this link to the BPA website. If GPs want to get more information regarding skydiving, they always have the option of contacting the governing bodies of the sport (such as the USPA or BPA) for more information, however Doctors are very busy and it will take them time and therefore the easiest (and also safest, for you) answer in these circumstances is ‘no’. Therefore, if your Doctor has some specific questions which they need answered before they will clear you to do an accelerated free fall course or tandem skydiving, you will need to help them in the research. Showing them the attached paper will help, and adding alongside it the contact details of the current medical advisor for your governing body.
You and your own mangement of Asthma in your skydiving experiences; Apart from doing your research and getting your Doctor on-board, you need to manage your own peak flow and your medications to make sure that you are fit enough to skydive and your remain so. But of course you already knew that didn’t you? After all, you’ve probably been doing it for much of your life. It’s different now though because you have the variables of altitude, weather and personal motivation vs health to take into account.
I know it’s tough on you if the weather eventually improves after you’ve been sitting around the DZ for a couple of weekends, and then you find your peak flows are low. You must ‘own up’ and tell your instructor, who will probably be as disappointed as you are, but they’ll also be supportive. One of my AFF students, Anna, was so incredibly positive about everything she did, and remarked to me one day how much easier she found it to breathe at altitude. I found this difficult to understand (because I already understood the opposing effects of ‘hypoxic’ environments) and she qualified this simply by saying that when the air was cooler and had less pollen, she could breathe more easily. Therefore, you need to view this whole adventure as a new sport, whichof course ity is, and train accordingly and to work out your own formula. You need to keep yourself as healthy as possible and keep away from anything which reduces your peak flow (alcohol, gluten?). If anyone finds a forum thread for asthma in skyding I'd appreciate the link so we can put it here to help others.
Your Accelerated Free Fall Instructor; is not an expert in Asthma, but she is an expert in skydiving and in developing people! Try to work with the same instructor each time (if possible) and develop your set of ‘operating procedures’ to manage the condition together. When teaching Anna, I always carried a spare inhaler for her and also a spare brown paper bag. I knew (and so did she) of her tendency to be super positive and therefore I found out her peak flow range and asked her specific questions about what it was at the beginning of the days jumping. Anna taught me how to help her work through an Asthmatic fit and what to do if things didn’t get better (call an Ambulance). All of this was absolutely fine and we took the ground school a little easier than we would otherwise have done, in order to not wear her out. Anna graduated with style and Asthma was something she managed, without letting the condition manage her. When selecting your Accelerated Free Fall Instructor, if you are an asthmatic, don’t find the instructor who ‘gets more jumps than the other instructors’ but find the one who is more patient than the others and who will give you the time and attention you need.
One of the things I love about Accelerated free fall is the way it focuses on the individual, rather than a ‘one size fits all’ approach. People are all different and they are become less willing to be prevented from achieving their lifes’ ambitions just because they have some sort of medical restriction. More and more people are being diagnosed with Asthma and it appears that there may be a growing trend towards this group of medical conditions, or is it just a growing awareness that they exist?Finally, these words mean a lot to Asthmatics and to me personally.....
“Life shouldn’t be measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the times our breath is taken away”
