Question about asthma & alcohol causing an attack

Hi Jen.

Are you sure it's the alcohol? What was in the drink? Wine, beer, mixers have all sorts of things in them you might react to. I can't drink them because of sulfites.

Do you react to any other drinks or foods? There are all sorts of triggers for asthma.

Wine and beer definitely contain sulfites. It's an ion (part of a chemical) with a sulfur atom and 3 oxygens. Google sulfite or search with the search box at the top of the page.

Vodka doesn't have it plain, but mixers and sodas do contain it. It's in an awful lot of prepared foods, usually as a bleaching agent or preservative.

A small amount of plain ethyl alcohol shouldn't be a problem by itself, but a couple of drinks could cause the stomach to be irritated and start refluxing stomach acid into the throat where it can be aspirated into the lungs.

If you have any sort of refluxing or asthma symptoms after drinking anything else or after any meals or medicines, keeping a food diary is helpful in finding the triggers. Lots of posts about food diaries or food journal or log in the search box too.