Living BetteR with asThma studY (Nutrition)

People with difficult-to-treat asthma are being offered a six-month programme of personalised exercise, mental wellbeing support, breathing retraining, and dietary advice to see if tackling multiple health problems at once can improve their symptoms. This matters because difficult-to-treat asthma rarely travels alone. Most patients also struggle with conditions like obesity, anxiety, or disordered breathing patterns, yet standard care typically treats the lungs in isolation. The researchers have already shown that a targeted exercise intervention alone can reduce inflammation and improve symptoms. Now they want to test whether a broader, patient-designed package of behaviour changes works better than exercise alone. If the pilot succeeds, it will provide the evidence needed to launch larger trials across the NHS. That could shift how asthma clinics operate—moving from single-disease management to integrated care that addresses the whole person. For patients, this might mean fewer flare-ups, less reliance on rescue inhalers, and a genuinely better quality of life. For the health service, it could reduce hospital admissions and long-term treatment costs. The funding will add a second hospital site and dedicated dietitian time, testing whether the approach works outside a single specialist centre.