Respiratory Load
Your Horse's Legs Aren't Doing All the Work.
At a gallop, air has to come in fast, and respiratory muscles do the pulling. This burns oxygen, the same oxygen the rest of the horse needs.
That's respiratory load: everything your horse's breathing has to do, and what it costs him to do it.
The Breeze
Short and intense. Sprints concentrate demand.
The Gallop
Longer and sustained. Extends demand.
The Week
Repeated efforts stack demand, recovery impacts how much he gets back in between.
Training plans account for legs, feet and feed. Breathing is doing just as much work.
Two Things Happen at the Nose at Speed, and They're Opposites.
Where the Air Gets Tight
Watch the changes to the nose during inhalation and exhalation. During inhalation, negative pressure draws the compliant tissues over the nasal passages inward, narrowing the airway.
His nostrils open.
Four muscles pull them wide, and they flare wider the harder he works. That part is built to open.
The passage behind them pulls in.
Just behind the nostrils is a stretch of nasal passage tissue with no bone and no cartilage holding it out. Every inhale draws that soft tissue inward, narrowing the airway right where air moves fastest.
Narrowing of the nasal passages raises resistance, which deepens the pull, which narrows it further — all inside one breath.
That's not a flaw you can train out of him. It's the shape of the horse.
One Spot. One Job.
How FLAIR® Strips Work
When horses breathe during exercise, the soft tissues overlying the nasal passages collapse, reducing the size of the airway. This reduction in size of the airway causes increased resistance to moving air into the lungs. FLAIR Strips support the nasal passages so there is less collapse and less resistance to bringing air into the lungs.
Eight Studies. Treadmill and Racetrack.
What the Research Shows
Every horse pays to breathe. The question is how much.
Furosemide and the FLAIR Strip are the only proven means to effectively mitigate pulmonary hemorrhage (EIPH).
Warwick Bayly, BVSc, MS, PhD, DACVIM & Emmanuelle van Erck, DVM, PhD, DECEIM · Kentucky Equine Research Conference, 2024
- 01
He spends less getting his air.
In a hard two-minute sprint, horses wearing a FLAIR Strip used about 6% less oxygen.
- 02
Reduced resistance to breathing.
Peak tracheal inspiratory pressure and inspiratory airway resistance both reduced significantly.
- 03
A FLAIR Strip reduces it.
Multiple controlled studies show reduced EIPH severity. In a maximal treadmill study, EIPH reduction showed no statistically significant difference between FLAIR and furosemide.
- 04
It adds to what you're already doing.
At Golden Gate Fields, 23 Thoroughbreds each raced twice, once with a Strip and once without. Every horse got furosemide before both races. Bleeding dropped lower with a FLAIR Strip on.
Most of His Breathing Happens Before the Gate.
It Starts in the Morning
A horse might race a dozen times in a year. He'll breeze and gallop hundreds of times. That's where respiratory work accumulates, and where you have the most control over it.
Use a FLAIR Strip for the sessions that ask the most of his breathing:
Breezes- Strong gallops
- Works from the gate
- Race dayWhere your jurisdiction permits
Getting It Right
Placement Is Everything.
A Strip in the wrong spot misses the part of the nasal passage that collapses. Two minutes with the instructions and you'll place it right every time after.
One Strip, one use. Apply to a clean, dry nose.
View Application Instructions
The Work of Breathing is Part of the Workload.
Make respiratory support part of the plan, from demanding morning work to race day.
FLAIR® Equine
Nasal Strips
Performance Starts
at the Nose.
