Pittsburgh Steelers defensive tackle Cameron Heyward #97, seen here prior to a recent game against the Buffalo Bills, has had to manage his asthma since he was a child. (Photo by Cooper Neill/Getty Images)
Getty Images
You could say that Pittsburgh Steelers defensive tackle Cam Heyward has had a rather breathtaking football career. He’s made the Pro Bowl seven times, first team All-Pro four times and many NFL quarterbacks run until they were out of breath, sacking them 90 times over 14 seasons. But when he was a child, something else was taking his breath away: asthma. Heyward recently talked to me about his long lung history as well as his work with the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca on the Asthma Behaving Badly campaign.
Heyward Has Dealt With Asthma Since Childhood
Yeah, asthma itself is not really known for its good manners. It’s kind of like that companion that you have to constantly tell not to act up but still may do so at all kinds of times. I have written before in Forbes about asthma. It’s a chronic medical condition where your airways can be particularly sensitive and get inflamed, making it much harder to breathe. “I’ve been dealing with asthma, basically my whole life,” Heyward told me and mentioned that he was diagnosed around six or seven years of age.
Asthma attacks are when your airways narrow significantly and produce lots of mucus to the point where you start wheezing, being short of breath and have potentially lots of difficulty breathing. These attacks can vary in severity from the mild to the life-threatening because the whole breathing thing is kind of important to your life.
Different things can trigger such attacks, ranging from exercise to strong emotions to cold air to certain medications to allergens like pollen, dust mites, mold and pet dander to irritants like smoke, pollution and strong smells to respiratory infections. So if, for example, you are upset with your pet wombat for wearing too much cologne, smoking and coughing a lot, there are potentially multiple things that can trigger an attack, depending on what type of asthma you have. “I have weather-induced, physical exercise-induced and also allergy-induced asthma as well,” Heyward clarified.
Asthma Has Landed Heyward In The Hospital Many Times
“I would want to go outside in those cold temperatures in Pittsburgh [where he grew up] and couldn’t do it because I had to stay inside to protect my chest,” Heyward recalled. “As I got older, as I got more active, whether it was in sports or with allergies, with dogs and being around Christmas trees, I spent my fair share of time in the hospital because of it.”
He described what it’s been like to experience an asthma attack: “Your chest starts to get tight, you start to wheeze and it just affects your whole body because your body tends to shut down.” Heyward did caution, “These are experiences from my asthma attacks. I might feel one type of way, but with asthma attacks, they can be very different.”
Heyward Hasn’t Let Asthma Limit Him
Cameron Heyward #97 and Alex Highsmith #56 of the Pittsburgh Steelers tackle Josh Allen #17 of the Buffalo Bills in the second quarter of a game at Acrisure Stadium on November 30, 2025 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Joe Sargent/Getty Images)
Getty Images
However, by getting diagnosed early and getting the proper medications, Heyward has managed to keep his asthma under reasonable control. “I’ve had my fair share of time with asthma, but it hasn’t prevented me from doing the stuff I love,” he emphasized. “Having those talks with your doctor and finding those triggers and those things that are affecting you and then finding the right treatment options are huge.”
That’s allowed Heyward to do huge things on the football field. “As I got older and I got into sports, I didn’t use asthma as a crutch,” he recalled. “I used it as something I just need to be aware of whether it’s using my inhaler before games or before I go outside and then also using my nebulizer in making sure my body was able to stabilize itself again.”
Asthma medications fall into two general categories. One category consists of medications that act quickly to relieve the symptoms of an asthma attack. These include inhaled medications that rapidly relax your airways such as beta-agonists and anticholinergic agents and corticosteroids that can be taken orally or intravenously. The other category are meds used for long-term asthma control that you take regularly to decrease the risk of asthma attacks. These include oral medications like theophylline and leukotriene modifiers and inhaled medications like corticosteroids alone and corticosteroids plus long-acting beta agonists.
You could say that Heyward used these medications to keep a Buckeye on his football career. After a storied high school football career in Georgia, he went to not a Ohio State University but The Ohio State University. There his Buckeye teams made major bowl appearances in each of his four seasons, and he made the All-Big Ten team. As Heyward described, “My mom, she would always be in the stands and she’d look at me and be like, ‘Did you take your inhaler before you went out?’” In 2011, Heyward was then drafted in the first round by the Steelers, which proved to be quite a steal for Pittsburgh.
While at the Burgh, Heyward has made significant contributions not just on the field but also off the field as marked by his being honored as the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year in 2023. His Cameron Heyward Foundation runs various programs to help with different causes such as fighting cancer, addressing childhood hunger, supporting teachers and improving childhood literacy. “We also helped fund a breath-mobile that was helping deliver inhalers to underserved communities in Pittsburgh,” explained Heyward.
Heyward Is Raising Awareness About Eosinophillic Asthma
Heyward is also working with AstraZeneca to raise awareness about on particular rare severe type of asthma known as e-asthma. No, this isn’t electronic asthma or asthma where attacks are triggered by way too much email. The “e” here stands for eosinophilic, which isn’t the exactly type of word that people say every day or a quarterback will yell on the football field. In fact, in a recent Instagram post, Heyward, not surprisingly, struggled with pronouncing this tongue-twister. Heyward doesn’t have eosinophilic asthma specifically himself but he is lending another “e,” his experience with asthma in general, to this campaign.
Eosinophils are a type of white blood cell that normally can help protect your body against allergens, parasites, bad bacteria and other organisms. But in eosinophilic asthma, having too many of these white blood cells around can cause inflammation in your airways.
The trouble with eosinophilic asthma, besides causing severe symptoms, is that inhaled corticosteroids, even in high doses, don’t tend to work. Therefore, other types of medications namely biologics like benralizumab (Fasenra), mepolizumab (Nucala) and reslizumab (Cinqair) may be warranted. Heyward is “bringing more attention [to this type of asthma], making sure everybody understands, there’s an opportunity to get a test done to test a blood type test done to make sure to find out if you have [eosinophilic asthma].” That test can measure the eosinophil count in your blood. An elevated count may suggest that you have e-asthma.
While asthma is a problem to be taken seriously, with proper management, it doesn’t have to limit what you do, even if you want to play professional football at the highest level. Heyward mentioned that other current and former NFL players have asthma as well. One of them is Jerome Bettis, the former Steeler known as The Bus, whose bust is now in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, who’s known for quite a few breathtaking performances.
