Asthma (pronounced AZ-muh) is defined in the book "Essential Allergy", by Mygind, Dahl, Pedersen, and Thestrup-Pedersen as "A lung disease characterised by: 1. variable and reversible airway obstruction; 2. airway inflammation; and 3. bronchial hyper-responsiveness. Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease that makes bronchial passages that make up one's airways particularly sensitive to irritants. It is primarily characterized by breathing difficulties. Asthma is a highly-ranked chronic health condition for adults in a majority of western countries. It is also the leading chronic illness afflicting children. Asthma cannot be cured. However, most patients can control it so that they suffer only minimal and infrequent symptoms and they can live an active life.
If you suffer from asthma, managing it is an important part of your life. Controlling your asthma entails avoiding things that bother your airways and taking medicines under your doctor's direction. With daily asthma control, serious symptoms can be prevented and it is possible to participate in all normal activities. When asthma is not well-controlled, your symptoms may cause you to miss school or work and may keep you from enjoying other activities.
Asthma sufferers have hyper-responsive or very sensitive airways. An asthma episode, or, in severe cases, an asthma attack occurs when a person experiences a worsening of their asthma symptoms. During an asthma attack, the smooth muscles around the bronchial tubes contract, narrowing airway openings thereby restricting air flow. As inflammation increases, the airways become more swollen and increasingly narrow. Cells in the airways also overproduce mucus, which further narrows the airways. These airway changes cause the asthma symptoms. It becomes difficult for air to pass in and out of the lungs and blood-oxygen levels decrease.
This narrowing of the air passages is due to different combinations of:
* swelling of the airway lining caused by airway inflammation
* excessive mucus in airways
* contraction of muscles around the air passages
Not all asthma attacks are created equally. Some are more severe than others. In a severe asthma attack, the airways can close to the extent that vital organs do not receive enough oxygen. This condition constitutes a medical emergency. It is possible die from a severe asthma attack. Suffering from an asthma attack has been compared to the sensation of drowning. Sufferers of an asthma attack describe symptoms such as a tightness in the chest, wheezing or whistling noises in the chest, coughing, breathlessness, and breathing difficulties that occur as the airways become narrowed, inflamed, and blocked by mucus. An asthma attack can flare up suddenly. However, asthma sufferers learn to recognize those warning signs that signal an attack. These indicators include an itchy nose or skin, dizziness or light-headedness, or an irritating cough. Learning the warning signs is essential to alert a sufferer to take preventive action, such as medication in time to avoid an attack. Because of this asthma sufferers should have regular contact with their physician. They need to educate themselves as to what things cause a worsening of their asthma symptoms methods to use to avoid them. Additionally, your doctor will prescribe medicines to manage your asthma.
In the Western world, about one in thirteen adults and one in eight children have asthma and rates are on the rise. It can affect anyone, any place, at any age. In the developed world asthma is becoming increasingly common and is presently the most common chronic condition in the west. Major contributing factors are thought to be aspects of our modern environment such as air pollution, processed foods, and centrally heated, double-glazed houses which are an ideal breeding grounds for house dust mites. Because it is considered a chronic condition, that means that attacks can occur over a long period of time. Although there are times when asthmatics suffer acute episodes, the majority asthma sufferers report that there are long periods during which they suffer few, if any,symptoms. Asthma can change progressively during the lifetime of the asthma sufferer. For example, children may grow out of asthma, but of these, some redevelop asthma at a later age.
Medications, such as those resembling two naturally-occurring hormones, help asthma. These two hormones are adrenaline or, in the United States, epinephrine and the steroid hydrocortisone. There are additional drugs which help treat asthma. Though drugs can remove all of the symptoms for a mild asthma sufferer, more severe or long-standing cases of asthma generally do not get such good results. To combat this, alternate medications have been developed. Over time, lifelong asthma sufferers see a decrease in the effectiveness of medications in removing the obstruction of the airways. One of the current treatment goals is to minimize the inflammation in the lung passages as this is thought to precipitate this long-term decline.
By: Barbara Brown
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