Asthma is a chronic, inflammatory lung disease characterized by recurrent breathing problems. It is the leading cause of children’s illness most kids’ asthma is created or triggered by allergies of some kind.
Asthma is one of the most common chronic disease affecting both adults and children. It’s known as the “most common chronic disease of child hood.
Symptoms
Symptoms of an asthma attack might include wheezing, chest tightness, coughing, trouble breathing, and a drop in your child’s peak flows. Despite the severity of symptoms during an asthmatic episode, between attacks an asthmatic may show few or even no signs of the disease. Recurrent asthma symptoms frequently cause sleeplessness, daytime fatigue, reduced activity levels and school and work absenteeism. When symptoms get more intense and/or additional symptoms appear, this is an asthma attack.
Breathing
People with asthma have acute episodes or when the air passages in their lungs get narrower, and breathing becomes more difficult. An asthma attack always causes difficulties in breathing. Clearly it is also an emotional issue, but underneath the emotions is the breathing or lack there of that causes the emotional stress. For a better understanding about what to look for when your breathing is deteriorating, consult your doctor and have them give you a test. Second Hand Smoke is a big cause of asthma attacks, asthmatics are generally not smokers. Cigarette smoke can drastically exacerbate the disease and asthmatics have a hard enough time breathing without filling their lungs with smoke.
Treatment
Asthma is treated by drugs that relax the muscle of the breathing passages. The most effective treatment for asthma is identifying triggers, such as pets or aspirin, and limiting or eliminating exposure to them. The goal of the treatment is to control the disease by following and asthma action plan you create with your doctor, taking asthma medicines as prescribed, learning what things make your asthma worse and taking steps to avoid exposure to them, tracking your level of asthma control, and responding quickly to worsening symptoms.
Allergy
Allergy tests can help identify avoidable symptom triggers. Allergies are a key cause of asthma in adults and children so exposure to things that trigger an allergic response in susceptible people (allergens), such as house dust mites or, more precisely, its droppings is important in influencing the development of asthma. Allergy plays a key role in about half of all asthma cases. The majority of these triggers can often be identified from the history; for instance, asthmatics with hay fever or pollen allergy will have seasonal symptoms, those with allergies to pets may experience an abatement of symptoms when away from home, and those with occupational asthma may improve during leave from work. Dealing with seasonal allergy symptoms have become a fact of life for many of us. Sometimes over-the-counter allergy medicines just do not do the trick.
As we all know asthma is a disorder affecting the airways of the lungs and is considered not to be curable. Asthma is triggered by many things, like pollen or cigarette smoke. It is one of the most common chronic conditions in the United States, affecting roughly 20 million Americans.