Asthma is disease that does have a cure through conventional medicines. This is lung disease which makes your breathing difficult. Good news for this disease is that can be treated to have well and qualified life. This disease that should be diagnosed by professional doctors and which should be caring all your life in way to improve your life. Your doctor can provide you an plan to make you feel better.
Asthma runs family members, but in some cases there is now the entire family affected with asthma. There is long list of possible risk factors, such as:
- urban environment
- smoking [1]
- viral infections in childhood
- triggers
- obesity [2]
- socio-economic stresses
- maternal smoking
- family history of asthma [3]
- prematurity and low birth weight [4]
- dust
- viruses [5]
- emotional factors
- weather changes [6]
- in vitro fertilization
- exercise [7]
- chemicals [8]
- personal history of atopy
- early exposure to broad-spectrum antibiotics.
Symptoms of asthma
The symptoms can increase time to time and there is no clear reason why this is happening. In many cases people have shown that their symptoms are getting worse as the time pass by, even if they take remedies, but in many cases this may happen because they are not taking the right medicine.
This disease can be diagnosed with spirometry, which is a test that measures how much air you can blow in the machine which use is for testing, called spirometar. To see the results from the spirometar they use the next technique: the amount of air you can blow in one second and the total amount you can blow out in one breath it is compared with your age, sex and height, because they affect your lung volume. If the spirometar shows a low value, that indicates you have narrowed airways which are typical for asthma.
asthma symptoms
Doctors can use many ways of testing. They are: your detailed medical history, a physical exam, lung function tests, chest or sinus X-ray. After you have completed the tests, doctors will see the results from the test and they will know what kind of infection you have. Depending of the kind, he or she will give a treatment plan.
Here are some symptoms which can help you to find out whether you are asthmatic or not [9]
Coughing: You may cough all the time and not to suspect that this is asthma. To be sure that this is symptom of asthma you should know you will cough a lot, especially in the early morning or at the night making your sleep hard.
Wheezing: Everyone knows that healthy people do not whistle while breathing. If you have cold you may have this symptom. But when you have asthma your whistling sound increases and you have hard breath.
Chest tightness: If you feel pain in your chest you should check yourself. This symptom is one of the most known symptoms for asthma. If you have feeling like something is sitting on your chest or something is squeezing your chest.
Shortness of breath: People who have asthma cannot have normal breath. They feel like they cannot take their breath or they cannot take their air.
To prevent this, you should lead yourself to the treatment plan of your doctor, to learn your triggers and to give an effort to avoid all of them. Take all of your medicines at the right time; also take your allergy medicines when you should. Many of people which are affected with an asthma, can live normal live, because they can manage all of their medicines as they should.
References:
[1] Thomson NC, Chaudhuri R, Livingston E. Asthma and cigarette smoking. European Respiratory Journal. 2004;24:822-33
[2] Sutherland ER. Obesity and asthma. Immunology and Allergy Clinics of North America. 2008;28(3):589–602.
[3] Paaso EMS, Jaakkola MS, Lajunen TK, et al. The importance of family history in asthma during the first 27 years of life. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. n.d.;188(5).
[4] Xu XF, Li YJ, Sheng YJ, et al. Effect of low birth weight on childhood asthma: a meta-analysis. BMC Pediatrics. 2014;14:275.
[5] Oliver BGG, Robinson P, Peters M, Black J. Viral infections and asthma: an inflammatory interface? European Respiratory Journal. 2014;44:1666-81
[6] Romaszko-Wojtowicz A, Cymes I, Dragańska E, et al. Relationship between biometeorological factors and the number of hospitalizations due to asthma. Scientific Reports. 2020.
[7] Jaakkola JJK, Aalto SAM, Hernberg S, et al. Regular exercise improves asthma control in adults: A randomized controlled trial. Scientific Reports. 2019.
[8] Vincent MJ, Bernstein JA, Basketter D, et al. Chemical-induced asthma and the role of clinical, toxicological, exposure and epidemiological research in regulatory and hazard characterization approaches. Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology. 2017;90:126–32.
[9] Krishnan JA, Lemanske RF, Canino GJ, et al. Asthma outcomes: Asthma symptoms. The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. 2012;129(30):S124–S135.