When it's difficult to get your breath and you just can't get enough oxygen, it's a frightening feeling, that's what can happen with asthma. We need to look at some of the things that occur in asthma to understand it better.
How does Asthma occur?
There are several ways in which Asthma occurs, let’s take a look at them serially:
Little Airways in the lung have muscles around them and those muscles go into spasm when they've been triggered and an asthmatic attack is occurring, so it makes the physical airway a lot smaller.
There's a kind of swelling that occurs around the airway itself which makes it even much more difficult for patients to get air because the airway is smaller.
There are some thick mucus that blocks the internal airway that's very hard to cough up and those three together, if asthma sufficient enough can be a medical emergency that can be life-threatening.
Symptoms of Asthma
Some of the symptoms that can be seen basically are wheezing, headaches, chest pain and cough. The wheezing is on expiration not an inhalation and actually the lungs over fill with air rather than under fill. The problem is getting the air out of the lungs and that's why it makes a wheezing sound when patients are exhaling.
Another thing that a lot of asthmatics have is trying cough out mucus and nothing comes up, they try to get that thick mucus in a tiny airway to come up and of course the shortness of breath that goes with it.
Triggers of Asthma
The triggers are important for anyone who has asthma and some people are just really sensitive to certain kinds of things called allergens. Things that stimulate the immune system to make that IGE antibody that causes a reaction in the airways that leads to all the aforementioned problems.
Things like dust mites, mold, smoke, food allergies, allergies to pets dander, different kinds of pollen triggers asthma. But the lungs themselves are also very sensitive, even cold air can trigger asthma for some people and there's something called exercise induced asthma so that people who are athletes when they start exerting themselves, they get a bronchoconstriction and that thick mucus that forms again.
Emotional states can cause a problem with asthma, if we get real excited and acute asthmatic attack can be a real dangerous thing. There are people who have GERD (gastro-oesophageal reflux) which means that the stomach acids that normally should stay down are not contained there anymore because the opening between the esophagus and the stomach won't close.
When there's peristalsis of the stomach particularly at night, when you're in bed and you're lying flat, it doesn't take much to push the contents of the stomach and all of its acidic material to go up the esophagus and actually back into the throat and be inhaled into the lung which can cause a lot of irritation.
Air pollution is another vital cause, people who live near freeways is a much bigger problem.
People who smoke, they're almost liable. People with asthma who smoke have a real special problem that need to deal with. There are some people that even have worse asthma during their menstrual cycle at certain times so there are many triggers that we have to pay attention to.
Treatment of Asthma
Bronchodilator(Image source)
When it comes to treatment for asthma, there are many conventional but also complementary alternative approaches to take. The mainstream approaches are generally the use of things called bronchodilators, albuterol and there are a variety of inhalers that can be used to help offset that muscle constriction that causes those bronchioles, tubes and the lungs to constrict and become small.
When albuterol is added topically to those areas, it takes that squeezed down muscles and relaxes them so the airways open up sometimes just within seconds and the asthmatic attack can be broken for free flow of air.
If that doesn't work, things like the leukotriene that are modified by drugs like singulair, accolate and zyflo. What they do is they block the immune reaction that causes all that swelling and constriction, it can be done for periods up to 24 hours and it can make a big difference in the course of treatment.
The problem with albuterol and leukotrienes is that they all have side effects, some of which can be lethal. They're huge amounts of deaths every year because of these drugs so they shouldn't be taken like panacea even though when patients has trouble breathing, this is something that they'd like to have on hand because it may save their life too.
There are steroids which can be delivered intravenously if the situation is life-threatening or serious, they can be given by inhalation or they can be taken orally. And very often, they're given in combination with things like albuterol because they work well together and they help block the allergic reaction.
I hope you find this article useful.
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