What is Asthma

by Arild Myklebust

Asthma is defined 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 airways (bronchial tubes) particularly sensitive to irritants, and this is characterized by difficulty in breathing. Asthma is a highly ranked chronic health condition in adults in most western countries, and it is the leading chronic illness of children.

Asthma symptoms include:
- Coughing. Coughing in people with asthma is often worse at night or early in the morning, making it hard for them to sleep.
- Wheezing. Wheezing is a whistling or squeaky sound when you breathe.
- A tight feeling in the chest. This can feel like someone is squeezing or sitting on your chest.
- Shortness of breath. Asthma sufferers often say they can't catch their breath, or they feel breathless or out of breath.
They feel like you can't get enough air in or out of their lungs.
- Episodes of wheezy difficulty in breathing
- Faster breathing or noisy breathing
- Narrowing of the air passages in the lungs and hence increased resistance to airflow.
- Rapid and considerable changes in airway obstruction
- Frequent nocturnal episodes and low morning peak flow values
- Significant reversibility with drugs which resemble adrenaline, the beta2 agonists
- Significant reversibility with steroid drugs
- Symptom-free periods
- Frequent occurrence of allergy
- Inflammation of the air passages, characterised by eosinophils in the airway wall
- Bronchial hyper-responsiveness to non-specific stimuli such as cold air or histamine

But what causes asthma ?
Why do some people develop asthma ?
Why is asthma more common in the western world ?

Asthma is not contagious. You cannot catch asthma from another person. However, you can inherit the asthma tendency from your parents, although people with asthma should not worry about their future children on this score.

Studies show that children whose parents smoke are twice as likely to develop asthma as children of non-smoking parents. Also, children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy tend to be born with smaller airways, which greatly increases their chances of developing the disease. The 'westernised' environment and lifestyle in developed countries has a lot to do with the chances of whether a person will develop asthma or not. Many people believe air pollution has something to do with asthma, although the evidence, at this stage, is surprisingly very weak.

Your pets and asthma - I.e. do cats cause asthma in people ? Causes of asthma include allergies to house dust mites, cats, dogs, and moulds.

Childhood infections and exposure to substances from bacteria in a dirty environment seem to protect against allergies and this seems to be the main reason why richer populations have more allergic disease.

So the causes of asthma are complicated. They include our genes, our exposure to things we become allergic to and a general effect of our environment on the chance that these genes and the things we become allergic to will cause trouble at some time during our lives. But it is not quite as complicated as it sounds.

Almost all asthma in young people is caused by allergies. This means that if you have asthma you probably have inherited genes which make it possible for you to get asthma, plus allergy-producing things in your environment, such as house dust mites, cats, or dogs. The allergies and the genes are the causes for developing asthma, because if either of them were not present you would not developed asthma.

But what about colds, exercise, laughter, or tobacco smoke, which can give you an attack of asthma even if everything in the last paragraph is true for you ? You can't cure your asthma by not taking exercise, or by not laughing. Quite simply, these are not causes of the fact that you have asthma, though they can be causes of the fact that you have an attack.

The type of interior house paint can apparently make asthma worse. Glossy oil paints used for home decorating can bring on asthma attacks in asthma sufferers. The good news is that emulsion paints don't seem to do this. Polyurethane paints, usually recognisable because they come in two packs which need to be mixed together before use, can cause occupational asthma in people who use them regularly. However, they probably cause no great risk in people with asthma who use them infrequently. As always, when using chemicals and paints, it is surely a good idea to ventilate the area well during and after use.

Arild Myklebust runs the free Asthma Information website, containing over 20 Asthma related articles. Visit now, to read more about Asthma. For useful, free tips on other topics, see the main page freetips.ws

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Arild_Myklebust