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All About Asthma

All About Asthma

What is asthma?

Asthma is a chronic, inflammatory lung disease involving recurrent breathing problems. The characteristics of asthma are three airway problems:

  • obstruction
  • inflammation
  • hyper-responsiveness

What are the symptoms of asthma?

Asthma may resemble other respiratory problems such as emphysema, bronchitis, and lower respiratory infections. It is under-diagnosed - many people with the disease do not know they have it. Sometimes the only symptom is a chronic cough, especially at night, or coughing or wheezing that occurs only with exercise. Some people think they have recurrent bronchitis, since respiratory infections usually settle in the chest in a person predisposed to asthma.

What causes asthma

The basic cause of the lung abnormality in asthma is not yet known, although healthcare professionals have established that it is a special type of inflammation of the airway that leads to:

  • contraction of airway muscles
  • mucus production
  • swelling in the airways

It is important to know that asthma is not caused by emotional factors - as commonly believed years ago. Emotional anxiety and nervous stress can cause fatigue, which may affect the immune system and increase asthma symptoms or aggravate an attack. However, these reactions are considered to be more of an effect than a cause.

What is a Risk Factor?

A risk factor is anything that may increase a person's chance of developing a disease. It may be an activity, diet, family history, or many other things.

Different diseases have different risk factors. Although these factors can increase a person's risk, they do not necessarily cause the disease. For example, some people with one or more risk factors never develop cancer, while others develop cancer and have no known risk factors.

Knowing your risk factors to any disease can help to guide you into the appropriate actions, including changing behaviors and being clinically monitored for the disease.

Why is asthma on the rise?

Some scientists theorize that the decline in serious illness may be one factor in the increa