Asthma is a chronic lung disorder that causes difficulty in breathing, panting, wheezing and tightness of chest and lungs. It is a common respiratory disease amongst men, women and children of all ages. Asthma, if it gets serious, leads to an asthma attack, causing frequent gasping and breathlessness. While it is a long term disorder with no particular cure, but proper medication and precautions and a doctor prescribed plan can help keeping the symptoms from reoccurring less often.
What Causes Asthma:
When the airways carrying air to the lungs get inflamed and the walls swollen, making it hard to breath. When the airways react, the muscles around them tighten. This narrows the airways, causing less air to flow into the lungs. The reaction in airways causes them to get narrowed and carry less than the required air to the lungs. If the swelling gets worse, due to mucus making cells in the airways they get even more contracted. Asthma attacks are sometimes triggered by inhaling something your airways are sensitive to, like dust, smoke, chilly air, perfumes or any sprays with fumes, dust mites, cockroaches, emotional stress. However, these triggers vary from person to person. There is a possibility that one asthmatic patient feels nothing with air pollutants while experience breathlessness due to a certain chemical fume. These are mostly personal or symptom triggers, depending on what your airways are sensitive to and may react at. Sometimes these triggers might not result in airways inflammation or contraction but in provoke irritation in the airways resulting in coughing and wheezing.
Symptoms:
The symptoms of this chronic respiratory disorder are more or less similar in every asthma patient. However, the way they experience these symptoms may vary from person to person.
- Constant Coughing
- Breathlessness
- Panting or wheezing
- Chest and lung tightness
- Feeling of exhaustion or annoyance
- Restless sleep
These are some of the early signs of normal and mild asthma disorder. When the asthma worsens and eventually turns into an asthma attack the symptoms get more severe, like:
- Persistent or nonstop coughing
- Difficulty talking
- Extreme chest tightness
- Neck pain
- Muscle tension
- Sweaty and pale face and palms
- Lips and nails turning blue and dry
- Fatigue and anxiety
- Dizziness
- Difficulty in talking or performing regular activity
- Difficulty in concentrating
Treatment:
The best way to control asthma recurrence is by staying away from asthma triggers and to keep your lung functioning properly. To achieve that you should work with your doctor and follow his advised plan to keep our airways from inflaming and contracting. Asthma doesn’t restrict people from performing normal day to day activities. Many people being diagnosed with asthma are normally living their lives with proper medical treatment and precautions. Analyzing your symptoms will help you to counter your asthma problem more effectively.
There are two types of medicines given by doctors to treat asthma: quick relief medication and long term control medicines. People usually use quick relief medicines, like inhaler or bronchodilator when faced by an asthma attack. While the long term medicines are to maintain your lung and respiratory conditions.
A peak flow meter is given to people suffering from asthma to measure the speed of oxygen exhalation and shows how your lungs are functioning.
If the asthma attack gets severe it can get fatal, it is best advised to work according to your prescribed asthma plan in order to avoid severe attacks. If your inhaler or other quick relief medicines fail to restore oxygen to your lungs then you should immediately seek emergency. It is suggested that people with major asthma problems have their emergency contact numbers at hand to be given immediate care when needed.