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Breathing with Asthma

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Breathing With Asthma

Asthma is a long-term lung disease that inflames and narrows the airways. Asthma causes recurring periods of wheezing, chest tightness, shortness of breath, and coughing. The coughing often occurs at night or early in the morning.
To understand asthma, it helps to know how the airways work. The airways are tubes that carry air into and out of your lungs. People who have asthma have inflamed airways. The inflammation makes the airways swollen and very sensitive. The airways tend to react strongly to certain inhaled substances.
When the airways react, the muscles around them tighten. This narrows the airways, causing less air to flow into the lungs. The swelling also can worsen, making the airways even narrower. Cells in the airways might make more mucus than usual.
Scientific evidence clearly shows that most people could control their asthma by following current asthma clinical practice guidelines. With proper care, people who have asthma can stay active, sleep through the night, and avoid having their lives disrupted by asthma attacks.
Patients with well-controlled asthma should have:
• Very few asthma symptoms.
• Barley any awakenings during the night caused by asthma symptoms.
• No need to take time off from school or work due to asthma.
• Few or no limits on full participation in physical activities.
• No emergency hospital visits.
• No hospital stays.
• Few or no side effects from asthma medicines.

There are different types of asthma, seasonal & regular asthma. Seasonal asthma is when the weather changes from hot to cold your asthma kicks in. Seasonal asthma is very easy to control. Regular asthma on the other hand isn’t very easy to control. Depending on how bad your asthma is, you can end up having asthma attacks every day or only about once a month or less. Even though it is very rare, it is actually possible to actually die from an asthma attack, due to the lack of oxygen being taken in.

Most people with severe asthma take a breathing pump called albuterol. Albuterol comes as a solution (liquid) to inhale by mouth using a nebulizer (machine that turns medication into a mist that can be inhaled) and as an aerosol to inhale by mouth using an inhaler. When the inhalation aerosol is used to treat or prevent symptoms of lung disease, it is usually used every 4 to 6 hours as needed. When the inhalation aerosol is used to prevent breathing difficulty during exercise, it is usually used 15 to 30 minutes before exercise.

Undoubtedly, asthma is a very common condition and, 5.4 million people in the UK receive treatment for asthma: 1 in 10 children and 1 in 12 adults. It is the most common chronic medical condition in children. There are 4.1 million GP consultations for asthma per year. The cost of asthma to the NHS runs at about a billion pounds per year. Internationally, the UK is one of the highest-ranking countries in terms of asthma prevalence, hospital admissions and mortality.

Asthma continues to be a serious public health problem. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An estimated 25.9 million people, including almost 7.1 million children, have asthma. Asthma prevalence is higher among persons with family income below the poverty level. Asthma is one of the most common serious chronic diseases of childhood. Asthma is the third-ranking cause of hospitalization among children under 15. An average of one out of every 10 school-aged children has asthma. 10.5 million school days are missed each year due to asthma. The annual economic cost of asthma, including direct medical costs from hospital stays and indirect costs such as lost school and workdays, amount to more than $56 billion annually.

Dust mites, molds, cockroaches, pet dander, and secondhand smoke trigger asthma attacks. Exposure to secondhand smoke can cause asthma in pre-school aged children. Exposure to dust mites can cause asthma. Ozone and particle pollution can cause asthma attacks.

Asthma symptoms can range from mild to very severe. A person may experience only occasional severe episodes one time and then experience frequents mild episodes. According to the book, Living Well With Asthma, there are four main symptoms of an asthma attack. Since an attack can be so overwhelming and frightening, it may be difficult to know what’s going on inside of a person’s body. Here are the major elements of an asthma attack: -Shortness of breath, described as tightness of the chest. Some people have trouble breathing during exercise, others experience it after inhaling smoke, while others need to ingest a particular food-regardless of the circumstance, and all people with asthma have trouble breathing.

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