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Asthma In Britain, almost 3 million people have asthma. Many are children. Asthma can be mild, with only occasional troublesome symptoms, or it can be severe, requiring repeated hospital treatment. If you have asthma, you will experience difficulty moving air into and out of your lungs. You breathe air in through your windpipe or trachea. It travels down through the airways or bronchi. It then passes into smaller airways or bronchioles, and it reaches the air spaces or alveoli. There, oxygen from the air is passed into your bloodstream. Carbon dioxide is passed back into the air spaces and you breathe it out. If you have asthma, your airways become narrow because their lining is inflamed. This makes your airways twitchy and irritable, and this makes you cough, and the muscles around your airways become tight and go into spasm. The medical name for this twitchiness is bronchial hyper reactivity - airways that overreact. The lining of your airways swells, and this causes sticky phlegm or mucus to develop. All of these things make your airways temporarily narrower, so that air cannot pass so freely through them. You experience wheezing and shortness of breath. The main symptoms of asthma are cough, wheeze and shortness of breath. Many people with asthma also have rhinitis, which often starts before the asthma. This is inflammation of the nose - an itchy, blocked or runny nose. Your eyes and skin can also be affected in some circumstances. Asthma is not an infectious condition. However, the most common cause of asthma symptoms in someone who is vulnerable is the common cold or upper respiratory tract infection. People who have asthma have to increase their inhaler use as soon as they get a cold to try and prevent their airways becoming so inflamed.
Asthma can also be triggered by exercise, stress or excitement, cigarette smoke, cold air, changes in weather, allergies, and some medicines. Something that causes an allergy is called an allergen. In our houses, we all have microscopic insects called house dust mite, which often trigger asthma. General dust, animal fur, feathers, and pollens can all trigger asthma. Sometimes, you may not react immediately to the trigger. If you are investigated, you will be given peak flow charts to fill in every day. This is one way to identify what is triggering your asthma. Sometimes, the cause is never found.
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