|
Asthma is the sudden coughing or wheezing that can make a person feel short of breath. Some other symptoms that accompany this shortness of breath include chest tightness and mucus moving when you cough. An asthma attack can occur at any moment: during the day or at night, outside or inside, during any season of the year and at any time throughout the day. Some people have asthma attacks only once a month, others have them once a day, and still others only have them when they are sick with a cold or upper-respiratory ailment.
Asthma attacks can last anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours or days. When these asthma attacks occur, most people can alleviate them by taking medication that is prescribed by a doctor. A peak flow meter is usually recommended by a doctor to be used to control and prevent an asthma attack. The peak flow meter is a device that that measures the amount of force that an asthmatic can exhale. By using this device, a person with asthma can track and see if an asthma attack is coming. Then they can take measures to prevent it from happening.
More than fifteen million people in the United States have asthma. It is the nation’s leading cause of chronic illness in children under sixteen years of age. Of the ten million people that are diagnosed with asthma, five million are children alone and over one million asthmatics are people over sixty-five years of age. So with such a wide span of people dealing with asthma, it is necessary for doctors to find out what caused it initially. Doctors do know that asthma seems to be hereditary. That is, it runs in families and most people develop asthma when they are young. Almost half of the people diagnosed with asthma get it before they are ten years old. But a person can develop asthma at any time throughout their life. So unfortunately, doctors cannot predict who will develop asthma and who will not.
When an asthma attack happens, the following things may occur:
- The space inside the airways to your lungs becomes narrow and less air is able to pass in and out. It is usually very difficult to breathe out: especially with any kind of force.
- The swelling and inflammation of the airways also makes it difficult for you to breathe. The lining of the airways becomes irritated.
- Mucus also becomes a factor. It normally lubricates the airways and helps the body get rid of dust and dirt from the air passages. But during an asthma attack, too much mucus is produced and blocks up the passages limiting the flow of air. It also makes it difficult to cough.
Some asthma attacks can be very mild and others can send you to the hospital. It varies in each person and attacks can vary within the same person. It is not predictable, but it is somewhat preventable. By keeping in contact with your doctor and by using your peak flow meter on a daily basis, you can look for warning signs to an impending asthma attack and take measures to prevent it from occurring.
| 
