Are You Making These Mistakes With Asthma?

What You Should Know About Asthma, But Probably Haven’t Heard.

Many very commonly used things in personal care and your home may be responsible for ongoing, worsening asthma and asthma attacks.

Asthma sufferers and those with other chronic breathing problems often react to common airborne chemicals.

This exposure can lead to an asthma attack, an ER visit, hospitalization, and for some death. This sounds like it might be over blowing the problem (pun intended), but check it out by reading the rest of the blog post below.

This post will help you better understand asthma. It might just save you or your child if you have asthma or other chronic respiratory diseases. This is something that your doctor is very unlikely to have ever explained to you.

If you or someone you know has asthma or if you would like to reduce the likelihood that you cause an asthma attack in someone, this is extremely important.

• All people with any chronic respiratory disease (asthma, chronic bronchitis, COPD,…) will react to varying degrees to various chemicals in the air.
• About 24.7 million Americans, 8% of kids and adults have asthma.
• Every year there are about 1.6 million kids and adults that go to the ER for asthma.
• Asthma attacks kill 3,564 kids and adults every year.

What causes asthma attacks?

Let’s look as what happens in asthma attacks (other chronic breathing problems have similar problems).

Something triggers responses in the lungs leading to severe problems breathing.

Asthma has two basic components.

The first component is a neurological response.

This is an increased activity of what are basically pain nerves in the lungs. These nerves serve an important purpose. They are there to protect us from breathing in harmful things.

• A good example would be if you are in a house fire, you inhale smoke. The smoke fires the nerves which causes two things – airway constriction so that you don’t inhale as much of the toxic substance and production of mucous so that it can trap the harmful substances and cause you to cough them out.
• In asthma and other chronic breathing problems these nerves become much more sensitive and more likely to fire.
• Exposure to various chemicals causes the same type of reaction. If you or your child are continually exposed to these chemicals causing a reaction, over time the breathing will worsen leading to progressively more severe problems.
• Every significant chemical exposure that fires these nerve receptors in the lungs will to varying degrees has a very real possibility of strengthens these nerves in the same way that lifting weights strengthens your muscles.
• This is one reason why breathing problems often progressively worsen, require more and more medications, and can lead to COPD. COPD is the 4^th leading cause of death after heart disease, cancer, and injuries.

The second component is an immune response.

Immune system activation which causes inflammation, damages the lung barrier and makes it more difficult to breathe.

Over time, with repetitive exposures the damage becomes more and more.

This is why more severe asthmatics use inhaled or in severe reactivity, oral steroids, to reduce inflammation. These types of steroids are immune-suppressants. These medications reduce immune responses to any potential trigger.

Unfortunately, very high steroid use can not safely be maintained for significant time periods because it will very likely have very severe consequences.

Every person that has chronic breathing problems will react to various chemicals in the air, even if medications in many cases (but not all) reduces the reactivity.

If you are an asthmatic, have a child that is an asthmatic, or are around asthmatics (8% of the US population) then it would be a very good idea to remove common airborne triggers.

These include colognes, perfumes, body sprays, scented detergents, scented fabric softeners (in fact unscented ones can be a problem as well), scented soaps, scented shampoos, scented cosmetics, many common household cleaners, scented candles, air fresheners, and scented plugins.

It should be noted that just using these chemicals, causing additional damage to your lungs, and just relying upon ever increasing amounts of medications is a very bad strategy for your health. If these are triggers for asthma, you should eliminate them as much as possible.

Other asthma triggers exist as well including in many various foods and mold among others.

Asthma is a serious problem that results in a lot of hospitalizations and unfortunately deaths of both kids and adults.

Above we discussed these numbers… About 24.7 million Americans, 8% of kids and adults have asthma. Every year there are about 1.6 million kids and adults that go to the ER for asthma. Asthma attacks kill 3,564 kids and adults every year.

Don’t wait for a serious event that could be deadly for you or your kids. Do whatever it takes to reduce your risk of experiencing a severe asthma attack.