Asthma Treatment & Information

There are many causes of asthma and each person can have different asthma attack triggers. So, each person may need to use a different medical approach and different asthma natural remedies.

Using drugs to control your asthma makes sense when you first discover that you have asthma provided your asthma is well established or life threatening. Once you have your prescriptions and your doctor’s instructions, you should consider looking at or experimenting with natural remedies to control or even eliminate your asthma, since drugs are not a cure.

No matter what type of drug or inhaler you are using, they all have their side effects. The longer you use drugs or an inhaler, the less effective they become and most likely you will see side effects. You should use asthma natural remedies when you are having an asthma attack or when asthma is under control. There are four areas you need to concentrate on when examining asthma natural remedies.

1. Reduce mucus
2. Reduce inflammation
3. Reduce emotional and stressful situation
4. Improve immune system

Reduce Mucus

By using various herbs you can control and remove mucus from your bronchioles. Test various herbs or herbal combinations to determine which work best for you. Drink carrot and celery juice and drink plenty of water daily to help dilute and move mucus out of your body.

Reduce Inflammation

There are quite a few different nutrients that can help you reduce inflammation. You should consider using more than one at a time. Start with these and then experiment with the others.

• Add omega-3 to your diet by using flax seed oil or fish oil
• Use MSM supplements
• Take vitamin C supplement
• Systemic enzymes, try Vitalzyme
• Digestive enzymes

Reduce Emotional and Stressful Situation

Reducing stress in your life is a difficult area to deal with since some situations in your life are strongly anchored, like your job, your family, your friends, or marital situation. But if these areas are causing your stress and you frequently have asthma attacks, then you have to decide which is more important for you, your job or your health.

If your job is deteriorating your health, then start looking for a way out. This may require you to look for another job or to go back to school to get training for something you might like to do. Just take action and start changing your life.

Improve Immune System

Improving your immune system is accomplished through diet, through taking nutritional supplements, by reducing stress, and eliminating those conditions that overwork you body. The fewer things your immune system has to react to and get under control, the stronger it is to take care of an asthma attack when it occurs. When your immune system has to deal with toxins in your colon and throughout your body, then it is weakened and not able to neutralize pollen or pollution you inhale from the air which can trigger an asthma attack.

Use drugs when you first discover you have asthma can make sense. But, if your asthma is light, then finding asthma natural remedies to control it, instead of using drugs, also makes a lot of sense.

Results from a new national survey demonstrate that elevated allergen levels in the home are associated with asthma symptoms in allergic individuals. The study suggests that asthmatics that have allergies may alleviate symptoms by reducing allergen exposures inside their homes. The work was carried out by researchers at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), the University of Iowa, Rho Inc., and the Constella Group. The team’s findings may help millions of Americans who suffer from asthma.

“Indoor allergen exposures are of great importance in relation to asthma because most people spend a majority of their time indoors, especially at home,” said Darryl Zeldin, M.D., a Principal Investigator in the Laboratory of Respiratory Biology at NIEHS and senior author on the paper. Asthma is one of the most common chronic ailments in the United States, affecting more than 22 million people. Asthma has been shown to be triggered by a wide range of substances called allergens.

The findings, published online and available in the March issue of the Journal of Allergy & Clinical Immunology, show that exposure to multiple indoor allergens was common in U.S. households with 52 percent having at least six detectable allergens and 46 percent having three or more allergens at increased levels. The indoor allergens studied included those from dog, cat, mouse, cockroach, dust mite, and the fungus Alternaria.

The researchers used data from the National Survey of Lead and Allergens in Housing (NSLAH) to examine factors that contribute to high allergen levels in homes and to determine whether elevated household allergen levels were associated with occupants’ asthma status. The NSLAH, which was the first study to characterize how allergen exposures vary in homes at the national level, surveyed the homes of nearly 2500 individuals in 75 locations throughout the U.S. The survey was jointly funded by the NIEHS and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Several factors were found to contribute to the increased concentrations of allergens, including race, income, type of home, and sources of allergens, such as presence of pets and pests. The study also showed that homes with children were less likely to have high allergen levels. The authors noted that this finding may not be surprising since homes with children may be cleaned more frequently than homes without children. Regular household cleaning is a simple yet effective regimen that helps to reduce the overall exposure burden.

According to lead researcher Päivi Salo, Ph.D., of NIEHS, the study provides useful information to asthma patients. “Our results highlight the importance of reducing exposure to allergens as a fundamental part of asthma management,” she said. “Although homes cannot be made allergen free, asthmatics that have allergies may need to do a better job in reducing allergen levels in their homes to improve asthma control.” This finding is the first to provide information on total allergen burden in U.S. homes and how it relates to asthma. “This study confirms that indoor allergens play a major role in asthma,” Zeldin stated.

Salo and her co-authors, however, point out that more research is needed to understand the complex relationships between genetic and environmental factors that cause asthma, particularly the role that indoor allergen exposure plays in the development of asthma. “Although reducing allergen levels in the home may not prevent individuals from developing asthma, reducing exposure levels is crucial for those whose asthma is allergic in nature.” Zeldin concluded.

Are you facing problems like coughing, wheezing, and rapid breathing, then it is right time to have proper medical check up as all these symptoms are related to disease called Asthma. Asthma is unceasing diseases that affects your airways, where airways are important tubes that carry air in and out of your lungs. Now during asthma attacks inner walls of your airways turn out to be more sore and this makes them very sensitive, and they may react to different things that are sensitive to you. When your airway reacts, they get narrower and as a result your lungs get a lesser amount of air and this cause coughing, and trouble breathing.

The term ‘asthma’ has been originated from an old Greek word which means ‘to pant’. It is fundamentally a chronic state which influences the air passage when they are stirred by environmental features that act as triggers. It is important to understand that an asthma attacks are not all same some may be worse than others. In case of stern asthma attack, the airways get so close that sufficient oxygen does not get to vital organs and this lead to a medical emergency. So, if you have asthma problems, you should visit your doctor frequently.

However there are some vital steps and effective ways to prevent yourself from asthma attacks:

1. The first and most vital step to prevent attacks involves recognizing and keeping away from substances that acts as trigger like: dust, cigarette smoke, shag rugs and cause asthma attack.

2. Have proper medication for asthma prevention. Medicines can be broadly categorized as :

(a) Quick-Relief Medicines: As the name suggests, it is taken at the initial signs of asthma indication for instant relief. After having these medicines you can easily feel the effects of medicines within few minutes. In simple terms they perform rapidly to calm down tightened muscles around airways and allow sufficient air to flow through.

(b) Long-term Control Medicines: In this case you take medicine everyday for long periods to prevent from asthma attacks. Moreover in these types of medicines, you feel the full effects after few weeks. People with constant attack need to have long-term control medicines.

3. Monitor your asthma very closely so that you can easily distinguish your asthma attack symptoms and react fast to prevent an asthma attack. Make the best use of Peak Flow Meter device to monitor how well your lungs are working. An effective Peak Flow Meter can warn you of a probable attack. If Peak Flow Meter shows that your breathing is getting poorer, you should tag on your emergency asthma action plan.

Moreover as per recent studies, it has been revealed that the immune system of children and adults who have asthma responds quite differently. Sometimes, immune system could react excessively to bacteria and thus increase the chances of severe asthmatic attack. Children with asthma will require help from their parents. It is important for parents to be more alert for possible signs of asthma in children that can be coughing at night, wheezing, or other signs of breathing problems. In case you guess that your child has asthma, take your child to a doctor for proper testing. Whereas in adults, they may require to adjust their treatment because of other diseases that they might have.

Certainly taking care of your asthma is key part of your life. By calculating and controlling your asthma, you can avoid severe symptoms and take part in all activities. source

The chronic disease that affects your airways is known as asthma. The tubes that bring air in and out of your lungs are known as airways. The inside walls of your airways are swollen or inflamed when you have asthma. Airways turn out to be damn sensitive due to inflammation.

Therefore, they often react in a strong way to the things that you are allergic to or find irking. They get narrower and less air flows through to your lung tissue at the time when airways give a reaction. This generates symptoms such as wheezing that is a whistling sound at the time when you breathe. Besides, coughing, chest tightness, and improper breathing, mostly in the night and early morning can also be the symptoms.

Muscles around the airways tighten up for the period of an asthma attack. This makes airways narrower, so less air flows through. And, then inflammation amplifies, thus making the airways more swollen and even narrower. More mucus than usual is produced in the airways which further narrows the airways. Thus, these changes make breathing harder for a person. Some asthma cases are worse than the regular ones. In these cases, the airways get so narrow or can close so much that not enough oxygen could reach out to the significant organs of the body. These conditions are very severe and there is a possibility that one could die. It is the case of medical emergency.

So, if one is going through asthma, he should immediately report it to the doctor. Also, one should be quite regular to the doctor. One should understand what things were the causes of the symptoms of asthma and should try to avoid them in the future. Some medicines will be prescribed by your doctor to keep your asthma under control. Besides, one should be quite open to the doctor and make him learn of everything that goes in your life i.e. the things you eat, the things you do and many more daily activities.

If any family disorder has prevailed, then too it should be reported to the doctor without any hesitation. This will give the doctor a clear story of what may be the cause of your asthma. Else, if you do not spill out everything, there may be a chance of the doctor giving wrong medicines to you.

So, be safe by keeping a positive and open attitude as there is no need of getting embarrassed in front of the doctor. You can also preclude serious symptoms by keeping a tab on your asthma on a daily basis. This disease can make one miss the things that he or she enjoys to do such as going to work, hanging out etc. It may be one of the leading factors of children missing their school. source

Asthma is a chronic lung condition with narrowed and inflamed airways caused as a result of hypersensitiveness to some allergens. The symptoms of asthma vary from person to person and in any individual from time to time. Many symptoms may be subtle and are also present in other respiratory conditions thus making diagnosis difficult. The four major recognized symptoms in asthma are shortness of breath with exertion, wheezing, cough that may be chronic or may occur when exposed to cold, dry air and chest tightness.

Most asthma medications work by relaxing bronchospasm (bronchodilators) or reducing inflammation (corticosteroids). Inhaled medications are preferred as they act directly on the airway surface and airway muscles where the asthma problems initiate and absorption of inhaled medications into the rest of the body is minimal. Inhaled medications include beta-2 agonists, anticholinergics, corticosteroids, and cromolyn sodium. Beta-2 agonists are inhaled bronchodilators which are called agonists because they promote the action of the beta-2 receptor of bronchial wall muscle. This receptor acts to relax the muscular wall of the airways (bronchi), resulting in bronchodilation. The bronchodilator action of beta- 2 agonists starts within minutes after inhalation and lasts for about four hours. Albuterol, metaproterenol, terbutaline sulfate are some beta-2 agonists.

The anticholinergic agents act on a different type of nerves than the beta-2 agonists to achieve a similar relaxation and opening of the airway passages. Ipratropium bromide is a commonly used anticholinergic agent. These two groups of bronchodilator inhalers when used together can produce an enhanced bronchodilation effect.

When symptoms of asthma are difficult to control with beta-2 agonists, inhaled corticosteroids are often added. Corticosteroids can improve lung function and reduce airway obstruction over time. Examples of inhaled corticosteroids include beclomethasone dipropionate. Expectorants are also used to thin airway mucus, making it easier to clear the mucus by coughing. For patients with atopic asthma, in addition to bronchodilator medications, avoiding allergens or other irritants is very important.

In patients who cannot avoid the allergens, or in those whose symptoms cannot be controlled by medications, allergy shots are considered. In patients with severe asthma, inhaled medications are unlikely to reverse the process and a mechanical ventilator may be needed to assist the lungs and respiratory muscles. A face mask or a breathing tube is inserted in the nose or mouth for this treatment. When asthma is unresponsive to treatment with an inhaler, patients should promptly seek medical attention at the closest hospital emergency room or their asthma specialist office. source