What is Asthma and What Do I Do If I Have It?

What is asthma? Do you really know what the heck asthma is? Having asthma means that your lungs and airways are very sensitive to certain things. Find out what being sensitive means and what you should do about it.

If you have asthma and your airways get irritated here is what is happening:

1.The insides of your airways begin to swell which makes the space for air to get thru much smaller.

2. The muscles on the outside of your airways start trying to squeeze your airways shut. So now the space for air to get thru gets even smaller.

3. To make things even worse, your airways begin to fill with gunk or what some people call mucus or phlegm.

We usually call this having an asthma attack when these things happen. These attacks are a very frightening experience. Many times they can also cause panic, especially in children. Not being able to breathe can bring the best of us to our knees.

Those attacks that are not real serious can be handled with the simple use of an asthma inhaler. These provide very quick relief. Other more serious attacks require more serious measures.

Emergency room visits are usually called for when having a serious attack. Being able to recognize when an attack is about to happen can give you the time to take some precautions, such as getting to a safe place or making sure that you have your emergency inhaler nearby.

The most common asthma symptoms include wheezing, tightness in the chest, shortness of breath, and coughing.
Asthma attacks are triggered by things that you are sensitive to. These are called your asthma triggers. Many people with allergies also have asthma. The things that cause your allergies might also cause you to have as asthma attack. But there are many other things that can also cause your airways to get irritated.

Getting to know what your asthma triggers are is very important. Not everybody has the same list of triggers so you need to find out what yours are. You need to try to eliminate coming into contact with your triggers once you figure them out.

Treatment for an asthma attack is usually done with a quick-relief inhaler. While these inhalers do provide instant relief to someone having an attack, they do not do anything to prevent the attack from happening again.

There are prescription medications that you take daily to help reduce the usage of the quick-relief inhalers. You need to follow directions for using your inhaler because overuse can be dangerous. These prescription meds can be taken with inhalers or orally.

An answer to the question of what is asthma could be that it means you will have to take multiple medications for the rest of your life.

Prescription medications are not very effective at completely eliminating your asthma symptoms and attacks. They certainly don't cure your asthma. They do not even try.

Another big problem with these medications is that they come with potentially dangerous side effects. Many people end up with symptoms that are worse than the ones they started with.

So what is asthma? Having asthma means that you will have to suffer from your asthma symptoms and take prescription medications for the rest of your life