Asthma Causes and Triggers
No one has pinpointed the causes of asthma yet. What mankind knows is that asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease of the airways. The causes of asthma symptoms can be different for different people. Even so one thing is same in asthma, when the airways come into contact with one of the asthma triggers they become inflamed along with narrow and fill with mucus.
When some one experiences an asthma attack, spasms of the muscles around the airways along with inflammation and the swelling of the mucosa l membrane which lines the airways and excessive amounts of mucus lead to the airway narrowing. All this makes airway resistance to increase and making breathing more difficult. This leads to shortness of breath, cough and wheezing. One might also have coughing with asthma due to the irritating inside the airways and because the body tried to clean out all the accumulated thick mucus.
So the main question people ask why do I have asthma and that person doesn’t? No one can give a definite answer to this. It is known that allergies play a vital role in many people with asthma but doesn’t hold true for all. As with allergies you can blame asthma on family history since there is a strong genetic component for asthma.
If you or a loved one has asthma it is very important for you to understand the “triggers” of asthma. Once you identify the triggers and reduce your exposure to them or the causes of asthma then you can play an active role in controlling asthma and reducing the frequency of asthma attacks. For example if you can pinpoint that allergies trigger your asthma then you have allergic asthma. Being aware of your allergies and staying away from them can significantly help you to reduce the number of asthma attacks and their severity.
Lets us list some of the most common asthma triggers.
Allergies are the first on the list of asthma triggers. Allergies with asthma are quite a common problem. It is a fact that eighty percent of people with asthma have allergies to airborne substances for example tree and weed pollens, mold, dust mites and even cockroach particles.
Second there is the exercise induced asthma. It is reported that in eighty percent of people with asthma the airways become narrower as a result of strenuous exercise. The main indications or symptoms for exercise induced asthma are feeling chest tightness, coughing and experiencing difficulty in breathing within the first five to eight minutes of an aerobic workout. These symptoms mostly subside in the next twenty to thirty minutes of exercise. But as much as fifty percent of people with exercise induced asthma might have another asthma attack after six or ten hours.
People who smoke cigarettes are at a higher risk of asthma. If a person smokes and has asthma he or she may find that symptoms such as coughing and wheezing might become escalated. Women who smoke during pregnancy escalate chances of wheezing in their babies.