Definition of Asthma and Its Types
When you breathe, the air reaches the inner part of lungs through small wind pipes called bronchi.
Asthma is a condition that involves reversible spasm of these wind pipes.
Inflammation is one of your body's responses to fight any injury or infection.
If any part of your body is infected by bugs, the white blood cells in your blood will accumulate in that area and fight with the bugs.
In case of injury, inflammation helps in rapid healing of that injured part.
But during the process of inflammation, some chemicals will be released which cause leakage of fluid from blood vessels leading to swelling of that area.
Even though this inflammatory process is good for your body's defense, sometimes this process could be triggeredunnecessarily causing some unwanted problems.
Asthma is such a type of problem where the inflammation specifically affects the wind pipes.
In fact asthma patients are over sensitive to the effects of this inflammatory process.
In response to some triggering factors, the muscles in the wind pipe goes into spasm and the airway swells (more than normally they should).
In addition the small glands in the wind pipes secrete too much of mucus.
This combination effectively causes narrowing of wind pipe, in worst cases they could cause complete blockage.
Incidence: Asthma is very common in developed countries.
It has been estimated at least 1 in 10 children living in industrialized countries suffer from asthma.
Roughly 5% of population is affected at one stage of their life by asthma.
It has been estimated around 17 million Americans (6.
4% of the population) including 5 million children suffer from Asthma.
In United Kingdom over 5 million (including 1.
4 million of children) have asthma.
Teenagers are found to be more commonly affected (around 15-20%).
But strangely incidence of asthma is low in far eastern countries like Singapore and Malaysia.
Types of asthma Extrinsic asthma; People who suffer from any form allergy are prone to get this type of asthma.
Often other family members also suffer from some form allergies.
People in this group often suffer from other related allergic conditions (atopy) such eczema and hay fever.
This type of asthma often develops in childhood and usually cause problem mainly in certain seasons of the year.
Intrinsic asthma: In this type there is no history of allergy and symptoms can get worse irrespective of the seasons of the year.
Strangely aspirin may cause this type in some patients.
Work aggravated asthma: Asthma symptoms made worse by work place dust and fumes.
People coming under the category normally have pre-existing asthma.
Occupational Asthma: This is slightly different from work-related asthma.
Here the symptoms are due to prolonged exposure to substances specific to certain occupations (e.
g.
) exposure to latex in health care workers, flour industry.
Exercise-induced Asthma: Here the symptoms are aggravated by exercise.
This often considered as a poor symptom control in patients who already suffer from asthma.
This article is part 1 of "Walking with a Doc Series - Asthma.
"
Asthma is a condition that involves reversible spasm of these wind pipes.
Inflammation is one of your body's responses to fight any injury or infection.
If any part of your body is infected by bugs, the white blood cells in your blood will accumulate in that area and fight with the bugs.
In case of injury, inflammation helps in rapid healing of that injured part.
But during the process of inflammation, some chemicals will be released which cause leakage of fluid from blood vessels leading to swelling of that area.
Even though this inflammatory process is good for your body's defense, sometimes this process could be triggeredunnecessarily causing some unwanted problems.
Asthma is such a type of problem where the inflammation specifically affects the wind pipes.
In fact asthma patients are over sensitive to the effects of this inflammatory process.
In response to some triggering factors, the muscles in the wind pipe goes into spasm and the airway swells (more than normally they should).
In addition the small glands in the wind pipes secrete too much of mucus.
This combination effectively causes narrowing of wind pipe, in worst cases they could cause complete blockage.
Incidence: Asthma is very common in developed countries.
It has been estimated at least 1 in 10 children living in industrialized countries suffer from asthma.
Roughly 5% of population is affected at one stage of their life by asthma.
It has been estimated around 17 million Americans (6.
4% of the population) including 5 million children suffer from Asthma.
In United Kingdom over 5 million (including 1.
4 million of children) have asthma.
Teenagers are found to be more commonly affected (around 15-20%).
But strangely incidence of asthma is low in far eastern countries like Singapore and Malaysia.
Types of asthma Extrinsic asthma; People who suffer from any form allergy are prone to get this type of asthma.
Often other family members also suffer from some form allergies.
People in this group often suffer from other related allergic conditions (atopy) such eczema and hay fever.
This type of asthma often develops in childhood and usually cause problem mainly in certain seasons of the year.
Intrinsic asthma: In this type there is no history of allergy and symptoms can get worse irrespective of the seasons of the year.
Strangely aspirin may cause this type in some patients.
Work aggravated asthma: Asthma symptoms made worse by work place dust and fumes.
People coming under the category normally have pre-existing asthma.
Occupational Asthma: This is slightly different from work-related asthma.
Here the symptoms are due to prolonged exposure to substances specific to certain occupations (e.
g.
) exposure to latex in health care workers, flour industry.
Exercise-induced Asthma: Here the symptoms are aggravated by exercise.
This often considered as a poor symptom control in patients who already suffer from asthma.
This article is part 1 of "Walking with a Doc Series - Asthma.
"
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