Understanding Asthma Asthma is a chronic allergic disease of the respiratory tract. When various excitatory factors are encountered, atopic individuals develop coughing, wheezing, chest tightness, breath-holding, and other symptoms with recurrent attacks. Most asthma patients also have allergic rhinitis, which manifests as nasal congestion, runny nose and sneezing. These patients are usually of special constitution – atopic constitution also known as allergic constitution, which is genetically related. Common allergic factors include airborne dust mites, pollen, animal fur, mold, and harmful fumes. Among them, dust mites are important allergens that induce airway allergies. Many asthma-causing allergens are present in the saliva, feces and fur scales of pets. Certain plant pollen or spores are also important allergens for pollen-allergic individuals. In addition, air quality is now severely degraded, most families have well-sealed housing with insufficient air circulation, and harmful substances released from various organic chemicals in modern construction materials can also have an irritating effect on the respiratory tract. Prevention and treatment of asthma Patients with asthma can be treated with early intervention using long-term control drugs such as inhaled hormones under the guidance of a doctor. First of all, you should go to the hospital for pulmonary function tests to determine the severity of asthma and decide the dosage of drugs to be used accordingly to provide a basis for long-term treatment in the future. And regular review at the hospital, the doctor will judge whether the asthma is controlled according to the patient’s symptoms and lung function and decide whether the dose of medication needs to be adjusted. Asthma patients should find out their allergens and the pattern of their attacks. Each patient has his or her own onset factors. Some patients are allergic to dust mites and have symptoms of allergic rhinitis and asthma all year round; some patients are allergic to pollen and only have symptoms in spring or summer and autumn; some patients are allergic to pets and have symptoms when they come into contact with cats, dogs and other pets; some patients are related to occupational factors and have symptoms as soon as they go to the workplace… ….. These conditions can be discovered by your own observation, but you should also go to the hospital for allergen testing to confirm and identify the allergen. After some allergens have been identified, specific immunotherapy (also known as desensitization) can be done to “treat the root cause” of asthma, so that long-term effective control of asthma can be achieved and the dose and course of inhaled hormones can be reduced. Asthma treatment As asthma is a chronic disease, it should be controlled with medication for a long time. During the treatment of asthma, many patients have misconceptions about the disease and delay the treatment of asthma. There are usually four major misconceptions: a. Asthma is not curable, so it is not treated. In recent years, with the progress of medical research, asthma has been completely controllable, and through long-term, continuous, standardized treatment, asthma symptoms will even disappear completely. Parents should not assume that asthma will heal itself as their child grows and develops. A large percentage of children with asthma will not recover and will become adults with asthma in adulthood. Especially in children with moderate or severe asthma, there is a lifelong risk of asthma if not controlled and treated in time, and it is difficult to recover the damaged lung function. Second, asthma does not need to be treated when there are no symptoms. Many patients only visit the hospital when they have an asthma attack and do not control it effectively through maintenance therapy once it has subsided. Other patients have already tasted the benefits of inhaled hormone therapy, but for various reasons are not willing to adhere to the medication, only when there are symptoms of asthma is sucking medicine, the result is repeated treatment, repeated offenses, resulting in a gradual decline in lung function. In fact, the usual adherence to medication can not only improve the life of asthma patients treatment, and less expensive than repeated asthma attacks to the hospital emergency treatment. Especially when a serious asthma attack requires resuscitation, the cost is more. Therefore, from the perspective of patients’ life treatment and economy, prevention is also better than treatment. Third, long-term hormone inhalation will affect the child’s development. This is the concern of most parents of children with asthma. Inhaled hormones in the daily control treatment of asthma actually control the airway inflammation and reduce the sensitivity of the airway. The intake of inhaled hormones is very small each time and only targets the bronchial tubes, and the side effects of long-term treatment are minimal. On the contrary, if you don’t pay attention to the maintenance treatment, when you have an asthma attack, you often need to inject large doses of hormones intravenously to rescue your child, which is not only a large amount, but also a whole body medication, which is equivalent to using several years of inhaled hormones at one time, and the side effects are even greater. Similarly, long-term inhaled hormones do not cause obesity, osteoporosis, diabetes and hypertension, and other side effects that can occur with long-term oral hormone use. Fourth, ignore the treatment of allergic rhinitis. Allergic rhinitis belongs to the upper respiratory tract, while asthma occurs in the lower respiratory tract, the upper and lower respiratory tracts are connected, so it can be said to be “the same airway, the same disease”, which can affect each other. According to the statistics of the Department of Allergic Reaction of Yuhuangding Hospital, about 30% of patients with allergic rhinitis have asthma, and up to 80% of asthma patients have combined allergic rhinitis. Therefore, if you have asthma and allergic rhinitis, you should treat not only asthma but also rhinitis. Currently, long-term inhaled hormone therapy and specific immunotherapy (desensitization therapy) can effectively suppress asthma. As long as the treatment is adhered to with the program developed by the doctor, it will enable asthma patients to study, work and live like normal people. Finally, we would also like to remind asthma patients that they should pay attention to monitoring changes in their condition, and if they have recurrent shortness of breath and chest tightness, they should go to the hospital for examination in time and adjust their medication under the guidance of doctors to try to prevent major asthma attacks.