Healthy Living helps to understand Asthma
It’s one of the most common health ailments around and while there is no known cure for asthma, there are ways to control it. As we find out this week, there are some basic do’s and don’ts in preventing this disease and if closely followed, can make controlling asthma as easy as well…breathing.
Marleni Cuellar, Reporting
It is estimated that an average adult takes twelve to twenty breaths per minute. The act of inhaling and exhaling is one of our bodily functions that we so easily take for granted. But with a chronic lung condition like asthma, breathing is not so easy. In recent years there has been an increase in the number of persons suffering from asthma. Without any cure for the disease it is important to understand how it affects the body.
Dr. Cardo Martinez, Pediatrician, Pulmonologist
“Asthma is a disease that can present itself spontaneously and can reverse itself spontaneously but most of the times requires treatment. Asthma is an obstruction of airway flow which means to say then that when you define the word obstruction you mean to say that asthma is an inflammation, swelling of the bronchial tubes, the production of mucus and very importantly at term which was coined about fifteen years ago which is known as airway hyper-responsiveness. In other words how quick the bronchial tubes respond to aggression. For those patients that are asthmatic when they go to Mexico City, a contaminated city within four hours the bronchial tube is closing up. That is hyper-responsiveness; sensitivity to the factors in the environment. For a person that is non-asthmatic, the bronchial tubes take seventy-two hours to adjust to the air contamination so that the body is able to adjust and you continue with your life normally whereas the person who closes within four hours needs some sort of a treatment so that is how you would define asthma.”
It is possible to develop asthma later in life as adults but it is most likely to have been developed as a child. Environmental factors play a large role in the development of asthma, Exposure to smoke, living in overcrowded areas and poorly ventilated areas. Similar exposure to respiratory illnesses as a child is also a contributing factor as well as genetics.
Dr. Cardo Martinez
“If you have one parent that has asthma, your chances of developing asthma is one in three. If you have two parents that have asthma is seventy percent for every child that you have.”
This is why Dr. Martinez stresses the importance of expecting mothers to report to obstetrician and pediatricians if either parent suffers from asthma so that dietary adjustments may be made in hopes of preventing the child’s development of allergies and asthma. Similarly, parents need to pay attention to their young children in order to detect the signs of the condition.
Dr. Cardo Martinez
“We need to look and understand that asthma should no longer impair a child’s activity. If that is so then the parent needs to understand the signs and symptoms of asthma. The parents need to understand what medications are useful so that they can use it. One thing I will certainly say here is that whenever you’re going to use your ventolin or your salmeterol more often that your doctor indicated then it’s time to see to your doctor again because it means you need something else.”
As for the treatment, this is directly linked to the severity of the asthma that a person is diagnosed with.
Dr. Cardo Martinez
“You need to control it. Within control there is a six step wise approach where you have what we call intermittent asthma and persistent asthma and then we have persistent asthma. The persistent asthma is divided into mild, moderate and severe. Once you’re able to do that then you’ll know what medicines to use.”
The medicines for asthma are typically categorized as reliever medicines, preventer medicines and protections medicines. Doctors develop treatment plans for patients based on their specific needs and the severity of the asthma. And in the height of what is considered the allergy or asthma season Dr. Martinez has these recommendations:
Dr. Cardo Martinez
“Two things: one, you need to maximize the fact that the Ministry of Health is now doing the flu shots. And two, if your baby starts with a cold, under normal circumstances all of us take three weeks to eliminate a flu virus. People smile when you tell them because normally we are well by the third and very well by the fifth day. So if your child has a cough that is persisting beyond three days to the maximum five days, it’s time to seek advice to deal with that cough, particularly if there’s a risk factor on the parents’ side of allergies.”
