Asthma essays

Asthma essays Asthma is a condition of the bronchial tubes characterized by episodes of constriction and increased mucous production. A person with asthma has bronchial tubes that are super sensitive to various stimuli, or triggers, that can produce asthma symptom. In other words, asthmatics have special sensitivity that causes their lung tissue to react far more than is should to various stimulating factors or triggers. For this reason, people with asthma are said to have "twitchy airways." Some symptoms that people with asthma commonly experience are chest tightenings, difficulty inhaling and exhaling, wheezing, production of large amounts of mucous in their windpipes and coughing. Coughing can be frequent or intermittent, and can be loose-reflecting extra mucous secretion in the airways or dry and deep-reflecting tight bronchospasms. Not all these symptoms occur in every case of asthma. Sometimes people may have coughing without and symptoms for months or even years before it's realized that they are asthmatic. Interestingly enough, asthma symptoms are most severe at night, while we're lying down our airways narrow as a result of gravity changes. Also our lungs do not clear secretions as well at night, which leads to mucous retention, and that can increase the obstruction to air flow. Furthermore, at night our bodies produce smaller amounts of certain chemical that help to decrease airway spasms and keep airway tubes open. All of these factors add up to a greater chance of symptoms worsening at night. An asthma attack begins when the smooth muscles in the walls of the bronchial tubes start to tighten and narrow when they are exposed to a trigger when this bronchospasm occurs, air can't flow into or out of the lungs. To make matters worse, mucous enters the narrowed bronchial tubes and plugs them up, causing a further decrease in air flow. The bronchial tubes seem to close down, and air moving through these narrowed breathing passag ...