Friday, August 23, 2013

Does Wheezing Mean That You Have Asthma?


Asthma is a rising problem. Worldwide some 7 to 10% of he population suffer asthma with the prevalence in the United States and other Western Countries being higher than elsewhere. Last year 2009, 300 million people had asthma and 250,000 died from it.

My first experience of asthma came in infancy as I was teething and asthma punctuated my childhood with wheezing, shortness of breath and chest tightness being the major symptoms. Other asthma patients suffer with these symptoms as well as coughing.

Wheezing is perhaps the most noticeable sign of asthma - the mixture of whistles and other tones being quite like musical sounds from a barrel organ.

There can be many factors triggering asthma and wheezing. Viral and other infections may lead to wheezing, as can exposure to tobacco smoke or to pollution from the environment caused by traffic or from ozone.

Psychological stress may lead to asthma indirectly by altering immune response, and on the other hand exposure to pets, especially during the early years has been shown to reduce the risk of asthma, whether this is due to priming the immune system or the well known effect of pets to reduce stress is not clear.

As many as 50% of asthma patients turn to complementary medicine, using a variety of nutritional and manual therapies.

Amongst nutritional treatments vitamin C is the most well known and one of the most controversial. Amongst mineral therapies using the well known effect of magnesium as a relaxing agent is used in the form of tablets to relax the airways.

Manual or hands on therapies such as Osteopathic, Chiropractic manipulation or simple massage help to relax the rib cage and relax and destress the patient.

Although it is often the case that wheezing and asthma go hand in hand you can have asthma and have such chest tightness that little to no wheezing is heard. It is also true that wheezing may be due to an airways obstruction not caused by asthma.

The diagnosis of asthma is not simple and straightforward and indeed getting better by taking asthma medications is often the best diagnosis of asthma. Although asthma and wheezing are common there is no simple relationship between them. Wheezing probably means that the patient has asthma but check on their temperature too, check that they have not swallowed something accidentally and inhaled it and check with your health professional too, asthma can usually be well controlled but should not be taken for granted.

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