What is Asthma?
Asthma is a disease of the lung airways. With asthma, the airways are inflamed (swollen) and react easily to certain things, like viruses, smoke, or pollen. When the inflamed airways react, they get narrow and make it hard to breathe.
Common asthma symptoms are wheezing, coughing, shortness of breath and chest tightness. When these symptoms get worse, it's an asthma attack.
You can have a mild or serious form of asthma. The symptoms may come and go, but the asthma is always there. To keep it under control, you need to work with your doctor and keep taking care of it.
In an asthma attack, the airways (or bronchial tubes) in your lungs react to some stimulus or trigger. The airways become inflamed and swollen and make more mucus than usual. Muscles around the airways in your lungs tighten or constrict. The constriction and swelling make it hard to breathe and cause the other symptoms of asthma.
Each year, nearly 500,000 Americans are hospitalized and more than 5,000 die from asthma. Children are more likely to develop asthma than adults, especially inner-city children. African Americans are hospitalized for asthma more often and are more likely to die from asthma than other Americans.
Read what Steven M. Brown, M.D., pulmonary specialist at Columbia St. Mary's, says about the different types of asthma.
Source: National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.
