In a 2001 publication, statistics placed 4.8 million American children as sufferers of asthma, with one out of every 15 youths below 18 years old affected. This was based on information gathered from 1980 to 1994. Since then, despite the modernity of medicine, inhalers, and other respiratory aid, the prevalence of asthma has grown rapidly and has become less manageable.
To date, the statistics from the past 20 years, disclosed that figures from the last survey nearly doubled and now include death since the count for asthma fatalities summed up at least 5,000 deaths annually, wherein children below 5 years old being the hardest hit.
An estimated 23 million people in America alone are now afflicted with asthma and the number of children affected increased to 6.80 million. The alarming growth despite the availability of medicines and modernity of other respiratory aids has alarmed the medical communities. In fact, this is true not only in America but all across the globe. Hence, due to its rapid growth and seemingly uncontrollable occurrence, asthma is now considered as an epidemic.
What is Asthma?
Asthma is a chronic respiratory disease that gravely affects the lungs, manifested by tight coughs and wheezing, and causing shortness of breath to the afflicted. The wheezing sound produced is due to the narrow airways that have become inflamed and swollen, making it difficult for an individual to let out air that was inhaled. The swelling and inflammation of the airways is the respiratory system's reaction against know allergens such as cigarette smoke, dust mites, and a host of other air pollutants found both indoors and outdoors. In other cases, even food additives and stress can trigger asthma.
To manage this disease, the asthmatic individual is administered with a broncho-dilatory medicine a type of medication that can help the constricted muscles relax as well as ease out the swelling of the airway linings. In extreme cases, asthma sufferers are hospitalized and are given ample supply of oxygen, since the sufferer tends to asphyxiate due to the lack of oxygen supply. In older individuals, this can also trigger the onset of high blood pressure since arteries around the lungs tend to harden, causing blood pressure to build up in this area. Blood supply cannot push through the constricted blood vessel and arteries.
What Causes the Rapid Increase in Asthma Incidences?
Sure enough, cigarette smoke, dust mites, and air pollution are the leading factors that trigger asthma. However, the quality of these pollutants is apparently more than what the present day medications can handle. There is no cure for asthma, yet medical researchers seem to be at a loss on how they could come up with a treatment that can effectively control the spreading of the disease. Unless the quality of the air we breathe is improved, the factors that irritate the airways continue to accumulate in a person's respiratory system. Until it reaches, a level that will cause swelling, inflammation, and constriction that leads to asthma.
As a person breathes in air today, both indoors and outdoors, he takes in allergens and particulate matters. Some of them are filtered while some of them don't but stay inside our respiratory system and will accumulate and build up over the years. In time, it will cause the swelling and inflammation of the airways. In the next days and years ahead, depending on how often we are exposed to these allergens or how weak our respiratory system, some of us will become part of the growing number of asthma statistics. This simply means that everyone is at risk, because the factors that cause asthma, pervades in our environment and stays hovering in our atmosphere