Quick Asthma Facts
- The CDC states that 19.2 million adults are living with asthma.
- Boys are more affected in childhood. Girls with asthma increase during adolescence.
- You can’t cure asthma. But you can manage it.
Asthma is one of the most prevalent health conditions in children. It starts in childhood and spans a lifetime. Thus, making it chronic. On the surface, asthma seems easy enough to understand. Your airways are irritated and become inflamed. The inflammation changes the structure of your airways. They go from being open to narrow and partially obstructed. Structural changes associated with asthma are temporary. And you reverse the changes with treatment.
Breathing problems, as a term, are not synonymous with asthma. There are many respiratory conditions with overlapping symptoms and breathing problems as the chief complaint. (We saved you the time and trouble of laboring over research articles. Check out Huddy Health’s content on the different conditions). But, when it pertains to asthma, breathing problems are observable. In most situations, you can tell when someone is having a hard time breathing. It looks like the person struggling to catch their breath, someone with an uncontrollable cough, or, in the more severe cases, someone who is unconscious because they didn’t get enough oxygen to the brain.
What’s easily observed is easily understood. On the other hand, understanding the antecedent, or what happens before the behavior, is not always as simple. And no one is to blame for that.
The Antecedents Of Asthma
The next question to explore is why these structural changes happen in the first place. Triggers. By definition, an asthma trigger is anything that makes your asthma worse or causes you to have an asthma attack. Asthma can have many, many, many different triggers like pets, dust mites, pollen, and the weather – yes, like hot air, cold air, and heavy rain!
Asthma is a heterogeneous condition. That’s the long way to say that there’s a lot of individuality with that condition. Therefore, two people can have asthma with different triggers.
READ MORE: The most common triggers of asthma.
The Weather Affects Your Asthma.
Meteorologists aren’t the only people who should track different weather patterns. Asthmatics should also pay close attention to the weather, especially if you suspect the weather is messing with your asthma! You should look at humidity, pollen content, and the chance of heavy rain? Indeed, extreme weather, like heavy rain/thunderstorms are rare but legitimate asthma triggers.
The Thunderstorm And Asthma Connection
The biggest, single-event of asthma attacks triggered by a thunderstorm happened in Australia in 2016. But this health phenomenon doesn’t only happen in Australia. In fact, thunderstorm asthma was first reported in the Middle East, also in 2016.
Thunderstorms bring heavy rains and high winds. Airborne allergens like pollen and mold explode into smaller particles when they’re wet. And the high winds scatter these particles around. Once you factor in air quality, it becomes clear: a recipe for an asthma attack.
Be Proactive
- Stay indoors if you can.
- But pack your umbrella and your inhaler if you have to go out.
- Download the Huddy Health app to get alerts about weather quality and your asthma.