Asthma is a chronic respiratory condition that is characterized by the inflammation of the airways. When a person has asthma, his or her airways get inflamed as a result of exposure to any range of asthma triggers. The airways, tubes proximate to your lungs that carry air to and from the lungs, constrict, limiting the amount of air that travels through the airway, swells, and becomes lined with excessive amounts of mucus. Some of the common symptoms that accompany asthma include a feeling of tightness in the chest cavity, wheezing, coughing, and shortness of breath.
When the symptoms of asthma are extreme, the situation is usually referred to as an asthma attack or an episode of asthma. Usually, these symptoms are managed with a combination of drugs (usually bronchodilators which are drugs that help open the airway) and a change in environment.
Asthma is one of the more popular conditions that affect people and has been increasing in prevalence over the years. To date, one in four urban children are affected with asthma, and an approximate 20.5 million Americans have asthma.
The condition was identified by Greeks with the term, aazein, which meant "sharp breath". While the word aazein first appeared in Homer's Iliad, it was only used to describe the said medical condition around 450 BC by Hippocrates. Hippocrates noted, during this time, that the spasms relating to asthma were common among tailors and metalworkers. Galen, six centuries later, studied asthma in great detail and observed that the symptoms of asthma included bronchial obstruction. It was later on studied by the influential medieval philosopher, rabbi, and physician Moses Maimonides in 1190 AD, who wrote a treatise on the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of asthma. The connection between asthma and organic dust was made in the 17th century by Bernardino Ramazzini. It was only in the year 1901 that bronchodilators became widely used, and not until the 1960s that physicians recognized the need for anti-inflammatory medication in order to deal with a previously unrecognized inflammatory aspect of asthma symptoms.
Based on the symptoms displayed by those suffering from asthma, there are four basic levels of asthma severity. The first level is called mild intermittent, which means that the person suffering from asthma has asthma attacks twice a week or less, has regular lung function, is bothered by symptoms at night at least twice a month, and experience no other symptoms. This is a sort of asthma that more or less "comes and goes" and causes no particular discomfort to a person affected by it.
The second level is called a mild persistent asthma. Mild persistent asthma causes asthma attacks more than twice a week but no more than once per day. A person with mild persistent asthma is bothered by asthma at night at least twice per month, and do experience the other symptoms of asthma sufficiently to affect his or her activities.
Moderate persistent asthma means that asthma symptoms manifest themselves everyday, causing discomfort from nighttime symptoms more than once a week. Asthma attacks themselves pose effects to most activities.
Severe persistent asthma, the highest of these four levels, means that asthma symptoms manifest themselves throughout the day on most days, with nighttime symptoms causing inconvenience often. With severe persistent asthma, limits to physical activities exist.
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