Questions on asthma? See your health care provider

“It was very peculiar,” a reader wrote recently. “Last week’s thunderstorm made me sick. For a while I couldn’t breathe and couldn’t stop wheezing and coughing. When the storm was over I felt fine. Could you look into this and let me know if I have asthma?”

When I get these types of letters I always confess that I’m not a medical professional and refer the correspondent to their primary health care professional. But, that’s not to say that this person’s letter didn’t pique my interest enough to send me to my favorite websites to get some answers because it did.

WebMD’s website says, “When asthma symptoms appear and are diagnosed in adults older than 20, it is typically known as adult-onset asthma. About half of adults who have asthma also have allergies. Adult-onset asthma also may be the result of commonplace substances in work or home environments and the asthma symptoms come on suddenly.”

But, what about thunderstorms? They say, “For people with asthma, a variety of triggers can result in inflamed airways, provoking an asthma attack. It turns out weather is one of them. For many asthma patients who list pollen as a primary trigger, thunderstorms can be a real problem. A recent study in the journal Allergy de-scribed how wind in the thunderstorms carries pollen grains at ground level that get into the lower part of the airway, sending high numbers of asthma patients to the hospitals for the treatment of asthma attacks.”

Well, that explains it. The Centers for Disease Control says that 26 million people suffer from asthma. Of those, 7.1 million are children. And, not all people with asthma have allergies. “In most cases, we don’t know what causes asthma, and we don’t know how to cure it. We know that if someone in your family has asthma you are more likely to have it.”

“An asthma attack may include coughing, chest tightness, wheezing, and trouble breathing. The attack happens in your body’s airways, which are the paths that carry air to your lungs. As the air moves through your lungs, the airways become smaller, like the branches of a tree are smaller than the tree trunk. During an asthma attack, the sides of the airways in your lungs swell and the airways shrink. Less air gets in and out of your lungs, and mucous that your body makes clogs up the airways even more,” the CDC explains.

If your medico suspects that you’ve developed asthma you will undergo a series of diagnostic tests that may include a blood test to get a picture of your overall health; lung function tests; a chest X-ray (although it won’t show asthma, it will show if it’s something else); evaluation for heartburn and GERD; allergy tests, and evaluation of the sinuses.

Obviously there are other triggers besides thunderstorms. They include tobacco smoke (oh, here we go again nagging you to quit smoking!), dust mites, outdoor air pollution, pets, mold, smoke from burning wood or grass and infections such as colds and flu.

Physical exercise can bring on an attack, especially when temperatures are very cold. Actually just breathing in very cold, dry air can trigger an attack as can some foods, food additives and fragrances. Everyone is different.

Although the disease cannot be cured, in can be controlled. Your clinician will put together a regimen for you to follow to prevent flare ups. There are many, very effective asthma medicines on the market today. Your job is to follow the directions and to know what sets off an attack and how to avoid that trigger.

To our reader: see your health care professional to ascertain if in fact you have asthma, and don’t even think of joining the dog under the bed during a thunderstorm unless you’ve vacuumed thoroughly!

Kathy Hubbard is a trustee on Bonner General Hospital Foundation Board. She can be reached at 264-4029 or kathyleehubbard@yahoo.com.