Asthma is one of the chronic diseases that can send shivers throughout your spine. The disease affects your respiratory system causing the air-duct to the lungs to swell. You cannot inhale and exhale the air needed for your body to function well because of the swelling. Fortunately, your internal medicine in El Centro center has treatment options that can help improve the quality of your life when living with the condition.
What Causes Asthma?
Some of the factors that can trigger an asthma attack include:
- Environmental factors such as smoke, pungent smells, and pollution from chemicals.
- Illnesses like flu, lenient respiratory infection, sinusitis.
- Subjection to an allergen like pollen, dust mites, grass, or cockroach.
- Exhausting exercises.
Symptoms of Asthma
When your lungs’ airways swell, they tighten and restrict breathing, causing symptoms like coughing when laughing or doing exercises, wheezing, shortness of breath, chest pain, difficulty sleeping due to wheezing or coughing, and tightness in your chest.
Asthma Diagnosis
When you go for an asthma diagnosis, your doctor will review your medical history and ask you about your asthma symptoms and family history. Your doctor may also request to know your daily life activities to check factors that could be igniting your symptoms.
Physical Examination
Your doctor will conduct a physical examination of your eyes, throat, nose, chest, and ears. Checking for signs of wheezing, skin rashes, and congestion to determine if underlying allergies are causing your asthma symptoms.
Spirometry Testing
Your doctor will conduct a spirometry test to establish if your lungs are functioning well or have a blockage. Your doctor will request you to breathe in until your lungs are brimful, exhale the air into a hollow tube attached to the spirometer forcefully and very fast. The device will measure the amount of air you can breathe in and how fast you can breathe out. Your doctor can do the test once or twice.
To check for an inhaler’s effectiveness to your lungs, your doctor will request you use the inhaler then breathe out through the spirometer.
Other tests that your doctor may recommend to help gather more information on how to control your asthma are blood tests, chest X-ray tests, and skin tests.
Asthma Treatment
After you receive your asthma diagnosis, your doctor will help you develop a management plan to control your symptoms and live a quality life. Your plan will include how to identify your triggers and how to avoid them.
Your doctor may prescribe medications that can treat your asthma, depending on your need. For acute asthma symptoms, your doctor may prescribe a fast-acting bronchodilator inhaler. Your doctor may prescribe corticosteroids, a controller medication you will take daily to decrease inflammation in your lungs’ airways and prevent asthma flare-ups.
If your condition is due to allergies, your doctor may recommend allergy immunotherapy which is a very successful preventive treatment that helps reduce your immune system sensitivity to triggers.
You can live a quality life after you are diagnosed with asthma. Call or book an appointment online with Prabhdeep Singh, MD, to embark on treatment.