Everybody have heard about asthma and we all know that it is something that makes breathing hard. Your neighbor or officemate might be running around with their inhalers always at hand. This could seem ok to you but their condition is scary.
Unless you've experienced an attack first hand, you wouldn't know the terror that they go through on those situattion.
Asthma is afflicting millions of people every year but the real cause of it is unknown. Even the medical industry is asking "What causes asthma?". For generations, researchers have not come into a conclusion as to what causes asthma.
Asthma symptoms may be caused by different factors, and these factors determine how serious the condition is and how well the person will respond to medication. Factors may be classified as genetic or environmental.
It is not clear, however, why some have a natural tendency to develop asthma. Certain genes have been identified among sufferers but there is not enough evidence to actually associate these genes to asthma. In fact, many people who have the same genes did not develop asthma.
Genetics and asthma still remains a wonder, but it is true that if one in your family has asthma then you are likely to develop one if you're not careful.
The other factor that tries to answers the question " What causes asthma ?" is the environment. Many environmental factors have been proven to induce asthma, some of them are:
· Molds
· Pollen
· Dustmites
· Food (peanuts, Fish, Soy etc...)
· Cockroaches
· Fungi
· Fuel (Diesel, Kerosene)
These things have been directly associated with asthma since more patients react to one or more of these factors. But then again, not all people exposed to this environment develop asthma.
Another theory that the medical industry is looking at is the hygiene hypothesis. Proposed by David P. Strachan, it states that an early childhood exposure to parasites, microorganisms and infectious agents strengthens the body's immune system.
This explains why there are more asthmatics in the United States than in any other less developed countries. If you will visit a third world country, you will notice that people are subjected to environmental risks everyday but only a few of them develop asthma, this may be because of the fact that they're immune system already knows how to handle the threat.
Different people have different theories about what causes asthma but as of right now researchers are still getting dead ends. Asthma is a very complex illness and its mystery remains.
Sources http://singularastma.org