Environmental triggers of asthma

Dr Annamore Jamu Features Correspondent
That Saturday morning I had hoped to visit a friend I had not seen in months. As I locked the gate behind my house, I noticed thick black smoke spiralling into the skies. I decided to go and check if no one was in danger and little did I know that it was going to be 10km away.When I finally got there, I realised that I had no one to ask the myriad of questions I had . . . who did this? Why did they do this? Don’t they have a better way of discarding unwanted materials?

Don’t they know that this is very near a residential area? Don’t they know that the young children, the elderly, the sickly and the very sensitive people would struggle to breathe in this thick smoke?

My mind raced to the different scenes in hospitals where I had attended to countless numbers of people with asthma who would have been wheeled into emergency rooms so that they would be helped just to take the next breath because their asthma would have been triggered by some polluted air.

I shook my head in anger when I remembered the cases where as a medical team we had failed to resuscitate some patients and they had died right in front of us.

We had walked away one after the other in that state of dejection, raising our hands up and saying, “We did our best! Another life lost during an asthmatic attack.”

At that point one can’t help thinking about other people who would have died at home during an asthmatic attack.

We are all held responsible for the life of the next person to us. As human beings we depend on each other or at least trust each other that we do not do what would hurt the next person. The point is if we burn materials, we trigger breathing problems in some people. The smoke travels farther than we can imagine. By burning rubbish in your local community, you are affecting the whole region, if not the whole world.

Statistics show that the number of people with asthma is increasing annually.

What is asthma?
Asthma is a persistent condition of the lungs and the airways. It is characterised by feeling tight in the chest, difficulty in breathing (especially when breathing out), characterised by wheezing, coughing can be another symptom as the patient tries to clear the chest.

When someone is exposed to a trigger such as the smoke from the burning materials, there is irritation of the respiratory system. The muscles lining the airways tighten. Inflammation and swelling of these muscles occur resulting in the narrowing of airways that lead to the lungs. Secretions from these linings of the airways are also common, leading to further narrowing of the air passage. At this stage now the patient is very anxious because he or she feels literally suffocating from these narrowed airways and copious volume of mucus.

Types of asthmas
Asthma is generally grouped according to what triggers it.

Non-allergic asthma is triggered by certain materials (irritants) in the air you breathe. One does not have to be allergic to any of these materials. Such irritants can be for example in our case the burning tyres, perfumes, household cleaning products and tobacco smoke. I did witness a woman who went into an asthmatic attack when she had accompanied a relative to a clinic where painting was going on. So, the fresh strong smell of paint triggered the attack. Unfortunately, some asthmatic patients can go into an attack when they have even a common cold or flu.

Allergic asthma is triggered by something that an individual is allergic to. If a person is allergic to cats, he is very likely to have an asthmatic attack when he gets in contact with one.

Luckily these people know and understand their condition so they avoid such pets.

Exercise-induced asthma is triggered by physical activity. This is worse in cold seasons when the cold air triggers the attack. The asthma occurs typically during the exercise or soon after the exercise. Anxiety, that an athlete experiences just before a race, can be so huge that it triggers an attack.

Nocturnal asthma refers to an asthmatic attack that tends to favour the night, typically between 2 and 4 in the early hours of the morning.

It does occur in a patient with any type of asthma though. This is because the body chemicals that ordinarily protect against asthma, such as steroids and adrenaline are lowest in the early hours of the morning.

Seasonal asthma is triggered by different irritants that are found in different seasons. These are mostly different types of pollen from different flowering trees.

Self help!

Let us not pollute the air we breathe by burning anything. We must dispose of rubbish in an acceptable way. Burning pollutes our air and some people can go into asthmatic attack.

Postural draining can be used to help minimise the frequency of asthmatic attacks. By allowing the patient to lie in different postures, gently tap with “cupped” hands on the chest of someone who suffers from asthma and then ask him to cough (works best for younger patients).

This helps keep the airways adequately opened. This loosens up the mucus which is then coughed up thus preventing also infections to the lungs. Do not do this when the patient is in an asthmatic attack because it worsens the breathing problems. The healthcare givers can teach this technique to a parent or guardian who has a minor with asthma.

Stay away from what triggers your asthma. If it is cold weather, then make sure that you are warm all the time, by dressing up in warm clothes and eating warm foods and drinking hot teas. I often find that if a person with asthma ties a neck scarf in winter, then they tend to warm up the air they breathe and hence have less frequent flues thus minimising the number of asthmatic attacks.

People with a history of asthma should always do breathing exercises when they are not in attack. This is basically practising taking deep breaths through the nose, holding their breaths for some seconds and breathing out through the mouth. This is the technique used when administering medication when they go into attack.

People in an asthmatic attack tend to panic during the attack (understandably) and tend to breathe in through the mouth instead of the nose — this worsens the attack.

So the purpose of the exercises is to let the patient get used to breathing the optimum way and reduce the tendency to pant when in an asthmatic attack.

Whether we like it or not, our environment affects our health. If communities look after the environment properly, health improves.

From today on, let us be wary of burning rubbish, because the particles that are released during burning can affect someone who is sensitive to smoke.

More so, when tyres burn there are tens of heavy metals that get released into the air as fragment ash.

These settle down on our vegetables and we eat them. Some sneak into water and into the ground and again we consume them when we eat food. They accumulate in our bodies and begin to slowly poison us.

Ever wondered why some disease patterns are so weird these days? We are taking in too many pollutants!
Till next time look after your environment and your health.