Matthew B Asthma

The Breathing Easy podcast explores respiratory health and the challenges faced by people with asthma. It discusses the causes, symptoms, and treatment options of asthma, as well as the latest developments in asthma research. Asthma is a chronic respiratory condition that causes inflammation and narrowing of the airways, leading to difficulty breathing. Triggers such as allergens, exercise, and poor air quality can cause asthma attacks. There are different severities of asthma, with some people needing frequent inhaler use, while others may only experience mild symptoms. Asthma is primarily genetic, but can also be triggered by environmental factors. Medical advancements are being made to improve treatment and potentially find a cure for asthma. Taking proactive measures and avoiding triggers can help manage the condition and lead a healthy life. Hello and welcome to the Breathing Easy podcast where we explore the world of respiratory health and the challenges millions of people with asthma face. I am your host, Matthew Berger, and in this podcast, we will dive deep into the causes, symptoms, and treatment options of asthma and discuss the latest developments in asthma research. Our goal is to provide a comprehensive resource for anyone seeking to understand and manage their asthma, as well as for caregivers, family members, and healthcare professionals. With professional stories and practical advice, we hope to shed light on this often misunderstood condition and empower our listeners to breathe easy. Dom, a good friend of mine, is joining me today, interested in learning more about asthma and comparing his knowledge to his field of study, heart disease. Dom? I'm welcome to be on here. All right. Let's get it started here. I guess our introduction is, what is asthma? With our first episode, we'll discuss kind of the basic level of asthma and where you can go with treatment, prevention, diseases, and share some personal stories. So what is asthma? Asthma is a chronic respiratory condition that causes inflammation and narrowing of the airways, leading to difficulty breathing. Some symptoms of asthma include wheezing, coughing, shortness of breath, and chest tightness. And that is all according to my first source of the day is our What Causes Asthma from Mr. McMaster of the Biocene Journal of College of Biology Teaching. This source does a great job of summarizing, telling us that asthma is kind of something that's genetic. Asthma comes into the body, plays a huge significant role on the body, and kind of affects your everyday life. So kind of relating back to what is, you know, just the definition of asthma, a chronic respiratory condition, asthma is something that most people, if you're going to have asthma, you're born with it. It's genetic. It's something that's going to be in your body. And there are things called triggers that trigger and cause you to react and have asthma. And asthma, when you're experiencing an asthma attack, it's when your airway is tightening, your bronchial air restricting within your lungs, and it's causing you to have tight, short breaths where you're having a depletion in oxygen and also an increase in CO2 as you breathe fast. Dr. McMaster also continues to tell us that there are a lot of medical incidents that are associated with asthma, and there has been a steady incline in asthma prevention and spread kind of since the middle 1900s, and, you know, just as more science and technology develops, more of these causes of asthma are kind of pinpointed and spread upon. I guess, Don, do you have anything to say about that? Yeah, I just got a question. Is there, like, different severities in, like, levels of asthma? Because my girlfriend has asthma, but, like, she doesn't necessarily need her inhaler all the time. But I know other people, like a kid on my basketball team last year, like, he always needed his inhaler on him. I was just wondering, like, is there different, like, severities to the asthma or, like, changes in the breathing? That's actually, honestly, a great question. That kind of leads into another source that I have, the Journal of the Operational Research Society, an article titled Towards an Operational Model for Prevention and Treatment of Asthma Attacks. Shahani here does a great job of telling us that there are different severities in asthma. There's the mild. There's the light level. Some people maybe experience asthma symptoms where they feel it in their lungs, and they never actually need to be treated. They never have to get an inhaler or get any sort of medication for it. But then there are severe attacks of asthma that are on the opposite side of the spectrum where you go undergo an asthma attack, and you have a high risk of dying. I mean, there's a high risk of just a high mortality rate because of asthma because a lot of that whole aspect of asthma is unknown. And this source actually does a great job of explaining that there are different levels to it. And there's a lot of science on that base to moderate level of asthma where, you know, the general inhaler and the general treatment is really good for it. But then there's also that extreme level where there isn't any advanced treatment that will actually, you know, prevent these asthma attacks from happening and prevent this mortality rate from increasing as it slowly has. I guess that kind of leads into what is an inhaler. From the AAFA, Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, an inhaler is medicine. It's prescribed medicine. It's a quick relief medicine. And so I guess the general inhaler is albuterol. It's a general medicine. And it's a propellant spray. I mean, maybe you can compare it to a Febreze spray. It's just a quick, you know, you take a quick puff of this and you slowly inhale. And what it does is it goes into your lungs, reduces, and this is the quick action. It goes right to the sites. It opens up your airway and opens up your pathways within your body. And the AAFA does a great job of describing, I guess, the different levels. So there's obviously your instant relief and then it kind of goes to your long-term. You kind of take this as you go through a life that you can prevent. And that's your prevention. And then there are even nebulizers which are strong medication where it's a whole dosage that you're inhaling at once just to kind of dampen that effect of asthma. So that is a great question. And there are obviously different levels. And then there's just kind of different medication to that. And that's just the AAFA does an amazing job of describing that. Kind of looking forward, the CDC also does a wonderful job about describing what an asthma attack is. They sort of, quote, unquote, 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. And then they continue to explain on an asthma attack is that base level coughing but also all the way up until where you cannot breathe. By controlling your asthma, they state, you won't have symptoms such as wheezing or coughing. You'll sleep better. You won't miss work or school. And physical activities will be easier. I'll kind of relate that to a personal story. A big thing for me when my asthma arose was swimming. I swam in high school. And I think it was allergy induced which would be spending time in the pool. Chlorine in our pool at Eau Claire Memorial was really poor. So crazy thing is when you urinate in the pool which happens all the time even in high school, the chemicals and the way the chemicals react causes actually a release in this chlorine to fill the air and then that along with splashing and stuff of that sort would cause a high amount of chlorine in the air. And inhaling this for me as an asthma patient would actually make it really difficult to swim sometimes. I mean my only thing holding me back, my muscles would be fine. I wouldn't be sore. I wouldn't be tired. But I just couldn't breathe in the pool. And I guess that kind of relates to what is a trigger. And I guess maybe we can advance into the next section. So what is a trigger? Don, do you know anything about a trigger? I mean do you have a question about what a trigger would be? I kind of got a question though about like how asthma develops. Is it solely genetic or is it possible to develop asthma? Or is this like a solely genetic thing and you're kind of just born with it? That's another great question. From what I learned, I have a source here. This source does a great job. An Understanding of the Genetic Basis of Asthma is the article title. This is actually from the National Library of Medicine. So a very trustworthy source. Asthma is genetic and it's something that you're born with. It's actually a variation on, this source did a lot of research. It's a variation on a specific chromosome or a specific gene in that chromosome that if you're an asthma patient, you generally, I mean obviously all these experiments and theories aren't fully proved and they're always expanding and stuff. But it's a change on a chromosome or a gene that initiates this asthma. And whether it is, what's the word? Whether it's in place or it's dormant. Dormant is the word. So if this gene is dormant, you have asthma in your body and the asthma will either be there your whole life or it will only be active with the trigger. So I guess to answer your question, it is strictly genetic. It's not induced from any other way. I mean obviously a lot of lung issues and a lot of respiratory disorders are induced from poor air pollution, poor air quality. But asthma is genetic and it can be dormant for your whole life or one trigger such as a cat, such as mold, such as even a chemical in the air that happens to be in the air one day. I mean that can trigger asthma. And you can live with this for the rest of your life or you can live with it for a couple of years. I mean asthma is just such a broad spectrum of a disease where it has so many different effects and so many different implications to it. Great question. Kind of looking, I guess I can look further into triggers. And we'll go to asthma treatment from the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, so the AFA. They do a great job of describing triggers. There are so many different triggers. There's triggers such as mold, pollen, even animals, and then it even goes to air quality, how fumes and chemicals in the air have a negative impact on the body, and any single one of these can cause an asthma attack and cause your lungs to lock up. And so that source also does a great job of telling us what is a trigger to asthma and how it affects and hurts the body. Yeah, do you have any other questions, Tom? I don't know. I guess more back to your case of being an athlete with asthma. I mean that sounds incredibly difficult, and I'm just like do you think there's any future for athletes with asthma, or do you think you have this and it might just be you just scrape by in high school, or do you think there's a future where we could maybe have more medical advancements where athletes or really anyone could move on to the next level and really be at the top like peak of their performance? That's a great question because obviously I get that. I mean knowing that asthma is kind of always going to be there within the body. I guess I can relate that to one of my sources as well, the stratification of asthma and its treatment. This is actually the studying of T cells within the body. So I guess your question is can you push past the asthma? Is there ever going to be a choice in the future, a chance in the future where asthma is pushed past? This source does a great job of explaining that there is a lot of science right now with T cells within the body, with your blood cells within the body, clinical trials where they are trying to make treatment that will allow asthma to be dampened if not remove it fully from the body. So I guess the one thing that people can do is help themselves in terms of triggers, avoiding triggers and avoiding things that hurt them. But then they can also look and say, okay, there is new treatment coming out and eventually science will tell us that you can take a medication and your swelling will go away and you will be good for 24, 48 hours, two weeks, a month and maybe it's a monthly thing and then maybe it turns into some sort of a cure just with the replacement of cells within the body. And that's what's so cool I guess about science is that they are trying to do everything they can to allow everybody to live a prosperous life and have that athletic experience. So I do see a bright future in it. I know it's a hard science to figure out because there are so many different aspects that cause inflammation, that cause problems, but science does do a great job of leading to, aiming to get it where the athletes can have that full body experience and that full enjoyment within their sport I guess in that way. Anything else, Tom? I don't know. You did a really good job answering all my questions. Good, I'm glad. Yeah, I guess I can just speak a little more on my own time with asthma. Right, just in swimming it's just the ability for chemicals to affect your lungs is something that obviously is being studied with smoking, with lung cancer, with lung disorders, with any respiratory disease, but with asthma it's just something that is naturally in your body that prevents you from experiencing so many things that everybody else experiences. I mean I have so many great friends, you know, swimmers or whatever, runners, being physically fit for football, played football, being physically fit for baseball, not being out of breath, conditioning. It's like I was always at the short end of the stick in a way just because I had this lung disease and it really is troubling to kind of work with and fight, but that's why I guess this research is so important because as asthma grows, as asthma research grows, people will be able to benefit more and more from science and not experience what I've experienced, not experience what people experienced 10, 20, 30 years ago where they didn't have any inhaler, they didn't have anything to help them and that's something that obviously has to keep growing in our science and our medical world which is a lot of foundations that aim to do that. So I guess we kind of jumped around, but what is asthma again? Your definition of asthma is your chronic respiratory condition, inflammation in the airways. What are your causes of asthma? Genetics, genes within the body are kind of the reason that anybody that has asthma will experience it or will not experience it whether it's triggered or not. Triggers of asthma, exercise, cold air, medication, there's so many triggers. CDC does a great job, AFA, and then all these wonderful academic journals that I've found, they do a great job of highlighting these triggers, highlighting how to prevent, interacting with these triggers and such, and then kind of with the prevention, right, avoiding triggers as we discussed. It's something that is hard to do. I mean, you kind of have to base your lifestyle around, for me, right, like if I said, hey, I can't swim, I mean, I literally couldn't swim at some point just because of asthma and that's kind of hard to determine, but it's something that you have to do at some point, right? And then, right, I mean, it's a lifestyle change, something that you have to do to live better, to be healthier. And I guess asthma can be a challenging condition to manage, but there are steps you can take to prevent and reduce the severity of asthma attacks. By understanding the causes of asthma and taking proactive measures, you can lead a healthy and active life. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Breathe Easy. Don't forget to subscribe. Come back for next week's episode and leave us a review. Thank you so much. Bye-bye.