Asthma
... 0 Introduction The Macquarie dictionary explains asthma as “A paroxysmal disorder of respiration with laboured breathing, a feeling of constriction in the chest, and coughing”. ... This report is based on the facts about asthma and will focus on trends and treatments of the past, today and the future. ... If this report is made correctly, anyone that can read should be able to pick up this assorted bundle of text, read it and then understand a lot more about asthma. ... 1 Definition Asthma is a condition in which the airways of the lungs become either narrowed or completely blocked, obstructing normal breathing. ... 2 History Asthma is not new. Asthma like symptoms were first recorded 3500 years ago in an Egyptian. ... The famous Greek physician Hippocrates first used the word Asthma to describe an illness 500 years later. The Romans used to treat asthma by giving sufferers Owls blood in wine. A Spanish doctor, Moses Maimonides, wrote the first book specifically about asthma in AD 1190. Maimonides wrote that asthma was characterised by sudden bouts of breathlessness. Physicians during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries realised that asthma was due to constrictions of the Bronchi (The airways into the lungs). ... It was not until the 1960s that physicians discovered that asthma is an inflammatory disease. ... 1 Treatment The treatment of asthma has improved over time as the scientific understanding of the disease has advanced. ... A variety of effective asthma medications are now available to choose from. Treatment of mild asthma usually tries to relieve occasional symptoms as they occur by use of short-acting, inhaled bronchodilators and anti-inflammatories. ... Taking anti-inflammatory daily for moderate to severe asthma is a relatively new approach to treating asthma.