What Causes Ashma?

“Ashma” means panting, a lung condition that owes it’s name to it’s  predominant clinical symptoms, shortness of breath. Because of oxygen deficiency, the asthmatic is compelled to force air into his lungs.

Exactly what causes ashma is not yet fully understood. For many years doctors were certain that in all cases ashma was an illness of allergic nature. Some substance – pollen, dust, even tiny particles of one’s own skin – were thought to play the role of touching off excessive secretion of histamine. This histamine, although a perfectly natural substance created the insupportable ill feelings ashmatics suffer from.

But a study carried out in a Californian clinic would seem to indicate that ashma is not always caused by an allergy. American specialists have noted that the attacks of ashma are provoked by factors which have nothing to do with any allergy. They can be caused by physical exercise, hearty laughter, particularly strong emotions, a passing irritation of the air tubes, a change in the temperature of the air breathed in, particularly if the change is towards colder.

According to the American researchers, it would seem that these various phenomena which touch off ashma attacks cause a constriction of the bronchial tubes. The walls of those tubes retract and their muscular movement, once it has begun, continues to amplify. This is what causes the growing ill feeling of the asthmatic.