According to the Mayo Clinic, a well respected medical resource, and the American Family Physician, a newsletter from the American Academy of Family Physicians, childhood asthma has risen significantly in over the past few decades. The American Lung Association states that in 2004, an estimated 4 million children under 18 years old have had an asthma attack in the past 12 months, and many others have "hidden" or undiagnosed asthma.
Asthma is the most common cause of school absenteeism due to chronic disease and accounted for an estimated 14 million lost school days. They claim that childhood asthma has become more widespread and is now the most common chronic illness in children.
If you have children, it's important that you can recognize the symptoms and signs of an asthmatic condition. Understand that the symptoms below "may" indicate asthma, but could be symptomatic of a wide range of bronchial or pulmonary illnesses.
The most common signs and symptoms of childhood asthma are very similar to bronchitis and other respiratory infections. The symptoms include:
1. Coughing. The need to cough is created by mucus, which builds up and needs to be cleared. The mucus is usually caused by some type of infection or irritation. Coughing is symptomatic of many childhood and adult illnesses. Notice that although coughing is a symptom, the type of cough plays a role in understanding the cause. Simply put, a rattling or lose type cough is very different than a tight or hacking cough and both types can indicate certain illnesses
2. Wheezing. Wheezing is most commonly associated with asthma, however, all children with asthma do not necessarily wheeze. You can identify wheezing as a whistling type sound when your child breathes.
3. Chest congestion and tightness.
4. Shortness of breath
While these signs and symptoms may indicate childhood asthma, they may also point to various illnesses common to kids. As a parent, you cannot be expected to understand how various symptoms may interact or be able to accurately diagnose an illness such as asthma.
Another factor to consider is frequency. The child who frequently coughs or suffers ongoing or recurrent bouts of respiratory infection illnesses such as pneumonia or bronchitis may have childhood asthma.
As you can see, the diagnosis of this disease can only accurately be done by a medical doctor. Childhood asthma is a disease that has been strongly associated with genetic factors and usually involves some aspect of allergies. In the American Family Physician newsletter of April 2001 it was suggested that almost 80% of children with asthma can be expected to have allergies. This suggests that one strategy to control childhood asthma attacks is to control the environmental factors that may trigger an event. Those triggers may include dust, dirt, pollen and other factors. Visit the link below and get a free report on how to control on how to control and eliminate common allergy and asthma triggers in your home
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