Chronic asthma bronchitis can be controlled; with proper care the flair ups can be minimized or even avoided. Like any other illness you need to do your part to keep yourself healthy such as if you are a smoker, stop smoking. Make sure your house is free from dust and allergens. If you can do not have carpets around the house, and if you are a pet owner find out if the pet dander is causing you to have attacks.
Chronic asthma bronchitis is often seen in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). COPD affects between 14 to 15 million people in the United States alone. What many people do not know is that chronic bronchitis is actually infectious. It is a condition often seen in asthma patients, and can also occur from a weakened immune system or from poor diet, prolonged stress, bacteria which has been transmitted from other people coughing up germs and spreading them, undigested foods, and improper elimination.
Of course since we breathe irritants into our air passageways every day, we have to control our environment the best that we can. One way is to avoid smoking or avoid places where there are heavy smokers.
When you go to the doctor for chronic bronchitis the first thing that is prescribed is cough medicine, however, in most cases the cough medicine doesn’t work and in other cases all it really does is hide the real symptoms, it does not solve the problem. When the cough medicine does not work the next course of action is the doling out of antibiotics. Since antibiotics are over prescribed there is always the thought that they will not work either. What antibiotics do is kill off the good bacteria will they are attempting to fight off the bad. The good bacteria are needed to stave off lung infections. When the good bacteria are killed the lungs will accumulated some toxic debris at the cellular level and this will impair their normal functioning.
As the years go by, the condition will worsen and the person affected will notice an increasing number of infections, and more antibiotics are taken and more good bacteria are killed off leading to the immune system being compromised even more. The antibiotics acerbate the situation by killing the good bacteria and they become less and less effective as a treatment to correct the problem. When the situation continues over a prolonged period of time, life-threatening complications such as advanced pneumonia can occur. Note these conditions can also occur if no intervention was ever sought.
Acute bronchitis is the inflammation of the bronchial tree and usually goes away, however, the damage has been done. Once the breathing system shrinks to the extent that breathing is labored, the mucous lining of alveoli is compromised and the flexibility of the expansion contraction mechanism is impaired.
Breathing tests and rib cage expansion tests provide a good indication of the state of your breathing ability, which is so important for asthma patients to know. Singers usually can tell when they no longer can reach the low and high notes any longer.
The symptoms of asthmatic bronchitis includes thick mucus, difficulty breathing, shortness of breath due to clogged airways, chest congestion, and wheezing which will last for weeks and sometimes months. Sufferers can become extremely tired, lose weight, and may have a low-grade lung infection.
Though antibiotics may be prescribed, do consider learning some good breathing techniques that will help expand those restricted air passages and get some good oxygen back into the lungs to promote health. Antibiotics serve their function for the most part but they are not always the solution.