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Asthma is an allergy-based condition that causes muscles of the windpipe to go into spasm. A muscle spasm is a tight contraction of muscle fibres that will not let go. When this happens to the muscles of the windpipe two complications result:
1. the windpipe is narrowed, meaning less air can get in and out of the lungs; and
2. the rhythmic contraction and expansion of the muscles that facilitate normal breathing are disrupted, making it very difficult to breath out. Wheezing and shortness of breath result.
The windpipe is lined with a membrane that produces mucus. This mucus is there to trap bacteria, dust, pollens, moulds, grasses, fungi and other foreign bodies that are inhaled and acts as an effective protector of the delicate lung tissues. In true allergic fashion the mucous membranes of the windpipe become overactive during an asthma attack and the excess mucus produced further blocks the already narrowed passageways. In this way asthma becomes an extension of those most common symptoms of allergy that occur further up the windpipe: hayfever, rhinitis, sinusitis, stuffy nose and post-nasal drip (mucus that drips from the back of the nose into the throat).
Asthma is a classic example of a migrating allergy and is proof of the fact that we don’t grow out of allergies naturally. Bronchial asthma is relatively infrequent in infancy but common after the age of two. At least half of those infants that were born with allergic eczema (dermatitis or severe rash) will later develop asthma as the allergies migrate from the skin to the windpipe. Sometimes the skin clears up and sometimes it doesn’t. Long standing eczema is fairly common among adult asthma sufferers. Sometimes the allergy moves up from the lungs as the child grows older. These children are often diagnosed as having outgrown their asthma. The repeated sore throats, inflamed tonsils, stuffy noses, hayfever and brain allergies that inevitably follow this migration are seldom ever linked to asthma.
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