When you have asthma, your airways are super sensitive. They react to many irritants, such as cigarette smoke, pollen or cold air.

What Are the Main Symptoms of Asthma?

• Shortness of breath
• Wheezing 
• Tightness in the chest
• Recurrent or persistent cough

Not all people with asthma wheeze. For some, coughing may be the only symptom of asthma. Coughing often occurs during the night or after exercise.

It is important to know that treatment can reverse asthma symptoms - treating even mild symptoms of asthma can keep the symptoms from getting worse.

This video in English and Spanish teaches you how the lungs work, what happens during an asthma episode, and how to treat asthma.

What Happens During an Episode of Asthma?

Asthma affects the airways in your lungs. During an episode of asthma:

• The lining of the airways becomes swollen (inflamed).
• The airways produce a thick mucus.
• The muscles around the airways tighten and make the airways narrower.

These changes in the airways block the flow of air, making it hard to breathe.

You need to know the ways that asthma affects the airways so you can understand why it often takes more than one medicine to treat the disease. Very simply, some medicines relax the airways - these are called "quick relief" - and others, called "long term control," reduce the swelling and mucus.

The Role of Heredity
The capacity to have asthma is an inherited characteristic. To some extent, asthma seems to run in families. People whose brothers, sisters or parents have asthma are more likely to develop the illness themselves.

Substances that you may inhale can cause allergy symptoms or can also trigger an asthma episode. Dust mites, pollens, molds, pet dander and even cockroach droppings may cause you to have asthma symptoms. It is best to avoid or limit your exposure to known allergens in order to prevent asthma symptoms.

Irritants in the air including smoke from cigarettes, wood fires, or charcoal grills can cause asthma symptoms to appear. Also, strong fumes or odors like household sprays, paint, gasoline, perfumes, and scented soaps can be an irritant and can aggravate inflamed, sensitive airways. 

Respiratory infections such as colds, flu, sore throats, and sinus infections may cause asthma symptoms.

Exercise, especially in cold air, can be a frequent asthma trigger. A form of asthma called exercise-induced asthma is triggered by physical activity. Symptoms of this kind of asthma may not appear until after several minutes of sustained exercise. When symptoms appear sooner than this, it usually means that the person needs to adjust his or her treatment. 

Other types of exertions can bring on asthma symptoms including laughing, crying, holding one's breath, and hyperventilating (rapid, shallow breathing). When you experience strong emotions, your breathing changes -- even if you don’t have asthma. When a person with asthma laughs, yells, or cries hard, natural airway changes may cause wheezing or other asthma symptoms. 

Weather such as dry wind, cold air, or sudden changes in weather can sometimes bring on an asthma episode. 

Some medications like aspirin can also be related to episodes in adults who are sensitive to aspirin.

To properly diagnose asthma, a physician will take your medical history and conduct a physical exam that includes special attention to your ears, eyes, nose, throat, skin, chest and lungs. A lung function test can detect possible limitations in your breathing, and, in some cases, you may need additional tests, such as a chest or sinus X-ray. 

Asthma does not have to put major limits on your life. There are many things that you can do to take control of your asthma and minimize its impact on your activities. For example, you can remove or avoid those things in your environment that you know that make your asthma worse. If these measures are not enough, you may have to take medications that are available to control symptoms.

Asthma medications may be either inhaled or in pill form and are divided into two types—quick-relief and long-term control. Quick-relief medicines are used to control the immediate symptoms of an asthma episode. In contrast, long-term control medicines do not provide relief right away, but rather help to lessen the frequency and severity of episodes over time.

There are two groups of asthma medications:

1. Long term controllers - taken if you have symptoms more than twice a week, usually prescribed for every day. These include inhaled and oral corticosteroids, (these are not the same as anabolic steroids, which some athletes take to build muscles, and are generally safe when taken as directed), cromolyn sodium, leukotriene modifiers, long-acting beta2-agonists, and long-acting bronchodilators.
     
   Combined therapy medicine (inhaled) contains both a controller and reliever medicine. This combination of a long-acting bronchodilator and corticosteroid is used for long-term control.
     
2. Quick relievers - Short-acting bronchodilators, short-acting beta2-agonists.
     
   Anti-IgE therapy (injected) is a new treatment for people with moderate or severe allergic asthma. It attempts to stop allergic asthma at its root cause instead of just treating asthma symptoms. Due to its significant cost, this form of therapy is currently reserved for moderate to severe cases requiring multiple medications.

National Institutes of Health, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/index.htm

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
http://www.cdc.gov/

United States Environmental Protection Agency
http://www.epa.gov