Symptoms of asthma

Some patients almost do not develop any symptoms of asthma and the disease takes nearly symptomless course with rare lame and short attacks. Other patients are constantly tormented with cough and short wind along with serious, recurring from time to time attacks. The attack can come suddenly, but it can as well develop gradually and symptoms of asthma appear within several days and even weeks.

The main signs of symptoms of asthma

Among the symptoms of asthma the main sign is difficulty of breathing. The degree of shortness of breath may be different from low to very severe and depends, in particular, on the sedentary or mobile way of life the person leads. In the first case the short wind can be hardly appreciable, if only the attack is not very serious. Those who lead more mobile way of life, for example sportsmen, may notice the slightest deviations in their breathing. Many people for the first time notice symptoms of asthma during physical exercises. The affected children cannot take part in outdoor games because of breathlessness. However, at present owing to effective treatment patients with symptoms of asthma have the opportunity to go in for sports and even practice the big-time sports.

The sense of constraint and discomfort, sometimes with pains in the chest is one of the first symptoms of asthma and asthmatic attack. The patient cannot inhale deeply because the lungs are overfilled with air and the exhalation is inefficient. The breathing is accompanied by the sibilant rales, which result from vibrations of spastically compressed bronchi when the air passes through them. The rales are detected in other diseases as well, in particular, in pneumonia; therefore, the presence of rales does not mean that the person suffers from asthma.

In case of severe asthmatic attack the sibilant rales that are usually audible in the beginning, can then disappear completely. It frequently leads to the erroneous interpretation of such symptoms of asthma as the signs of in a little while ending asthmatic attack. However, as a matter of fact it frequently may signify quite the opposite condition, i.e. the worsening of the patient’s state because the air ways are blocked even more and the air flow becomes limited. At this stage the patient’s condition becomes extremely dangerous. The immediate help is necessary in order to prevent the full respiratory standstill.

Cough is one of the main symptoms of asthma. As a rule, the cough becomes stronger at night or early in the morning. Cough and other symptoms of asthma frequently become the reason of sleepless nights of the asthmatic patient and the members of his or her family. It is not completely clear for the specialists why these symptoms of asthma amplify at night. Doctors think that it is connected to natural narrowing of the respiratory ways, which is observed in all people. It does not cause any troubles to the majority of people, except the patients with symptoms of asthma whose respiratory ways are already narrowed.

In some people the dry cough and insignificant rales are the only symptoms of asthma. Usually the attack begins with dry cough, but in process of the disease development sometimes the phlegm expectoration is observed especially at adult people. In the absence of an infectious disease of the lungs or bronchi the phlegm is usually colorless. If the cough is caused by pneumonia, it can be cured with antibiotics, but in asthmatic cough antibiotics do not help. Sometimes, in asthma the phlegm is of yellow color because of eosinophils, which are immune cells that in huge amounts are present in areas where the allergic reactions occur.

Severe attacks of the asthma cause a nervous and physical exhaustion of the patient, which is compelled to be in a constant tension only to breathe. It is difficult for the patient to talk. During the attack the patients usually take a sitting position and hold themselves upright in a characteristic pose or are inclined forward, trying to help an exhalation. They prefer not to lie down as it complicates the breathing even more. The patients’ skin frequently gets a bluish shade as a result of oxygen lack in the blood. Then breathing may become superficial and inefficient. In the heaviest cases the confusion and loss of consciousness indicate the progressing oxygen insufficiency.