May is Asthma awareness month. It is a time to bring awareness of a chronic incurable, inflammatory disorder of the airways.
Did you know that Asthma is one of our nations most common and costly diseases? There is no known cause and over 20 million people have it. The severity of asthma, as well as the frequency of asthma episodes (“attacks”), can be influenced by exposures to allergens and/ irritants (“triggers”) in the environment, both indoors and outdoors. It is important to know that asthma attack triggers are often hidden. The most common triggers are dust mites, second-hand smoke, animal dander (skin flakes and saliva), cockroaches and their droppings, mold and mildew, and pollen. These triggers can be life-threatening for the millions of people with asthma in the United States, and young children are at the greatest risk. In fact, asthma accounts for one in six of all child emergency room visits and nearly 196,000 hospitalizations each year in the United States. That’s more than any other childhood disease. Just imagine: you’re short of breath, and you’re trying to fill your lungs by sucking air through a tube the same size of a plastic coffee stirrer. That’s the helpless and scared feeling a growing number of people with asthma experience. Asthma is scary, but it is a disease that can be managed.
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