Asthma is a condition that causes individuals to struggle to breathe. This is due to swelling or inflammation in the airways, which causes the gap for the air to pass through to become increasingly narrow, restricting the amount of oxygen that the sufferer is able to draw in. Likewise, the airways will often get clogged with sticky mucus, which can further create more challenges in breathing.
Asthma is a chronic condition that can affect people their entire lifetimes – though sometimes it will come and go with age. However, while asthma is something that lingers, it is only noticeable during attacks, which are typically caused by ‘triggers’.
In this post, we will explore the 18 most common causes of asthma – both in terms of what causes the condition to appear in the first place, and in terms of those triggers.
1. Allergy
For many people, asthma is a form of allergy. The symptoms are essentially the same as an allergic reaction but simply localized to the airways. If you imagine touching something that would normally cause an allergic reaction, you would probably imagine it to cause the area to swell up and become red. Likewise, if you were to react to cat fur or pollen in the air, then this would cause your eyes to become red, swollen, and potentially pussy.
This is precisely what happens inside the airways then when you have an allergic reaction: the symptoms are actually caused by your own immune system trying to drive out what it sees as a toxin, even though that element is in fact entirely innocuous. It is a case of mistaken identity!
Thus, allergy is one of the most common causes of an asthma attack – and therefore if you have other allergies, that means that you are very likely to be at risk.
