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Therapy
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Aim of therapy: Asthma cure?
Whenever an asthmatic patient consults a doctor he always wants to
know whether asthma will be cured or not? Though symptoms of asthma
can be cured for varying period but tendency of the disease
continues in the body silently. Worldwide studies
on the subject suggest following patterns:
- Approximately one third of the children
complaining asthma get complete cure but remaining two third have to
live with the disease in adulthood as well.
- Asthma cure in adulthood is less clearly
understood, still it has been suggested that much less proportion of
patients get complete cure. However, there are many symptoms-free periods.
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It is not uncommon to see the patients
having severe attack for 4-5 years and then remain symptom free for
years, sometimes even for decades. But even such patients also have
a tendency to have asthma if exposed to a very high levels of dust
mite and other strong trigger factors. When asthmatic patients shift
from one town to another many become symptom free for many years. Majority of patients have symptoms free
periods of 4-6 months when they do not require any medicine and
become symptomatic during the period of August-September and
February-March.
The doctors of alternative
medicine do claim a complete cure of all types of asthma but it has
never been substantiated by any of their studies.
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Why tendency of asthma persist in
the body?
Asthma is an allergic disease. In order to understand the answer
you have to understand nature of allergic diseases. Cold, urticaria,
eczema and asthma are caused by allergens and termed as atopic
diseases. Around 25% people of general population have a
predetermined genetic tendency to have atopic diseases, called atopy.
Atopy is inherited through genes and it is a body tendency since
birth.
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When an atopic person comes in contact with an adverse
environment he may suffer from an allergic disease. Though 25% of general population is atopic yet
asthma or other atopic diseases develop only in half of atopic
subjects.
Tendency of developing asthma is inherited through atopy gene.
Hence it depends on genes of the parents. However, a number of
patients develop asthma even without obvious history of atopy in
their long chain of family.
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Majority of asthmatic patients have mild asthma and remain
symptom free even without drugs for months, provided trigger
factors are tackled properly. The tendency of developing asthma can
be reduced by proper care. Since tendency to develop asthma is
inherited through genes, it can not be lost altogether hence it would
persist. But you should not
feel depressed because having asthma tendency in body is not a
serious problem. There are many people who have inherited asthmatic tendency even without having
asthma once in their life.
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If not cure what
are realistic goals?
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Minimal goals of asthma therapy should
be as follows,
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Symptom free life style
You should not have asthmatic
symptoms during work or rest. You should not feel cough, wheeze or
breathless during exertion or exercise.
Normal lung functions
Morning and evening record of peak
flow should be normal.
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To achieve these goals following therapeutic modalities are
adopted.
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