Asthma is essentially difficulty in breathing, and breathlessness along with cough and expectoration caused due to the narrowness of the windpipe.
Causes
Allergy of dust, pollutants, or natural resources such as hay or pollens causes the windpipe to go into acute narrowness causing breathlessness.
Psychological causes such as mental tensions, depression, or anxiety could also precipitate the attack of asthma.
Improper diet habits, such as consumption of unsuitable foods, very cold foods, cold drinks, and very spicy, pungent, dry and oily food cause asthma.
Certain organic diseases, such as cardiac failure, allergic rhinitis, or allergic disorders of skin could also cause asthma.
Sign & Symptoms
The main sign is acute breathlessness accompanied by wheezing sound while breathing and little or moderate expectoration of cough and mucus.
Severe asthmatic attack is associated with a feeling of suffocation and secondary infection of bronchi, causing fever and cough.
Increased breathing rate and heart rate.
Excessive perspiration, inability to lie down due to inability to breathe in the lying position.
The symptoms, which often appear in early childhood, are wheezing, coughing, shortness of breath and difficult in breathing. During an asthma attack, the airways of the lungs narrow because their walls go into spasm. Breathing is often made even harder because the airways can also become blocked with thick plugs of sputum.
In non-allergic cases the culprits include certain types of drugs (for example beta-blockers, aspirin and its relatives such as ibuprofen) and the fumes produced by some industries such as vinyl manufacture. An extraordinary range of activities is said to make asthma worse, including colds, laughing, talking too much, stress, and passive smoking.
AYURVEDA Concept : According to the Ayurvedic system, three forces or doshas controls the body. Asthma is the result of an excess of Kapha (the dosha which controls the lymph system) in the lungs, although Vata (responsible for the central nervous system) can also be involved. Using diet, lifestyle changes and massage, the doshas are brought into balance again.
Do’s & Don’t
Food should be eaten when hot and freshly cooked.
Spicy, oily, very pungent, and dry foods such as cold drinks, ice creams, and any other food, to which the patient might be allergic, should be avoided.
Hot soups of lentils, green grams, black grams, rice, and meat soups, without adding spices, should be taken in daily diet.
For natural purgation, as well as for nourishment, Ghrita or Ghee (clarified butter) should be added to the food in adequate amounts.
Powder of black pepper, long pepper, ginger and cinnamon should be added while cooking food.