When people say they are allergic to something or that they are suffering from an allergy, they are actually referring to several inflictions instead of a single problem. An allergy is caused when your immune system reacts to an alien object or chemical in your body. This reaction if often not supposed to take place. The alien objects that enter your body can be found the following forms –

• dust
• chemicals from the household like cleansers, chlorine, soaps, paints, etc
• pollen
• some types of nuts
• citrus fruits
• some seafood varieties
• animal hair shed from pets
• pollutants from car and industrial emissions
• inhalation of smoke from fire
• some medications and so on

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Bronchial Asthma is a more specific term used to describe what is traditionally known as simply asthma, which is a chronic inflammatory disease that effects the airways by causing coughing, wheezing, chest tightness and shortness of breath “attacks“. More than twenty-two million Americans are suffering from various intensities of Bronchial Asthma. While not all cases of asthma have an element relating to allergies, a large number of them do. There is a strong genetic component for Asthma as well, so having a family history of Asthma is typically a reliable indication of a future with Asthma as well.

Because of the symptoms that are commonly associated with asthma, the disease is regularly associated with mast cells, T lymphocytes and Eosinophils. Mast cells are the cells that create allergies by releasing histamines and other chemicals. Histamine is a substance that is responsible for nasal stuffiness and dripping when you have a cold or are suffering from hay fever, as well as the constriction of airways that is common during an asthma attack, and the itchy areas when reacting to a skin allergy. Eosinophils are white blood cells that are associated with allergic diseases, and T lymphocytes are white blood cells, but these are associated instead with inflammation and allergies.

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Asthma is one of the more popular conditions that affect people and has been increasing in prevalence over the years. To date, one in four urban children are affected with asthma, and an approximate 20.5 million Americans have asthma.

The condition was identified by Greeks with the term, aazein, which meant “sharp breath”. While the word aazein first appeared in Homer’s Iliad, it was only used to describe the said medical condition around 450 BC by Hippocrates. Hippocrates noted, during this time, that the spasms relating to asthma were common among tailors and metalworkers. Galen, six centuries later, studied asthma in great detail and observed that the symptoms of asthma included bronchial obstruction. It was later on studied by the influential medieval philosopher, rabbi, and physician Moses Maimonides in 1190 AD, who wrote a treatise on the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of asthma. The connection between asthma and organic dust was made in the 17th century by Bernardino Ramazzini. It was only in the year 1901 that bronchodilators became widely used, and not until the 1960s that physicians recognized the need for anti-inflammatory medication in order to deal with a previously unrecognized inflammatory aspect of asthma symptoms.

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