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Show Your Doctor Says . . . The following ii one of series of articles written by members of iht Utah Staff Medical At lactation and published in cooperation with your total newspaper. Then articlei art scheduled to appear every other week throughout the year in an effort to belter acquaint you with problem! of health, and designed to imprort the well-being of th people of Utah. are those that leave behind various articles of furniture and various air-borne materials. Such a chance type of moving to find relief is often very expensive and usually requires many moves. There are many other reactions in asthma tha. account for gome of the patients pa-tients moving and getting relief. If the asthmatic will observe closely how he reacts day by day to his environment, what he eats breathes, and contacts, he often helps to find some of the causes of his asthma. As a result of this careful observation he can tell his doctor many things to guide him in what type of tests are necessary in order to find the exact causes of his condition. Another part of the medical history his-tory is aimed at trying to appraiso how much nerve tension is present. pres-ent. Nerve tension does aggravate many diseases and with asthma it is obviously present. A large group of asthmatics belong be-long to the hay fever group of bronchial asthma. This is a large group in which the asthma starts as simple hay fever. After a few seasons the first attack of asthma occurs. It is for this reason that the treatment of hay fever is often encouraged by the M.D. When the patient has told the story to the M.D. and the M.D. has looked carefully care-fully over this and examined the patient to determine the changes within the body that are produced by infection, by asthma, and by other diseases, then comes the question of testing to help find more of the detailed causes and tha secondary causes of the patient's pa-tient's asthma. This can often be done by very simple tests but at other times requires extremely detailed de-tailed testing. Skin testing often reveals many of these detailed causes. A program can be outlined to the patient for the purpose of helping him live in a manner that is compatible with happiness. This permits freedom of living without eating, breathing or contacting the various materials that produce asthma. Bronchia Asthma Cnmchial asthma is a disease that has been present since history has been recorded, with the onset possible to occur from the first day of life till the last day of life. One person out of every 100 people peo-ple born will have asthma due to materials that they breathe, or eat, or a combination of these. Another group of people including 1 person out of every 100 between the age of 18 nnd 35 will have asthma that is primarily connected with infection. infec-tion. This infection may be in any part of the body, but the growth of bacteria within the body is the primary factor concerning this particulai group. If you would consider con-sider the entire population of the United States it is estimated that at least 3 or 4 of the people will have bronchial asthma symptoms. The symptoms of bronchial asthma as-thma are those of difficult breathing breath-ing in which it is difficult for the patient to get air into the lungs but more difficult for him to get :' it out of the lungs. He, therefore, has n choking, wheezing sensation and a feeling as though there is a tremendous weight on his chest. Patients often have a ballooning of . the chest so that they appear to have more air in their lungs than normal. With this difficult respiration respir-ation they will very often cough up excessive amounts of mucus ;4; that is very sticky and difficult to cough out of their lungs. Spasm : of the breathing tubes is one of : the reasons they have difficulty in getting the air into the lungs and out of the lungs. In general then, we can classify asthma into 2 main groups: Those with infection and those without infection. The group without infection infec-tion occurs more early in life and those with infection later in life. Most asthmatics seek a single cause for their asthma and often this brings about articles telling of the relief some people have obtained ob-tained by moving to a certain area. A3 a result many people move from community to community hoping to find the specific relief. Those that move to a specific area and do get relief often have the pollen type of asthma where the pollens of the area they lived in are lift behind and are not present pres-ent in the new area. Another group It is possible to desensitize by means of injections the people that are sensitive to pollens and to the common things they breathe. Another treatment (and one that most asthmatics want quickly) is immediate relief. There are many satisfactory drugs that doctors are acquainted with to give this temporary tem-porary relief. The various drugs are often in tablet and capsule form and sometimes in hypodermic hypoder-mic form. The use of Cortisone and ACTH to relieve these conditions has been hoped to be a cure for asthma. These drugs offer relief for temporary periods in asthma, but do not affect a permanent cure of the disease. Many people ask, "Can asthma be cured," and the answer is that the asthmatic can be made free of attacks by controlling his inhaled materials, Infection material, hia infection levels, and his nerve tension ten-sion factors. Desensitization aids in this program very greatly. |