In the hot summer, people often use air conditioners to cool down, but every year, the number of asthma relapse cases caused by setting the air conditioner temperature too low to seek relief from the heat is increasing, due to the large temperature difference between indoor and outdoor environments.
Professor Zhang Hongyu from the Department of Respiratory Medicine at Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, Capital Medical University, explains that asthma is a common respiratory disease, and China currently has at least 20 million asthma patients. This group of people often experiences recurrent symptoms such as wheezing, shortness of breath, chest tightness, or coughing, which often occur at night or in the early morning. Asthma can be aggravated by inhaling allergens (such as pollen, dust mites) or other triggering factors (such as cold air, exercise). Judging from daily clinic visits, there are still four major misconceptions about asthma among the public. Misconception one: Feeling breathless means you have asthma.
Some people suspect they have asthma as soon as they experience symptoms of breathlessness and wheezing. In fact, there are many medical conditions that can cause breathlessness and wheezing. Some elderly people often suffer from diseases such as hypertension, coronary heart disease, arteriosclerosis, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Coupled with poor heart function, they are prone to experiencing breathlessness and wheezing, which is medically known as cardiac asthma. For the elderly with these organic diseases, especially those patients for whom bronchodilators are not effective, they should seek medical attention promptly. They need to undergo various auxiliary examinations such as ECG, cardiac ultrasound, X-ray chest film, and lung function tests to rule out conditions like left heart failure, spontaneous pneumothorax, or pulmonary embolism that cause breathlessness and wheezing, in order to get a correct diagnosis. Misconception two: A long-term cough means you have asthma.
This is likely a special type of asthma known medically as cough-variant asthma. If a patient has a persistent and recurrent cough for more than three weeks, often triggered by upper respiratory tract infections, strenuous exercise, or inhaling cold air, with normal chest imaging findings, and no response to antibiotics and expectorant/cough suppressant medications, they should consider the possibility of having cough-variant asthma. They should go to a major hospital for a bronchial provocation test to receive a correct diagnosis and treatment. Misconception three: Refusing to use steroid therapy.
Some asthma patients believe that bronchial asthma is caused by bronchial smooth muscle spasms and that treatment only requires bronchodilators. Professor Zhang Hongyu says: "This is a very wrong idea." After the 1980s, the medical community gradually came to understand that the essence of asthma is chronic airway inflammation, involving various cells (including eosinophils, mast cells, lymphocytes, etc.) and cellular components. Therefore, inhaled steroids must be used to eliminate this airway inflammation and avoid or reduce severe asthma attacks. Misconception four: Stopping medication when symptoms subside.
Some asthma patients, after a few weeks of treatment, see significant improvement in their wheezing symptoms, think they are cured, and stop taking their medication on their own. As a result, their wheezing symptoms worsen, and they may even experience life-threatening severe asthma attacks.
In reality, asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease of the airways that requires treatment for months or years to control the condition. Professor Zhang Hongyu emphasizes: "You must adhere to long-term inhaled steroids as prescribed by your doctor to achieve good control of the disease."
Professor Zhang Hongyu says that for asthma patients, anti-inflammatory treatment should be started as early as possible, with inhaled steroids being the first-line anti-inflammatory medication. For moderate to severe asthma, a combination of long-term, standardized anti-inflammatory therapy and long-acting bronchodilators should be used to relieve symptoms, relieve bronchial smooth muscle spasms, and reduce airway inflammation. After standardized long-term treatment, the condition of more than 80% of asthma patients can be well-controlled, allowing them to live and work like healthy people.