Conversations with Aunt Emmy by Patricia Edwards

Conversations with Aunt Emmy by Patricia Edwards

Welcome to the New Year with the promise of abundant good health, dreams fulfilled and enough prosperity to keep financial stress to a minimum.

On December 26^th, the Sunday after Christmas we did not broadcast a show, but were back on the air the January 2, 2011!

January will start a new topic of conversation  about health and that topic is Asthma. On Sunday’s show our Healthful Tip: breathe deeply at least 5-10 times per day to truly aerate the lung. Over 300 million people have Asthma and it has no cure and is a complex disease.  Aunt  Emmy has been an asthmatic all her life and has learned and knows how important an engaged partnership with your doctor is in living a symptom free life or at least being able to meet the challenges before they affect  your health or even your life.

Asthma was chronicled as a disease over 3,500 years ago and was described by Hippocrates as labored breathing- he was not kidding!  Aunt Emmy pointed out that when people get a diagnosis of Asthma they are usually not in the same state of devastation as when a diagnosis of cancer or HIV/AIDS is presented.  Asthma is not seen as life threatening or very serious.  Yet it is! 

What is Asthma?  Asthma is an inflammatory disease which creates obstruction of the air flow in the lungs as the bronchioles oft times fill with mucus and the muscles around the bronchioles (the breathing tubes) become tighter and therefore, the bronchioles become narrow which prevents the flow of air. Signs and symptoms which could indicate Asthma are cough, wheezing, shortness of breath, tightness in the chest.  Well these are symptoms for other diseases as well- so how do they know it is asthma?   On next week’s show we will discuss some of the testing which is done, but a careful history combined with testing will help in the diagnosis.

Questions: Do I have Asthma?

 What is asthma?

How will you make your diagnosis to be sure it is Asthma and not some other disease?

Loss of time from work and loss of time from school in most countries is attributed to Asthma.  Puerto Rico in the Caribbean has the highest incidence of Asthma and in spite of research there is no definitive conclusion on why this is so.  But asthma as we stated is complex and is different for every person.  Invite your friends, your family, your co-workers to  listen in to Conversations with Aunt Emmy on www.blogtalkradio.com/auntemmy on Sunday afternoons at 4:30pm or call -321-375.

Ciao, Walk good and we will have a nugget on Breast Cancer  interspersed throughout this series on Asthma.