| Learn about asthma and its symptoms |
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Research hasn’t yet found out exactly what causes asthma, although it is widely believed to be a variety of allergy, at least partially.
Asthma often shows up in association with hay fever and eczema, suggesting that these conditions may be genetic and therefore inheritable. This means that if you and your partner both suffer asthma, there’s a good chance that your children will, too. Similarly, if a member of your immediate family has one or more of these conditions, there’s a higher likelihood that you will develop asthma.
However, genetics is only one factor in the likelihood of an individual having asthma, as several environmental factors also seem to play a part.
Ironically, the standards of hygiene and housing characteristic of modern Western society seem to be one of the environmental factors that has seen such a rapid rise in asthma over the last twenty years or so – some speculate that having houses that are less draughty have an effect. Our changing diet may also have had an effect on the rate of asthma diagnosis/development.
Smoking, as you may expect, is definitely an environmental factor that can take the blame for children developing asthma. Smoking during pregnancy and being exposed to parents’ smoking makes a child far more likely to develop asthma.
Pollution can also cause asthma and it can make the symptoms more extreme, as pollution contains a high level of irritants that are breathed in. Sometimes these environmental irritants/pollutants are produced in the workplace, which leads to a person with a predisposition towards asthma to develop a full-blown case of what is known as “workplace asthma.”
In adults, asthma may develop as the aftermath of a viral infection in the chest/lungs.
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