LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Asthma: Airways
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Asthma is a chronic lung condition with ongoing airway inflammation that results in recurring acute episodes (attacks) of breathing problems such as coughing, wheezing, chest tightness, and shortness of breath. These symptoms occur because the inflammation makes the airways overreact to a variety of stimuli including physical activity, upper respiratory infections, allergens, and irritants. Exposure to these stimuli--often called triggers--creates more swelling and blocking of the airways. Asthma episodes can be mild, moderate, or even life-threatening. Vigorous exercise will cause symptoms for most students with asthma if their asthma is not well-controlled. Some students experience symptoms only when they exercise.
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Asthma (Az-muh) is a chronic disease that affects your airways. The airways are the tubes that carry air in and out of your lungs. If you have asthma, the inside walls of your airways are inflamed (swollen). The inflammation (IN-fla-MAY-shun) makes the airways very sensitive, and they tend to react strongly to things that you are allergic to or find irritating. When the airways react, they get narrower, and less air flows through to your lung tissue. This causes symptoms like wheezing (a whistling sound when you breathe), coughing, chest tightness, and trouble breathing, especially at night and in the early morning.
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Asthma affects a person's bronchial (pronounced: brahn-kee-ul) tubes... known as airways. When a person breathes normally, air is taken in through the nose or mouth and then goes into the trachea (windpipe), passing through the bronchial tubes, into the lungs, and finally back out again. But people with asthma have airways that are inflamed. This means that they swell and produce lots of thick mucus. They are also overly sensitive, or hyperreactive, to certain things, like exercise, dust, or cigarette smoke. This hyperreactivity causes the smooth muscle that surrounds the airways to tighten up.
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Asthma occurs when the main air passages of your lungs, the bronchial tubes, become inflamed. The muscles of the bronchial walls tighten, and cells in the lungs produce extra mucus further narrowing your airways. This can cause minor wheezing to severe difficulty in breathing. In some cases, your breathing may be so labored that an asthma attack becomes life-threatening.
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Asthma needs to be managed with controller medications — not just treated with a rescue medication when it gets out of control. A controller, or maintenance, medicine helps control inflammation and prevents the airways from reacting to asthma triggers so a person can breathe easier. Controller/maintenance medicines work best if taken every day, as prescribed by a physician. Maintenance therapies, which include newer combination asthma treatments such as SYMBICORT® (budesonide/formoterol fumarate dihydrate) Inhalation Aerosol, not only help control asthma symptoms, but ... help to improve lung function. SYMBICORT delivers improved lung function within 15 minutes of the first dose and at subsequent doses, offering asthma patients the opportunity to experience control of their asthma symptoms. Administered twice daily, SYMBICORT is a combination of budesonide, an inhaled corticosteroid (ICS), and formoterol, a rapid and long-acting beta2-agonist (LABA) for patients 12 years of age and older.
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Asthma medicine often is taken through an inhaler (say: in-hay-lur). An inhaler is a plastic tube that holds a container of medicine. You may have seen a friend or someone in school using an inhaler, which is held up to the mouth. A kid holds the inhaler up to his or her mouth and breathes in. The medicine comes out in a mist that goes into the lungs. The medicine in the mist relaxes the airways, so the person can breathe easier.
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