Archive for December, 2008

Are you suffering with seasonal allergies? If you are suffering with seasonal allergies, you already know how changing season can disturb your health.

In addition, if you have asthma, the condition will become much critical for you.

Hence, it becomes very essential for you to know all those triggers that can bring allergy flare ups.

Here are most common triggers of seasonal allergies that can bring allergy flare ups.

Ragweed

This is the most common weed plant found in US that can produce pollens in millions and billions every year. Ragweed easily grows along roadside, yards or even on the sides of rivers, lake and also in vacant grounds. It brings lot of problem and allergy flare ups for allergy sufferers in months of June to November.

Mold

Molds are responsible to cause allergic reactions in great number. They thrive in moist and warm weather conditions or even in your home itself. You have to be very cautious with mold spores.

Grass

Did you ever expect that grass can trigger allergy flare ups? But it is the fact that grasses are highly active in summer season and they are responsible for many allergic reactions. So, avoid the places where you can get in contact with grass.

Some patients with severe asthma who also have allergic sensitivity to certain fungi enjoy great improvements in their quality of life and on other measures after taking an antifungal drug, according to new research from The University of Manchester in England.

“We knew that many people with severe asthma are sensitized to several airborne fungi which can worsen asthma without overt clinical signs.

The question was: does antifungal therapy provide any clinical benefit,” said David Denning, F.R.C.P., F.R.C.Path., professor of medicine and medical mycology at The University of Manchester and lead investigator of the study.

In 2006, the most recent year for which official statistics are available, there were more than 16 million adults with self-reported asthma in the U.S.; about 20 percent of them have severe asthma.

A small number of severe asthmatics—about one percent— are known to have a syndrome called allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis, an extreme allergy to Aspergillus fumigatus fungus that is associated with the long-term colonization of their respiratory tracts with the fungus.

Read more at EurekAlert

Many of us are welcoming family or traveling to see loved ones over the holidays. There are plenty of stresses with holiday travel, but allergies need not be one of them.

Some planning and communication can go a long way toward making sure that everyone enjoys the holidays.

Ask your guest if there are any concerns about staying at your home. Know ahead of time whether the holiday potpourri or wood-fired stove is going to bother someone.

If a guest is allergic to your pets, keep them out of the room where your guest will stay and then put fresh linens on the bed.

It is very helpful to wash the pillows and blankets as well. Cat allergen actually dissolves in water and easily washes out of bedding.

Uncomfortable situations can arise when a family member with asthma visits the home of a smoker. It may be especially hard to ask an older member of the family to smoke outside of their own home.

Patience and understanding are needed on both sides. If, for example, your child’s asthma is poorly controlled at the time of the visit it may be easier on everyone to get a hotel or make alternate arrangements.

Snoring and daytime sleepiness are not associated with allergic rhinitis, but are associated with obstructed nasal passages, regardless of an individual’s allergic status, according to an article.

One persistent symptom of allergic rhinitis, a runny nose due to allergies, is nasal obstruction.

The authors of the article point out that the resulting obstructed breathing can cause complications.

“People with nasal obstruction often experience other symptoms, including headache, thirst, lack of concentration, daytime cognitive deficits, daytime sleepiness and disturbed sleep, which impair their daily and social activities,” they write.

“There has been growing awareness that the morbidity [illness] of allergic rhinitis in the general population is increasing and is leading to a decline in school and work performance, resulting not only in a medical economic loss but also in a large social economic loss.”

In order to explore the relationship between nasal obstruction, snoring, and excessive daytime sleepiness with the presence or absence of allergies, Nobuaki Hiraki, M.D., and colleagues at the University of Occupational and Environmental Health, Kitakyushu, Japan, analyzed a survey distributed to 1,878 workers, 78% (1,459) of whom responded with sufficient information to perform the analysis.

Read more at Medical News Today

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) have recalled two types of cold and flu tablets following reports of a number of anaphylactic and allergic reactions.

The national recall applies to all packets of Nyal Cold and Flu Fighter, and Nyal Cold and Flu Fighter Day and Night and the TGA has advised people who have these medicines to return them to their place of purchase for a full refund.

The class 1 recall applies to all product batches and expiry dates - the products have been supplied Australia-wide primarily through Coles, Woolworths, Big W and Priceline stores and the recall means defects in the products are potentially life-threatening or could cause a serious risk to health.

The TGA says these products contain the herbs Andrographis paniculata (Andrographis), Sambucus nigra (Elderberry) and Salix alba (White willow), and the night-time tablet contains the herb Valeriana officinalis (Valerian).

While a specific cause for the adverse reactions to the herbal remedies has not yet been identified, consumers are advised to stop using the products immediately and return them to the place of purchase and anyone who has used one of these products recently and has concerns, should consult their doctor.

Actually, when you are with kids there is no guarantee that they will not face any health risk.

So, just imagine what will be the condition of your asthmatic kid in your absence? It will be very frightening to even think of it.

That’s why it is very essential for you to educate your kid with emergency asthma tips.

Here are few tips that can help you in your task of educating your kid about asthma.

Teach them controlled breathing

It is quite possible for your asthmatic kid to often struggle to catch his breathe. In fact, it is a condition that makes asthma much worse.

So, be sure to teach him how to control his breath so that he can feel much better when he encounter an asthma attack.

Teach how to relax

Be sure that your child knows how to relax himself when he encounters serious asthma attack. Tell him not to undergo extreme stress that can trigger asthma attack.

Teach him how to use inhalers

It is very essential for your child to know how to use inhalers when he has an asthma attack so that whenever he experiences asthma attack, he can control the condition going worse.

Research funded by Asthma UK has led to the development of a vaccine treatment that can prevent asthma-like symptoms in mice.

Dr Noble and his team at King’s College London have been studying allergic mechanisms in mice and investigating whether it is possible to regulate the immune system’s response to potential allergic triggers.

Sometimes the immune system initiates the wrong type of response to harmless substances such as dust and pollen, which can result in allergic responses and asthma. It is this overactive response which the vaccine would aim to prevent.

Dr Noble’s team is part of the world-renowned MRC-Asthma UK Centre in Allergic Mechanisms of Asthma. They have developed a vaccine which suppresses allergic immune responses by boosting the cells which regulate the body’s protective mechanisms.

They found that after treating mice with their vaccine they could detect millions of these activated cells in the mice’s blood, which then prevented the mice from having an allergic response to an asthma trigger.

In the past, vaccine treatments have failed because they haven’t activated sufficient numbers of cells so the protective immune response simply wasn’t powerful enough.

A Kansas State University graduate student has found a correlation between childhood obesity and asthma.

Sara Rosenkranz, doctoral student in human nutrition, Manhattan, conducted research that found that healthy children with higher levels of body fat and lower levels of physical activity had greater amounts of airway narrowing after exercise.

“Kids who are overweight and inactive are having — even at the age of 8 to 10 years old — a negative response to exercise challenge tests, which might be contributing to the increase that we’ve been seeing over the past several decades in asthma prevalence as well as obesity prevalence,” Rosenkranz said.

Rosenkranz worked with other K-State faculty and students to recruit 40 children in the 8- to 10-year-old age range to participate in exercise studies.

All of the children were healthy, meaning none of took medication or had a diagnoses or history of acute or chronic disease, including asthma.

For Rosenkranz’s project, the children completed pulmonary function tests, an exercise test that doctors often conduct to determine if children have asthma, and body composition tests.

The children also took questionnaires to determine if they were active or inactive compared to the standards of their age, gender and ethnicity.

Asthma is a chronic lung disease that causes serious breathing problems and severe discomfort for the affected person.

It can be triggered by stress, anxiety, exercise, cold air and even perfumes. Be very cautious how you deal with it, as it can turn into a life-threatening problem for anyone.

Various treatment options and alternative methods are available for asthma treatment including aromatherapy, using essential oils.

Even though many asthmatics say that aromatherapy can exacerbate asthma, essential oils offer promising results if used in appropriate way.

How aromatherapy works to treat asthma?

Aromatherapy is most helpful in the treatment of asthma because many essential oils have calming and soothing effects that encourage ease of breathing. Most essential oils are absorbed into the cell’s lining of respiratory passages and work well on respiratory ailments.

If you suffer from serious asthma attacks or the scents or smell of essential oils cause attack, it is better to use oils topically by rubbing rather than inhaling them.

How safe is aromatherapy?

While essential oils offer promising results, caution must be exercised when choosing them. Eucalyptus oil, in particular, should be strictly avoided.

The risks of two widely used asthma drugs outweigh their benefits for both children and adults, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel said.

The health panel targeted Serevent and Foradil, made jointly by Novartis AG and Schering-Plough, for restrictions, but it excluded Advair, Glaxo’s biggest-selling drug in the class of medications known as long-acting beta-agonists. It also left alone a fourth such drug, AstraZeneca’s Symbicort.

The health experts did not say that the use of Serevent and Foradil should be abandoned altogether.

Instead, they said the medications’ labeling should be reworded to urge doctors to use the drugs along with an inhaled corticosteroid — as guidelines already recommend.

That may help explain why Advair and Symbicort were spared. Serevent contains just one active ingredient, salmeterol, while Foradil contains only formoterol.

Advair is a combination of both salmeterol and fluticasone (an inhaled corticosteroid), while Symbicort contains formoterol and another steroid (budesonide). All of these drugs relax airway muscles, letting asthma patients breathe more easily.

The controversy over these drugs has been going on for several years, with two FDA officials recently calling for banning the use of these drugs for anyone under 17.