What’s The Link Between Asthma And Eczema?
There are various medical conditions that have no cure; several of them are serious while others just tend to complicate our lives. Their symptoms can be managed, but the scientific community has yet to find a definitive cure for them. Typically these diseases are not related to each other at all; developing one is not going to cause someone to develop another. Yet in a number of instances, like with regard to eczema and asthma, there’s reason to believe that developing one will trigger the other one too.
Eczema can be described as a disease that affects your skin – the outer layer of the skin (the epidermis), gets inflamed and is usually quite painful. The problems can vary from quite mild to very severe, and include blisters on the skin, cracking, flaking, crusting, itchiness, swelling, and redness, as well as bleeding and oozing in more acute cases. There are certain pharmaceutical drugs which are useful to treat eczema, and they are referred to as corticosteroids. These kinds of medications are very successful at managing the sufferer’s eczema; yet the disease can’t be completely eliminated at this point in time.
Asthma, meanwhile, entails long term irritation of the lungs in which the air passages become narrowed so that breathing becomes strenuous or almost impossible. Approximately 7% of the population in America experiences asthma and 300 million people internationally suffer from it. Indicators of asthma include shortness of breath, even when at rest; nighttime coughing; a persistent cough that sounds like clearing of the throat; and tightness in the chest. Asthma has different severity levels as well; attacks run the gamut from minor to moderate. Although usually it can be kept under control using prescriptions, it is also incurable.
So just how do these illnesses, which are apparently so dissimilar, have any connection to each other? The relation isn’t entirely known, yet it’s been determined that 50% of all young children who develop eczema will go on to acquire asthma too. Doctors have determined that when eczema manifests, it causes a substance to be secreted by the body’s injured skin. This substance ends up flowing through the bloodstream and throughout the lungs, and then triggers asthma-like problems that ultimately expand into the full-blown condition. This is why young children who have eczema will frequently go on to be afflicted with asthma too.
For the healthcare society, this is an enormous advance. They now believe that if they begin treating eczema more aggressively and make certain that the body doesn’t begin manufacturing that substance to start with, then many of the kids who have eczema will not go on to develop asthma. As long as they are triumphant, a huge number of children will be able to enjoy their lives without this crippling disorder.
Eczema is a condition that covers a number of different skin problems, from dyshidrotic to nummular eczema. It reveals itself through a number of different symptoms, such as flaky red patches on the skin that are unbearably itchy. To find out how to identify and deal with eczema, visit the Eczema Treatment site.