Steemit Learning Challenge-S21W4; Asthma"

Greetings and welcome. Am glad to be a part of another interesting class. Thank you @ashkhan for another episode or great learning.

What's Asthma? Write in your own words after getting knowledge from the lesson post.

Asthma is a persistent disease of the lungs that causes the muscles around the airways to be inflamed and tight thereby causing difficulty in breathing. Asthma is chronic and if not treated on time can be life threatening. It affects people across all age bracket and women are more prone to it.

Asthma has two major components:
The first is that the immune system becomes very sensitive and reacts hyper actively to allergens and this causes the lungs to be affected by these allergens. The second is that the lungs becomes inflamed causing the airways to swell and this leads to the linings the cell secreting excess mucus that inhibits breathing.

Types of asthma:

1. occupational asthma: This type is common in people whose job had to do with working with substances that irritates.
2. Exercise induced asthma: This type is as the name implies is induced by exercise.
3. Conventional asthma: This is the normal asthma that are none allergic.

Factors that can triggers asthma includes;

• Cold or respiratory infections
• Vigorous exercise
• Cigarettes smoking
• Exposure to air pollution indoors or outdoors
• Allergic reactions to molds, pollen, insects, dusts, feather
• Strong smell of chemicals and etc.

How would you diagnose asthma? Any clinical investigation or assessment tests?

To assess asthma some tests that are carried out includes;

Chest X-ray: This is used to check the condition of the lungs to diagnose the causes of wheezing or check for other complications in the lungs.

ABG’s (Arterial Blood gases): This test makes use of blood samples drawn from the arm, groin or waist to diagnose severe respiratory failures.

LFT (Lung function test): As a key test, this is used to diagnose and monitor how effective asthma medications are and have different types such as peak flow test and challenge test.

Sputum analysis: This helps to show the degree of inflammation of the airway through cellular markers.

In the physiology assessment, spirometer test is one of the test used.

Try to practice at least 3 exercises that you have learned from the lesson. Share images, gifs or videos while practising.

Diaphragmatic Breathing Exercise
This is also called belly breathing as it helps to expand the lungs, reduce effort in breathing and helps relaxation and stress and also improve athletic performance and sleep

Pursed lips breathing
This is expelling residual air gradually from the lungs through pursed lips and it helps to strengthen the muscles of the chest and improve the fun of the lungs and shortness of breath.

Chest stretches
The chest muscles shortens when they are weak hence chest stretches helps to lengthen and also strengthen the muscles of the chest.

Share your review after performing these exercises either on yourself, healthy individual or patient.

After performing these exercises, my breathing improved and it felt there was least resistance with my breathing. The chest stretches were very helpful as my chest muscles felt the impact of the stretch and I had a great feeling on my chest region.

The pulsed lips breathing and diaphragm breathing helped regulate my breathing and I had a sense of serenity. The impact was good on the body.

Thank you @ashkhan for this lesson. I ask @ruthjoe, @eliany and @ninapemda to join the challenge.