Get to know the Different Types of Asthma.

There are two main types of asthma. The first is allergic asthma, and 9 out of 10 asthma sufferers fall into this group. This means that you or someone in your family is allergic to one or more common allergens.

The second type is non allergic asthma, or intrinsic asthma, of which doctors do not really know the causes because there is no history of the disease in your family, and you do not seem to be allergic to anything.

In either case your asthma may be mild, moderate or severe, and if it has been going on a long time it is chronic. Then there is brittle asthma, which is very rare, where you may have a sudden attack, usually brought on by an allergy, which comes out of the blue and is difficult to control. Finally, there is night time or nocturnal asthma.

Is this has anything to do with hay fever? Every year during the flowering seasons hay fever affects tens of millions of people. At the height of the hay fever season up to a third of us will show a positive reaction to a skin test using extracts of pollen.

Hay fever or to give it its more accurate name, seasonal allergic rhinitis, is not caused by hay, nor does it cause a fever. It is an allergy to airborne pollen from trees, grasses, plants and mould spores.

Some people are allergic to just one or two types of pollen, others are sensitive to several. In the southern hemisphere, grasses and trees are the major causes of hay fever. Allergic rhinitis generally is characterized by sneezing and a runny or blocked nose, often accompanied by itchy, watery eyes.

Sufferers may feel unattractive, grumpy, tired, run down and unable to concentrate. It prevents many from enjoying a good meal, and the constant sniffling and sneezing take the enjoyment out of kissing. It may even put the dampers on sex.

You can develop hay fever at any age, but it normally makes its appearance between 8 and 20, and rarely after 40. Men are more likely to have hay fever than women and contrary to popular belief, it seems to more common in cities and towns than the countryside.

Hay fever rates have increased fourfold over the past 20 years, despite falling pollen counts associated with the reduction of grassland. Scientist says that vehicle exhaust pollution is sensitizing the airways of hay fever sufferers, making then more prone to allergies.

Proteins on the pollen grains are washed off and stick to particles in the polluted air which, because they are so small, are breathed deeply into the lungs.

Diet and Eating Tips to Fight Asthma

According to the latest information, asthma with its coughing and wheezing is up 60% from about 25 years ago.Approximately 23 million Americans now have asthma with the figures continuing to climb. Experts claim that what you eat helps fight asthma and coupled with diet will go a long way toward curing or at least reducing asthma's inflammation.

Some of the research-based tips that were suggested:

First of all eat a Mediterranean type diet. Overall this is a good diet not only for fighting asthma but to lose weight and get healthier. The main ingredients of this diet are lots of of fruits and vegetables, whole grains and legumes, fish instead of meat, cooking with olive oil as well as staying away from white flour products and sugar. A new study finds that by eating a Mediterranean Diet the risk of asthma was cut by 78% after adjusting for gender, age, education, etc. Kids, who eat a Mediterranean diet, especially lots of oranges, apples, tomatoes and grapes, have less wheezing, allergic rhinitis and asthma. Children of mothers who followed a high-quality Mediterranean diet were 80 percent less likely to have persistent wheezing, the most common symptom of childhood asthma, the study found. They were also 45 percent less likely to develop allergies. The research, which was published in the journal Thorax, was carried out by teams from the Royal Brompton Hospital, in London; the University of Crete; Venezelio General Hospital in Crete and the Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology, in Barcelona. The Faculty of Nutrition and Food Sciences, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal, and Department of Immunoallergology, Hospital of S. João, Porto, Portugal.s. reported similar findings.

If you are overweight or obese you should lose weight because your odds of developing asthma jump 50%, according to a recent review of 330,000 subjects by researchers at Denver's National Jewish Health Center. They estimate that being overweight or obese accounts for at least 250,000 new cases of adult asthma every year. Although it's a fact that children that are overweight increased the chances for asthma no figures were given.

Eat the good fats and avoid the bad ones. Omega-3 oil, found in certain kinds of fish (sardines, salmon, tuna) is a potent anti-inflammatory. A study by Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School and reported in Nature Immunology found that adults who ate fish with high levels of omega-3 fatty acids reduced asthmatic symptoms. These fatty acids are found in cold-water fish such as salmon, mackerel and anchovies. Adults who never ate fish as children, were more apt to develop asthma and at an earlier age. An Indiana University study shows that high doses of fish oil of at least 5 g daily helped prevent exercise-induced asthma symptoms. Stay clear of omega-6polyunsaturated fats (in corn, soybean, regular safflower and sunflower oils, and in meat and many processed foods) as much as possible, as they induce inflammation and promote asthma according to studies by the University of Maryland Medical Center.

Low sodium intake won't help. Up until recently it was thought that a low sodium diet would help control asthma. Recently in a British study, published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, researchers compared the effects of a low-sodium vs. normal-sodium diet on asthma control in nearly 200 adults with asthma for six weeks. The study showed that subjects who restricted sodium intake for six weeks had just as many asthma symptoms as those on normal diets. It still might be a good idea to restrict your sodium intake though.

Pregnant women need to watch what they eat. Dutch research, reported in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine shows that pregnant women who eat nuts or nut products like peanut butter every day up their children's odds of developing asthma by nearly 50%.

What are the Causes of Asthma?

During an asthma attack, the patient's airways become irritated, narrowing and constricting, causing difficulty in breathing by restricting airflow.

Why do some people have asthma while others don't? Why is asthma more common in the Western world?

The causes of asthma are complicated.

It is include our genes, the things that we are exposed that may develop into allergies and contributing factors in the environment such as pollution that can determine whether these genes and allergies will cause asthma at some time during our lives.

Although asthma is not contagious and you cannot catch it through contact with another person, you can inherit the asthma tendency from your parents.

If a parent is a smoker then a child is twice as likely to develop asthma than children of non-smoking parents.

Children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy are often born with smaller airways, which can greatly increase the chances of the disease developing.

The "westernised" lifestyle and the environment in developed countries has a lot to do with the chances of whether a person will develop asthma or not.

These factors include pollution, allergies to house dust mites, cats, dogs, and moulds.

Ironically, it seems that childhood infections and exposure to substances from bacteria in a dirty environment, assuming such an environment doesn't kill you, seems to build up a protection against allergies and resistance to asthma that is why richer populations have more allergic disease.

Allergies are the cause of almost all asthma in young people, meaning that the patient has both inherited genes that have a tendency towards asthma and have been exposed to allergy - producing things in their environment. Both the allergies and the genes are the causes for developing asthma, because if either of them were not present then no asthma would develop.

At a Glance … Asthma - Causes

• When talking about diseases such as asthma, it is important to distinguish between causes and triggers.

• A cause is something without which the effect of having asthma will not happen. Without a cause a patient would not be asthmatic.

• Common causes of asthma include a family history of asthma, allergies and exposure to certain infections when young.

More explanation about asthma here.