Asthma Triggers: Common Causes and How to Avoid Them

Introduction

Are you an asthma sufferer? Well, then, you already know that your condition shows up like uninvited people in your life who try to make your life miserable. So are the asthma triggers!

Sometimes, you must be breathing just as well as you should, and at the next minute, it feels as if your lungs have given up and are striving hard. These are the uninvited asthma triggers that can show up anytime and make breathing tough. So, let’s break down and understand these asthma triggers in this article in order to breathe easily and stress-free.

What Are Asthma Triggers?

Asthma triggers are irritants or allergens present everywhere around you, but you cannot see them. They can make your airway inflamed and narrow, causing muscle constriction or bronchoconstriction, which makes breathing difficult by restricting the airflow. This leads to asthma symptoms, such as wheezing, coughing, shortness of breath, and chest tightness. These triggers make you struggle to gasp each breath.

Moreover, the interesting thing to know is that asthma triggers or irritants can be anything and everything around us (such as a situation or a substance) and in any form, such as molds, dust, mites, infection, emotions, medication, and so on, that can put your lungs at war to breathe easily. Therefore, you need to identify personal triggers because it will help you to develop coping strategies in advance to deal with and react to these sneaky irritants in a calm way to manage asthma effectively. This can be done with the help of an allergen sensitivity test (skin prick test or blood test) that identifies specific allergens that flare up your asthma symptoms.

What Are the Common Asthma Triggers and Their Effects?

You will never really understand the value of your breath until you find it difficult to breathe. Asthma triggers can make your breathing terrible; thus, knowing the common triggers and their effects is crucial.

1. Allergies and Asthma - The main culprits of asthma symptoms are allergies that can occur even from the tiniest harmless things, such as:

• Dust Mites - These are insect-like pests that live in homes, hiding in pillow covers, mattresses, carpets, blankets, and quilts.

• Pet Dander - Loving your furry pets can be dangerous sometimes. Yes! You heard it correctly. Skin flakes of your pets can also trigger your asthma.

• Mold - These microscopic fungi hide in damp or moist places in your home, release spores, and trigger allergic reactions.

• Pollen - Greenery around you is beautiful as long as it does not make you breathless, quite literally! Pollen is tiny grains that are the common cause of seasonal allergies. They are found running in the air and can be inhaled easily.

• Cockroach Allergens - Yikes! Cockroaches can shed their skin, which can trigger asthma attacks. The asthma allergens are also present in their feces and saliva.

Allergic reactions can cause runny noses, nasal congestion, skin reactions, and itchiness in the eyes, as well as coughing, wheezing, and shortness of breath.

2. Environmental Allergens: Asthma triggers are also present in the outside air, not just in your home.

• Tobacco Smoke and Secondhand Smoke - Smoking and asthma are an awful combination. Smoking tobacco directly or passively (secondhand smoke) can trigger an asthma attack or make the existing symptoms worse.

• Air Pollution: It can make breathing difficult even if you do not have asthma. Air pollution, such as ozone and smog, acts as triggers or allergens in the outside environment that can exacerbate or flare up asthma.

• Household Chemicals and Strong Odors - Cleaning and personal use products are chemical irritants that can cause your lungs to go through agony because their smells act as asthma triggers.

• Dust and Airborne Particles - A little dust might not hurt, but it can give you a breath-taking experience! Dust or particulate matter in the air can trigger asthma symptoms.

3. Respiratory Infections and Other Health Conditions

• Colds, Flu, Pneumonia - Respiratory conditions, as minor as the common cold or flu, can flare up asthma. These infections can also worsen the already-existing symptoms of asthma and potentially increase the risk of other respiratory complications, such as pneumonia (lung infection). Even conditions like sinus infection, nasal polyps (small growth inside the lining of the nose), and rhinitis (inflamed mucus membrane of the nose) cause a stuffy nose that leads to breathing problems and triggers asthma as well.

• GERD (Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease) - Not just the lungs but even your digestive system can make your breathing challenging. Know how? Acid reflux in GERD can inflame your airways, irritate the lung lining, and narrow the airway passage, which makes breathing difficult, thus triggering asthma attacks.

• Hormonal changes - Fluctuating hormones (such as low progesterone levels) in the body can also trigger your asthma, especially in women during pregnancy, menstruation, or menopause. Well, thanks, asthma! Is there anything that cannot trigger you? Guess no!

4. Exercise-Induced Asthma

Exercise is good for your health as long as it does not backfire, making you gasp for each breath. Physical activities can also poke asthma and cause symptoms like chest tightness, shortness of breath, and coughing. These symptoms can appear anytime before or after exercise, ranging from mild to severe, but may get resolved when you take some rest.

While exercising can get you in trouble, a few tips can help you manage exercise-induced asthma, such as:

• Proper warming up before exercise.

• Taking short breaks in between the sessions.

• Do low-intensity workouts.

• Use asthma inhalers before starting exercise.

• Avoid outdoor workouts in cold weather.

5. Weather and Air Quality

If you have asthma, nature can sometimes be harsh on you. Seasonal changes and weather conditions, such as humidity, extreme heat, dry air, and cold air, are bad for asthma and can trigger symptoms like wheezing, coughing, and chest tightness.

If you have asthma, make sure you check your AQI (Air Quality Index) before leaving your home, especially in extremely hot and humid weather or when pollutants are at their peak in the atmosphere.

6. Emotional Triggers

Can stress cause asthma? Well, Yes! It is not just mental health; your lungs, too, can be messed up by any kind of extreme emotions. Fear, anxiety, crying, stress, or laughing can all trigger asthma and make breathing hard for you. A laugh is not always funny, not for an asthma sufferer, at least.

When you feel emotional, you start hyperventilating (quick and deep breathing), which can narrow your airways and flare up asthma symptoms. You can manage this situation with mindful breathing that releases stress and also learn ways to cope with such strong emotions.

7. Medications that Trigger Asthma

As weird as it sounds, some medications can trigger asthma exacerbation. This includes sensitivity to non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as Aspirin, which is used to treat inflammatory conditions, pain, and fever, and beta-blockers, such as Propranolol hydrochloride, which is used for managing heart conditions and high blood pressure.

How to Identify and Avoid Your Asthma Triggers?

Now, the most important thing is how you can know about your asthma triggers. So this can be done in the following ways:

• You can keep an asthma diary to monitor your triggers, symptoms, and pattern of occurrence (for example, seasonal triggers like pollen) and understand when and how they flare up your asthma. Noting these potential triggers will let you know if they are present indoors or outdoors, and you can frame a personalized plan to manage asthma accordingly.

• Identifying potential triggers will also help you report them immediately to your doctor for allergy testing and guide you in coping with them.

• You can allergen-proof your home by cleaning and optimizing indoor air quality with humidifiers. Asthma triggers can also be avoided by wearing masks when going outside in a polluted area and managing your stress and overall mental health.

Why Does Asthma Get Triggered at Night?

Worsening asthma symptoms at night can be due to various reasons, such as fluctuations in lung function at night, accumulation of nasal secretion in the airways, increased exposure to environmental allergens in the bedroom, hormone imbalance, or effects of sleeping in a reclining position. The condition is often called nighttime or nocturnal asthma.

What Are the Asthma Management and Treatment Options?

You can manage asthma by taking necessary preventative measures and setting up long-term plans to avoid asthma attacks even before they begin. You must be thinking about how this is possible. Well, you can identify your asthma triggers, follow preventive measures to avoid them, and track the effectiveness of your medications to ensure they are keeping your asthma symptoms under control.

Preventative medications - These asthma medications will help reduce the airway’s swelling and help manage the symptoms. Preventive medications are for long-term asthma control to reduce swelling and open the airway for easy breathing. Long-term preventive medications include:

1. Quick-Relief Medications: These are rescue medications used for instant, short relief of asthma symptoms during the attacks. Examples include:

• Short-acting beta-antagonists, such as Albuterol and Levalbuterol, act within minutes and provide relief. You can take these medications with the help of hand-held (portable) inhalers or nebulizers, which can convert the medication into a mist, which can be inhaled through a mouthpiece or face mask.

• Anticholinergic agents, such as Tiotropium and Ipratropium, make breathing easier by providing immediate relief by relaxing the airways. Doctors mainly prescribe these agents for chronic bronchitis and emphysema, but they can also be used to manage asthma.

• Corticosteroids (oral and intravenous), such as Prednisone and Methylprednisone, manage airway inflammation if you have severe asthma symptoms. However, you should only use these medications for the short term because they can also cause side effects.

You should note that you do not need quick-relief medications very often as long as your long-term asthma control drugs are working effectively. However, in case of asthma flare-ups, quick-relief inhalers provide instant relief.

2. Long-Term Medications: These are the main pillars of asthma treatment, and they work by managing symptoms each day to prevent the likelihood of asthma attacks. Long-term medications include:

• Corticosteroids (inhaled), such as Beclomethasone, Budesonide, Fluticasone propionate, Fluticasone furoate, and Mometasone. These medications have a low risk of side effects, but you need to consume them for a longer duration to avail all the potential benefits.

• Combination inhalers, which contain beta antagonists (long-acting) along with inhaled corticosteroids, such as Formoterol-Mometasone, Fluticasone-Salmeterol, Fluticasone Furoate-Vilanterol, and Budesonide-Formoterol.

• Leukotriene modifiers, such as Zileuton, Montelukast, and Zafirlukast, can also be used to manage asthma symptoms.

• You can also use theophylline to relax the muscles around the airways and keep them open for easy breathing. You can take this as a daily pill, but the doctor usually does not prescribe it as frequently as other medications for asthma.

3. Allergy Medications: These are used to treat asthma attacks triggered by some allergic triggers. Medications include:

• Immunotherapy or allergy shots help your immune system to react less to allergic triggers. You can take these shorts initially once a week (for a few months), then once a month (for about three to five years).

• You can also take biologics, such as Dupilumab, Omalizumab, Tezepelumab, Rezlizumab, and Mepolizumab, to manage severe asthma conditions.

Inhalers and Emergency Action Plans

Inhalers help you breathe during asthma attacks and thus are the life savior for you. But are they enough to manage the condition? Well, not really! You should have hands-on experience using an inhaler along with an emergency action plan to rescue yourself. A well-planned game plan can only make the asthma attacks a little less scary for you and prepare you before an attack hits.

So, you can prepare a written guide for an emergency action plan and mention your asthma symptoms, triggers (known), what needs to be done, write about your medications and when to use them, and when you need to call for medical or emergency help.

Let’s know how you can frame an asthma action plan:

• Identify your symptoms or early warning signs, such as wheezing, coughing, shortness of breath, chest tightness, using a rescue inhaler frequently, or gasping for air at nighttime.

• Monitor your lung function with the help of a PEF (peak expiratory flow) meter if recommended by the doctor.

• Follow the prescription medication schedule diligently for both reliever and controller inhalers (taken on a daily basis).

• Prepare an “asthma zone” guide to track your symptoms:

1. 1. 1. Good to Go! (Green Zone) - Normal breathing, no symptoms. Continue taking daily medication as or if prescribed by the doctor.
      2. Caution! (Yellow Zone) - Your symptoms are mild, such as coughing or shortness of breath. In this situation, you can use your inhaler (rescue) and keep monitoring the symptoms.
      3. Danger! (Red Zone) - Act fast in this situation. If your symptoms are severe and you struggle to breathe, immediately seek medical help.

• If your symptoms are flaring up and you are already in the red zone, multiple puffs of inhaler are ineffective, and you even cannot speak clearly - Call Emergency Help!!

• You should also not forget to mention your emergency contact details in the written guide.

Lifestyle Changes

• If you have asthma, you must keep your house free from triggers and make it a safe place for your lungs to breathe clean air. You can use air filters or purifiers and clean them regularly.

• There are also asthma-friendly exercises, such as relaxation and controlled breathing, that can help improve respiratory health and overall quality of life.

• Eat healthy food, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, and fatty fish (omega-3), and avoid processed food, dairy, and sugary foods or drinks.

• Also helps relieve airway inflammation and improve lung function.

• Sleep well and manage your stress with deep breathing, meditation, and yoga.

• You should also quit smoking and try to avoid secondhand smoke as well.

• Also, stay hydrated and consume at least eight glasses of water daily, as it helps to keep mucus in the airways thin and makes breathing easier.

Conclusion

Asthma is a long-term (chronic) disease known to be triggered by some irritants or allergens (asthma triggers). The condition cannot be cured completely; however, there are treatment options available to manage the asthma symptoms effectively with certain medications and lifestyle changes. Therefore, you can manage your symptoms with preventive care medications that provide long-term control over your asthma condition.

Key Takeaway From iCliniq

The doctors at iCliniq are very well aware of asthma conditions and their possible triggers that can cause asthma attacks. At icliniq.com, we are committed to providing expert guidance and personalized care for those affected by this condition.