Asthma causes, triggers, and symptoms

Children are those predominantly affected by asthma. Some children who are diagnosed with asthma find it drastically improves or even disappears as they grow up.

If you are not diagnosed with asthma but experience asthma symptoms whilst exercising, you may have exercise-induced asthma. Predominantly affecting elite athletes or those doing physical activity in cold environments, this type of asthma causes breathlessness, coughing, or fatigue during or after exercise.

Exercised-induced asthma can be treated with different types of inhalers. Relievers are usually better used before you exercise as a ‘pre-emptive’ measure. They are administered before physical activity or other long-acting bronchodilator treatments.

Allergic asthma is – quite self-explanatorily – asthma triggered by allergens, such as pollens, pets, or dust mites. It can be managed with a reliever inhaler and by avoiding these triggers as much as possible.

Some people only suffer from asthma flare-ups during certain seasons. For instance, it can occur in spring when there is lots of pollen in the air or winter when the temperature drops. For this reason, if you have seasonal asthma, you may only need to administer your asthma medication during said seasons.

This less common type of asthma does not have any definite causes. Unlike allergic asthma, there isn’t a trigger in the air causing symptoms. It can often develop later on in life and can be more severe than allergic asthma.

Occupational asthma is generally a type of allergen asthma. If you work in an environment with allergens in the air and only suffer from asthma symptoms during workdays, you may have occupational asthma.

Examples of workplaces that can trigger occupational asthma are construction sites, bakeries (flour in the air), or healthcare (dust on latex gloves).

Difficult asthma refers to asthma that is hard to manage or control. Other health issues can cause difficult asthma, such as allergies, or it can occur due to simply forgetting to administer the correct medicine.

Symptoms of difficult asthma include:

• A persistent cough that does not go away.
• Using your reliever inhaler three or more times a week.
• Experiencing frequent asthma attacks.

Formerly known as ‘brittle asthma’, this variation refers to asthma which suddenly and unexpectedly worsens. Severe asthma is not as easy to manage with standard asthma treatments and may require the individual to take a new kind of medication called biologics.

If you experience any of the following, you may have severe asthma:

• You experience very frequent asthma attacks.
• You experience ongoing symptoms despite administering the correct doses of your inhaler or medication.
• You’re using your reliever inhaler more than three times a week.

Adult-onset asthma symptoms are the same as those of other variations of asthma. However, different variations of asthma generally begin during childhood.

Some possible causes of adult-onset asthma include exposure to smoke (either through smoking or secondhand), hormonal changes (only with female hormones), stress or even occupational asthma (see above).