Our thanks goes to Exhale (www.exhalenow.com) for
sponsoring this post and making it possible for Food Allergy Buzz to chat with Dr. Priya Bansal of the
Allergy and Asthma Center in Bloomingdale, Illinois, about asthma and its connection
to food allergies during this Asthma and Allergy Awareness Month. Exhale
provides a new and unique service which uses sophisticated technology to
capture particles in the air, at even a molecular level, to detect allergens in
indoor spaces which can trigger asthma.
Dr. Bansal spoke with me for about 45 minutes on Thursday,
May 26, 2017, and what follows is a summary of some of the highlights of our
conversation.
What is asthma?
Asthma is a disease that's involved when there is
inflammation in the airways and can be triggered by a number of things. It
causes inflammation in the large and small air passageways. When you have an
asthma attack, you get tightening in the smooth muscle surrounding the tissue,
less room for air to go through, and mucus gets stuck inside the airways.
How does one know if they have asthma?
You might see a cough, wheezing, shortness of breath. The
key is to know that these symptoms might be a sign of asthma. An allergist can
look at the patient's history with the symptoms to assess whether or not the
patient does indeed have asthma.
How does one manage asthma?
It depends on what your triggers are. You could have
allergic asthma--pollen, pets--respiratory, cold weather, emotions or stress,
medications, GERD, perfumes or fragrances. Sometimes there is a medication
taken in advance, or a person might need to wear a mask, or sometimes a rescue
inhaler is needed. Ideally, you want to prevent those triggers. If that is not
possible, then you have options for treatment.
How dangerous is asthma?
It can be very dangerous. People ignore the signs or do
more than they should, over-exerting themselves. Allergists can teach patients
how to treat the symptoms and how to prevent asthma attacks. "If you
recognize a problem, you stop doing what you're doing that's getting you into
trouble, and the faster you take your rescue inhaler, the better off you're
going to be."
How can a person know whether symptoms should be treated as
a food allergy symptom or asthma symptom?
Sometimes you can't tell at the beginning. It depends on
the history. Dr. Bansal emphasized that if you aren't sure about whether or not
you need epinephrine, the answer is usually yes! This is why preventative
measures and counseling from your allergist are so important.
Dr. Bansal advises patients to elevate their baseline.
"If your baseline is good, you will not get into trouble. But if you're
constantly having allergy symptoms..."(as an example) "allergy
symptoms are causing severe post-nasal drip, which are causing heartburn, which
is causing the asthma. If you fix the first problem, you won't have the other
problems." In other words, if you fix the problems and triggers, the
better you control your allergies or your triggers, the less of a problem your
asthma will be. Asthma management, like food allergy management, is not a
one-size-fits all. Asthma management depends on one's triggers, and allergists
provide very specialized, tailored treatments. For example, if your asthma is
triggered by environmental allergies, your allergist will work with you to
figure out what allergens are in your environment, and what are your triggers,
to determine what treatment is best. Allergists
like Dr. Bansal recommend services such as Exhale--which can detect
environmental allergens which are triggers for individuals with asthma—as it
can provide valuable information to assist in asthma diagnosis, prevention and
treatment. Uncovering allergens is most important for truly elevating the
baseline and helping people with allergic asthma caused by allergens.
Dr. Bansal explained the benefits of a service such as
Exhale. “A device like Exhale takes the guesswork out.” She recommends her
patients put the device in the bedroom because that is where they spend the
most time. Dr. Bansal explained with an example “Somebody might tell me ‘I
don’t open the bedroom windows, there’s no pollen in there.’ But if you have a
dog or cat, and the dog is coming into the room, and you don’t wipe them down
and they’ve been outside, and they have pollen on them, and they are bringing
pollen in the room, and the pollen level is high (per testing by Exhale), you
can address that. You can actually start wiping down the dog, and maybe now you
won’t be having the same allergy symptoms or asthma symptoms…so it…defines
better what is going on in your bedroom to tell you what the specific problem
is. And then once you have that data, combining it with the skin tests, and
talking with the allergist…If you are getting allergic symptoms, and the
testing and the reading on Exhale are matching, then you can be aggressive to
target that particular antigen to get the symptoms to go away.”
If I have an
inhaler, will I always need an inhaler?
No! Not necessarily. If you control the allergies and the
triggers, and take preventative action, and the breathing improves, you may
only need a rescue an inhaler and have mild/intermittent asthma.
How does asthma put those with food allergies at greater
risk?
Almost all food allergy action plans have a box that says
"Check if your child is asthmatic...the reason that's there is because the
asthmatic child is a higher risk during a food allergy reaction because it can
shut your airways down." If a patient has asthma and food allergies, and
asthma symptoms such as an occasional cough are ignored or overlooked, instead
of being treated, they will be in a much worse position if they have a food
allergy reaction. So many people are--appropriately so!--concerned about
avoiding a major food allergy reaction but yet overlook these mild asthma
symptoms which could make a food allergy reaction so much worse.
_________________________
I truly appreciated the opportunity to
speak with Dr. Bansal about the importance of being aware of asthma symptoms
and managing asthma. Many individuals with food allergies also have asthma, yet
we don't hear much in the food allergy community about the role asthma plays in
allergic reactions and the importance of managing asthma. Dr. Bansal emphasized
that asthma is actually easy to manage, once you learn what to watch for and
how to treat symptoms, and it is so very important to get asthma under control.
There are simple things we can do in our daily lives to minimize exposure to
environmental allergens which cause asthmatic symptoms. It's critically
important for individuals with asthma to take preventative action to limit
their exposure to their asthma triggers, especially individuals with food
allergies. In fact, Dr. Bansal stated that those with food allergies
"should aggressively target it because that will keep the food allergies
(more severe reactions) at bay.
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