How man's best friend can become an asthma sufferer's biggest enemy

One of the main reasons why asthma is so widespread and difficult to control is that it is a very individual disease. While one asthma sufferer might not have any ill effects when faced with a high pollen count, another could be getting rushed to hospital. The stimuli that cause asthma attacks are called triggers. These can be cold air, exercising, pollen, pollution, and yes, household pets are on the list, too.

Now asthma sufferers have another reason to hate 'roaches

Everyone knows that cockroaches are disgusting little insects (make that disgusting big insects), but did you also know they are a prime suspect in the triggering of asthma attacks? Several separate studies have been made in recent years and their results have been far from reassuring.

Go to bed with a bug and wake up with asthma

If I were to tell you that every night you sleep with thousands of insects right there in the bed with you, you would probably like to believe I was crazy. I'm not. Sorry. These insects are called dust mites. I know, I know, you've never seen one in your bed. You can't, as they are microscopic entities. A hundred of the little pests wouldn't fill up a speck of dust. Now before everyone takes a long sigh of relief that could cause a tornado in Texas, let's get something clear; Dust mites can be a health hazard, especially if you suffer from asthma. The problem that they cause is because of a protein they create that can trigger an asthma attack. Just one of these mites can make two hundred times its body weight in waste, waste containing this protein, so you don't need to be Einstein to do the math. Suffice to say that there's a lot of dust mite protein in every house in the entire world.

What is asthma?

Asthma is the disease of the twenty-first century. If Typhoid and Cholera have had their day, then they only made room for a new epidemic. The fact that asthma doesn't make the news headlines all the time is simply because it is not as dramatic as the two former diseases. It still kills, but because hundreds at a time aren't falling down dead, the media doesn't really want to know about it. Believe me, asthma has the potential to be even worse than both Typhoid and Cholera put together.

Keeping an asthma diary

Asthma is a strange disease. Though it effects over 20 million people in the US alone, no two cases are exactly alike. Doctors now know that it is a genetic condition, meaning it is passed down from generation to generation (see it was your father's fault all along), but what varies greatly are the triggers which set off an attack. A trigger can be any external effect (such as cold air, animals, dust, etc) which our bodies react to. Each sufferer has different tolerance levels to different triggers, which would be great if we knew what our own particular triggers were. But we don't, and herein lies the problem.