Doctor, I checked on baidu, asthma is likely self-healing, then my child’s asthma can not be treated?

Before we can answer that question, we need to understand what asthma really is.

Asthma is a disease of chronic airway inflammation and hyperresponsiveness.

Chronic airway inflammation refers to the swelling of airway wall, increased mucus secretion and contraction of airway smooth muscle in children with asthma, which leads to lumen narrowing.

Airway hyperresponsiveness refers to airway sensitivity and vulnerability, especially after exposure to cold air, physical and chemical stimuli, allergens, hyperventilation and exercise, a series of reactive symptoms will appear.

Asthma can be compared to a huge iceberg. The wheezing symptoms are just the tip of the iceberg at sea level, and there is a huge ice body under the sea. This is the chronic inflammation of asthma, so we need to treat not only the wheezing symptoms, but also the chronic airway inflammation of the huge ice body below the sea level.

Why treat asthma, and what risks does it pose to children?

Asthma mainly affects lung function.
Impairment of lung function will lead to decreased exercise endurance, affect the children’s collective living and athletic ability, and continue to have persistent impairment of lung function in adulthood, especially in old age. Daily life will also be affected, such as walking, climbing, climbing stairs, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and emphysema.
In China, when the cognition of asthma is insufficient, the death caused by the acute attack of asthma is the main harm of asthma.
And asthma caused by growth retardation especially short height is also more common.
It also causes children’s inferiority, a variety of psychological problems, a variety of family problems and parents’ anxiety, increasing the family’s medical costs and so on.
Our beloved Chairman Mao died of emphysema, and the famous singer Teresa Teng did not escape an acute attack of asthma.

So can asthma heal itself?

Infants and young children with the growth of age, the growth and development of the lung and immune function gradually mature, indeed, some infants and young children wheezing gradually relieved, after 6 years of age, wheezing attacks reduced, or even no attack.
Studies have now shown that 80 percent of adults with asthma have impaired lung function, with their first wheezing episode occurring within the age of 3.
And some children with asthma who seem to heal on their own suddenly have an asthma attack, a relapse, later in life.
Asthma in outpatient service, there is a child’s mother, talk to the doctor says she is breathing frequently, in elementary school before the parents did not seriously, junior high school of time don’t breathe heavily, suddenly thought of asthma have self-healing, result in again breathing again and again, since the birth of her baby, now is also a long-term drug use, drug withdrawal.

So if a child already has impaired lung function, don’t try to heal itself years later, which may or may not occur.
If a child is normal lung function, the number of breath is not a lot, allergen detection basic normal, no asthma or repeated wheezing family members in the family, is that you can consider to clinical observation, if there are still breathing frequently attack, review or breath nitric oxide have abnormal lung function, to start the treatment of asthma.