Sometimes a child begins to cough often, sneeze a lot, breathe with difficulty, as if with a sore throat; he has a runny nose and some other signs that make parents think: is their child really allergic or, worse, asthma? Of course, these symptoms can be a common cold, but if even after the prescribed treatment they do not go away or soon recur again, the idea of a cold has to be rejected. Most likely the child has increased bronchial reactivity, which is both an allergic and an asthmatic sign. And here it is very important not to make a mistake and unmistakably recognize what you have to deal with.
On the one hand, parents can make a serious mistake by taking the symptoms of bronchial asthma for allergies and thus not providing the child with proper treatment on time. But on the other hand, there is the likelihood of “healing” and excessive escalation of negativity, when due to any cough or cold, parents hang the label “asthmatic” on the child and expose it to completely unnecessary and even harmful restrictions.
The main symptoms of asthma, how not to confuse?
The main symptoms of bronchial asthma are a dry cough, often prolonged, and asthma attacks, as well as shortness of breath. For allergies , rashes, redness of the skin in certain places are often characteristic. Asthma attacks often worsen at night or in the morning. Allergy also manifests itself in contact with allergenic factors and stops after elimination. However, one or another allergen can provoke an asthma attack, so it’s easy to make a mistake here. Bronchial asthma is allergic in nature, and therefore it is more difficult to distinguish between them than, for example, to distinguish asthma from acute bronchitis, the nature of which is infectious. In addition, an allergy can go into a pre-asthmatic state, and then into asthma, and this is one of the factors that unite these two diseases and make it difficult to identify.
In this situation, you can give only one piece of advice. It must be clearly understood that not a single person, unless he is a doctor, can make a diagnosis on his own. No matter how well you are familiar with the symptoms and the general picture of the disease, there is always a risk of making a mistake. Only after passing the necessary tests, a professional physician can accurately determine what your child is sick with, especially if the two diseases have very similar symptoms, and prescribe a suitable treatment for bronchial asthma. Making a diagnosis at home and neglecting to visit a doctor can lead to an aggravation of the existing situation, the transition of the disease to a more severe stage, or even give an unexpected and very dangerous result.