What are the myths surrounding asthma?

Though facts about bronchial asthma are not unknown, myths are also associated to it.

Clearing the air, Dr Sameer Nanaware, consultant- pulmonology at Global Hospitals, Mumbai, said, people feel asthma is contagious, but it is actually not. It can only affect genetically resembling individuals and that too not everyone. It depends on how strong the allergy gene works in that person.

People also fail to understand that it's not the environment which causes asthma in most cases, rather the atmospheric factors and the pollutants trigger allergy and thereby exacerbate asthma.

Dr Nanaware further said that unlike the common consensus, asthma is curable if diagnosed at an early age and treated properly.

The most common myth is related to the use of inhaler and the taboo that they become dependent on the same. However they need to understand that these devices give targeted drug delivery at the lung where the actual medicine needs to work something similar as a cream is applied to the skin for a skin problem, he continued.

The doctor concluded saying, these myths actually increase the fear in the patients, which prevent them from actually receiving the right treatment to win over the problem.