Why do some people get asthma? (In the last 25 years, the number of new asthma cases in the UK has increased six fold among children and three to four fold in adults) Well, as is the case with pretty much every single disease we know about, nobody knows. We are meaning-seeking creatures. We want to make sense of what we experience in life. Who gets any disease without thinking “why me?” And that is a very, very hard question to answer. It would be more convenient if human beings were more like machines. We’d be able to work out exactly why a particular fault had occurred, we’d be able to understand the consequences of that fault and we’d be able to fix it. But human beings are not like machines (even if the way we treat people who are ill seems to assume that they are). Not only do we not know why asthma afflicts more and more people every year, but we cannot explain to any single, individual patient – this is why you have asthma.
One of the main reasons we can’t answer these questions is that we’ve only recently begun to understand that human beings, biologically, are complex adaptive systems. As such, they have particular characteristics which make the answers to these questions hard to find.
Disease is multi-factorial. There are many things which contribute to the development of a disease in an individual. Causation is, therefore, not simple. We can’t say “X’ causes “Y”. However, we can still observe carefully, and experiment and explore to try and understand what the factors are and how they interact.
Here’s an interesting study which tries to uncover some of the factors involved in the causation of asthma. It’s that old factor “stress” again. But this time, they’ve found something interesting and thought-provoking. Not only have they found that life stresses occurring during childhood seem more common in those who develop asthma, but they’ve discovered something interesting about exactly what kind of life stresses can have this impact. In a nutshell, the stress of parents splitting up and the stress of moving home seem associated with an increased risk of developing asthma. Other major events, such as the death of a close relative, or parental unemployment don’t seem to have the same impact. How do they know? The researchers used the finding of increased blood concentrations of the neuropeptide VIP (vasoactive intestinal polypeptide) as the objective manifestion of the stress response. This, and other substances which were also found to be raised, are known to be factors in producing allergic responses, like asthma.
I think this is a useful study. It shows us some of the mechanisms that connect life events to disease and it shows us that we can’t consider all life events to be the same. What matters is what is most stressful for the person experiencing the stress, not how others rate the stressfulness of an event.
Heroes Not Zombies 
Hmmm, I guess the word disease can take on a slightly different meaning or maybe this was its intended meaning:
dis – absence or opposite of
ease – state of being comfortable in your environment as opposed to feeling stressed in your environment or having you immune system stressed due to damage to the environment (pollution, etc.)
Asthma is on the rise here too Dr. Bob. I don’t know exactly why, but I do know the U.S. is under too much stress too.
This is not a real diagnosis, and I do not mean to trivialize asthma, ’cause it is a bad actor, but I call too much stress “Bill Monroe Deficiency.” In other words, it is not playing enough music or having enough fun.
Dr. B
Dr. Bob,
Interestingly enough I have been on the peripherals of this subject due to the situation with my mother. Follow me here..
Diagnosis of APlastic Anemia in end stages. The body circulation starts to slow down. Since the blood is no longer able to carry the oxygen correctly to the organs, patient starts to become agitated. Breath becomes harder to attain. As time progresses patient needs to be prescribed Morphine and Ativan to help calm and promote breathing.
Fact is, people who are lacking oxygen have panic attacks. Their bodies use it as a signal. I think that really there is little difference when it comes to Asthma. The less oxygen, the more panic, stress patient will feel. Its a vicious cycle.
I think that we should be thinking about this in terms of the larger picture of the disease and treating it appropriately. People may have many mini attacks that they are not really aware of, yet they feel the stress in their bodies from them. This stress builds to create further larger attacks that the body cannot recover from.
What do you think?
That’s really interesting for me personally. I developed asthma as an adult and to be honest, in my completely unscientific state, I’d actually thought it was related to my move to the city and possibly the pollution levels (as I’d not had the problem prior to moving). But I guess I would fall into the childhood stress category come to think of it (without too much wish to pander to self-pity, death of parent at a young age).
So it is really interesting to think that it might have been a factor. Stress is a funny old thing – it seems to affect everything!
Richard, I think that’s a good take on disease – it is the absence of ease, or the opposite of ease – whether at a person level, or even at a cellular one.
Dr Bibey, good to see you my friend. You highlight an important point I’ll post about separately……how focus on good things can bring, well, good things!
Amber, I totally agree. In fact, I suspect we could do a LOT more to improve the quality of life of people with asthma if we taught them the techniques of breathing which can be learned in yoga, meditation and the Buteyko method
cb, it’s really interesting to think about things this way, isn’t it? People just aren’t machines. We understand them (and ourselves) best through their life stories I think. Stress, I feel, is a word which is used a lot, but infrequently considered carefully. Any change, and, yes I mean ANY change, is “stress” to the organism. In fact, as I understand it, stress is the phenomenon of response to change – its about challenge – in itself, neither good, nor bad. It’s a force.