Is it possable for anxiety to bring on asthma?

[kate61]

Over the years of living with a person with asthma I have noticed that not only does an infection bring on asthma but anxiety, is this true?

[Victoireh]

Hi I have asthma and when I get infections, I get severe exacerbations that take many weeks to clear up. I can understand why he would have anxiety. I get scared when I've i'm down 50% of my peak flow readings, and I know then that I need prednisone ASAP. At that point I can even see the skin between my ribs in my upper chest being sucked in during breathing. It's not fun at all. For some people strong emotions can set off asthma attacks. Or they can get into a vicious cycle where they are scared of an attack, so then have a lot of anxiety about it, and in turn get one anyways. I have read that a number of mild asthmatic tends to hyperventilate during attacks. I guess it's the body over compensating for a sudden mild attack. Attacks that come on slower are harder to feel.  But I do know other asthmatics who's asthma is more emotionally triggered. Myself, I haven't had problems that way.

[Paxiled]

I think you're confused.  There are two kinds of asthma, allergic and pulmonary based.  Bot exist all the time, it's the attacks that are episodic.  Inflammation will irritate both types.  Certainly anxiety can weaken the immune system, which will increase the possibility of inflammation, but it isn't necessarily so.  Depends on the person.  And there's no infection involved necessarily, though people with asthma get worse symptoms from certain infections.  What you're seeing could be from food allergies, any other kind of allergies, anything that causes inflammation of the air passageways.  With anxiety, what you could be seeing is just difficulty breathing deeply because of the shallow breathing that anxiety can cause.  The thing about anxiety is, it makes anything potentially worse because the person is more aware of worrying about it.  Why don't you read up on asthma so you can understand this person more?  And realize that asthma is very sensitive to environmental toxins and poor diet, such as too much sugar, dairy, wheat, and other inflammatory foods.