Someone you know..

Ryder, Gabriel, Olivia, and Tanner all suffer from asthma

Someone you know suffers from a dangerous allergy.  Someone you know struggles to move air in and out of their lungs, due to asthma, someone you know is at risk for a life threatening reaction, and nearly everyone you know has allergies.  Some of us suffer from hayfever, some a pet allergy, some to medicine or latex; more that half of the people in this world suffer from an allergy.  Why is this important to you? A sniffle, or small rash today, can turn into a deadly reaction when you're exposed to that same trigger tomorrow.

• A nationwide survey found that more than half (54.6%) of all U.S. citizens test positive to one or more allergens.⁶
• In a recent survey, over 50% of homes had at least six detectable allergens present.²³
• Allergic diseases affect as many as 40 to 50 million Americans.²⁴
•  Anaphylactic reactions to penicillin cause 400 deaths.⁷
• Between 6% and 10% of adverse drug reactions are allergic or immunologic in nature.¹⁵
• Penicillin is the most common cause of drug-induced anaphylaxis. 
• In 2007, approximately 3 million children under the age of 18 were reported to have a food or digestive allergy in the previous 12 months.⁸
•  
• The prevalence of food allergy among children under the age of 18 increased 18% percent from 1997 to 2007.⁸
• Kids with a food allergy are two to four times more likely to have conditions such as asthma and other allergies.⁸
• Food allergies affect about 6% of children under the age of three.¹¹
• Six and a half million Americans (or 2.3% of the general population) are allergic to seafood.¹²
• More than 3 million people in the United States report being allergic to peanuts, tree nuts or both.¹³
• Food allergies account for 35% to 50% of all cases of anaphylaxis.²⁰
• Food allergies affect approximately 6% of young children and 3 to 4% of adults in the US population.²⁷
• Milk allergy is the most common childhood food allergy, affecting 2.5% of children less than age 3.
• Approximately 20% of children outgrow a peanut allergy by age 6.³²
• Approximately 9% of children outgrow tree nut allergy by age 6.³³
• Peanut allergy doubled in children from 1997-2002.³⁴
• Anaphylaxis occurs in 20% of allergic reactions to peanuts and tree nuts.³⁶
• It is estimated that the number of cases of anaphylaxis from foods in the US increased from 21,000 per year in 1999 to 51,000 per year in 2008, based on long term population studies of anaphylaxis from the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.^{29, 37} 
• From 2003 to 2006, food allergies resulted in approximately 317,000 visits to hospital emergency departments, outpatient clinics and physicians’ offices, according to Branum and colleagues, using data from multiple US national surveys collected by the National Center for Health Statistics.³⁸
• Food allergy related hospital admissions increased from 2,600 per year (1998-2000) to 9,500 per year (2004-2006), according to a study from Branum and colleagues.³⁸
• It is estimated that food allergies cause approximately 150 to 200 fatalities per year, based on data from a five year study of anaphylaxis in Minnesota from the Mayo Clinic.³⁹
• Fatal food anaphylaxis is most often caused by peanuts (50-62%) and tree nuts (15-30%).⁴⁰
• Risk factors for fatal anaphylaxis include failure or delay in administration of epinephrine, history of asthma and teenagers.

Can you think of someone you know with a peanut allergy?  20% of these people will have a life threatening, anaphylactic reaction.  These numbers are scary, but they are real.  Gabriel lives against the odds.  The likelihood of landing each of the separate disorders/syndromes/diseases that he faces is like winning the lotto.  Dangerous allergies and asthma are not so rare.  
Asthma, like a common cold, we dismiss as 'unimportant' because it is so common.  The more often we see something, the more people we know who suffer from something, the less severe we assume it is.  As time goes on, and asthma becomes more and more common, it is becoming more severe.  One in 10 children suffer from asthma, and depending on where you live that number may be higher.  Whether asthma is as rare as landing a jackpot, or as common and finding a heads up penny, it is dangerous.  


The human body is made to run for days without food, if necessary, and to survive for hours without water, in survival situations. No body can survive more than seconds without air.  Digest that for a minute-  If you've never suffered from difficulty breathing, imagine using every muscle to expand your lungs.  A healthy person takes near 6 breaths every minute.  What does fast and heavy breathing feel like?  Exhausting?  Like after a run, or under stress, rapid breathing rates is scary, and physically demanding.  The average asthma patient takes 14 breaths per minute.  14.  That is more than twice that of the healthy lung.  Asthmatic lungs don't just use faster rates, they have less lung capacity, so that they can not breathe as deeply.  Asthmatic airways are 'swollen' feeling, they are narrow and mucosy.  Imagine breathing more than twice your normal rate with what I compare to breathing through a straw.  Asthmatic lungs may be very common, but that should not take away from its importance and severity.  


My 6 year old sister recently suffered an allergic reaction so severe she could not remember it.  Because of a campfire.  One in ten people suffer from asthma.  Emotions, stress, pets, pollen, cigarette smoke, physical activity, or campfires narrow their airways, fill their lungs with wheezy sounding phlegm, and decrease their lung capacity, and sometimes- for a moment, minute, a few hours, or often for several days- makes keeping their body alive a struggle. 


 Be careful dismissing asthma as something so common and unimportant, as asthma's prevalence and familiarness increases, so does its severity.