Imagine if your environment was putting your life in danger. If you suffer from asthma that is exactly what can happen.
There are numerous factors, known as triggers, which can cause an asthmatic to suffer an attack and many are just part of everyday life.
How often do you walk past a smoker, accept a lift from a friend who smokes in their car or go to a party where people are smoking?
Secondhand smoke, full of harmful chemicals, is one of the worst triggers for asthmatics. It can not only trigger an attack but cause it to be more intense than normal.
Stopping people from smoking indoors or near to doors and windows of a building will help.
While none of us really want to think about the tiny insects that live in our sofas, pillows, mattresses and clothes and feed off human skin, dust mites can prove a real danger to asthma sufferers.
They are so small you need a microscope to see them, but they are in your house, in all fabric items, and parts of dead dust mites and their faeces can be inhaled, sparking an asthma attack.
By washing bedding and pillows in hot water weekly, vacuuming carpets and furniture every week and using dust proof covers on pillows and mattresses, you can kill dust mites and reduce the risk of them causing an asthma attack.
You may have seen small amounts of mould growing on surfaces in your bathroom or kitchen. It is caused by fungus that feeds on decaying plant or animal matter. Harmless, you may think.
But this mould releases tiny spores into the air which are breathed in. To an asthmatic, these spores can cause a severe asthma attack. It is important to clean up at the first sign of mould.
Reducing the triggers in your environment will improve your asthma symptoms. The more you eliminate, the easier your asthma could become to control.