Honest to God, we know far less than our self absorbed, arrogant little minds think is the case.
It doesn’t matter what the excuse is, the bottom line is that we get things wrong all the time and even things we teach as “facts” and as basic as a food pyramid as taught to me in the 1980-1990s is “full of shit.”
This actually looks like interesting and productive work. Hell of a long list of authors, and look at how many are Asian.
I always figured the increase in asthma cases in recent decades was fueled comparably to the increases in polio cases years ago.
A lot of asthma may be tied to the hyper-vaccination schedule, but back in the day, when they cleaned up the water systems (and not using public well pumps which wound up contributing cholera outbreaks), they also eliminated a lot of the polio virus that was commonly found in water.
Early introduction to small amounts of polio virus allowed folks to develop some immunity. However, when they cleaned up the water, polio cases exploded.
I suspect a lot of asthma comes from cleaning up indoor air. Humans, after all, spent tens of thousands of years warming themselves with indoor fires. In fact, if you recollect the Otzi the Iceman, his dissection showed that his lungs were heavily blackened.
So it’s likely that a little bit of pollution can be good for you.
Bttt
Researchers have discovered that GERD can trigger asthma symptoms. In addition, GERD is more common in people with asthma than in the general population. Individuals whose asthma is especially hard to treat appear to be more prone to GERD than other affected persons.
Generally speaking, reflux may cause asthma symptoms in two ways.
1) The stomach acid that leaks back into the esophagus creates a chain reaction leading to asthma symptoms. The refluxed gastric acid irritates the nerve endings in the esophagus generating signals to the brain. Subsequently, the brain responds with impulses to the lungs that stimulate the muscle and mucus production in the airways. The small airways of the lungs then constrict, resulting in asthma symptoms.
2) In many cases, physicians believe that the refluxed stomach contents enter the lungs directly. This situation is called aspiration. The foreign material is a potent irritant for the airways, creating wheezing, coughing, chest tightness, and other symptoms of asthma.
Some experts believe that asthma also may trigger GERD, when breathing difficulties or certain asthma medications cause the esophageal sphincter muscle to relax and allow stomach contents to reflux — completing a troublesome, potential vicious cycle.
So ... The Science ISN’T settled?
Back in the 60’s, asthma supposedly was caused by eating things with wheat in them. Like bread.
Any real world, practical advice asthma sufferers can take away from this article — besides the urgency for unlimited more funding to study their new theory?
I know it is a lucrative business to advise that there is no cure for their particular disease except to raise unlimited more funding for these researchers — while advising that anybody who claims they have a cure, is a charlatan, and should not be trusted.
Instead, the disease becomes more rampant until everybody has it — like AIDS, Covid, Alzheimer’s, colorectal cancers, transgenderism, drug dependency, etc.— wiping out the human race.