How do inhalers work?

Question

I didn’t care about inhalers because I knew they were for asthma but I didn’t know they worked for dry cough too. How do they work?

In: 37

Answer 1

The medication in the puffers relaxes and therefore helps ‘open up’ parts of your lungs. Particularly the parts associated with improving your ability exhale air.

This is important, because the body relies on large open airways to create the exhalation force to clear things like pollen or dust etc. by coughing.

Without the puffer opening up the airways, these sorts of pollutants get trapped and eventually start to become inflamed. This in turn causes irritation and the triggers the body to respond by doing one of the only things it knows how to do – coughing again (despite how useless and worsening it may be).