I have asthma and I’ve always wondered how the “air” inhaled from the medicine works so fast and what it does precisely
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Imagine you have a tunnel wide enough for two lanes of cars to drive through. When you have an asthma attack, the walls shrink and then you can only get one lane of cars through. The first line asthma medications will make the walls of the tunnel widen so you can fit three lanes of cars through instead.
Lift your arm above your head and let it drop. Muscle go from tense to relaxed really fast – since muscles are making the walls of the tunnel shrink, you just need to make them relax and that can happen really really fast.
If you want the ELICollege Student explanation:
The first line asthma medications are what are called selective b2 adrenergic agonists (for example albuterol). Adrenergic receptors are receptors that are activated by the fight or flight response. Imagine you see a bear, your body get itself ready to run away from it. So it does things like kicking your heart rate up so you can get more blood to your muscles and it shunts blood from your organs to your muscles. It’s also important to get more air into your lungs so you can get more oxygen into your blood, so it does this by relaxing the tubes that bring air from your trachea to your alveoli. That last part is what b2 adrenergic receptors do.
Since it’s a fight or flight response you want it to happen fast so it literally makes the smooth muscle cells in the wall of your lower airways relax, the bronchi/bronchioles widen and wider airways mean you can move more air into your lungs.
The other medications that are commonly used:
M1 muscarinic antagonists (ex. ipratropium): in your body you have fight or flight system that makes your heart rate go up, your airways dilate, etc. and a system that causes the opposite effects. That’s the role of the muscarinic receptors. So when so you block them muscarinic receptors you’re blocking airway constriction which causes airway dilation, if that makes sense.
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