Lung Disorders 127The longtime use of such hormones has severe side effects. While
they reduce infl ammation, they also cause weight gain, dark moods,
and anger, and they can stunt growth. Side effects in adults are elevated
blood pressure and blood sugar, cataracts, and osteoporosis. So while
prednisone and cortisone have saved many from immediate death, their
constant use reduces the quality of life and lays the foundation for
degenerative disease. The problem for asthmatics in the long run, then,
is perhaps less the acute breathing problems than the chronically
infl amed bronchial tubes and air sacs that force the use of corticoster-
oid (stress) hormones.Causes of Asthma
While allergic reactions are undoubtedly related to defects in the adre-
nal and insulin-producing glands, it is not by chance that the lungs
become the site of immune reactions rather than other organs. Any
number of factors can sensitize the lungs to normal airborne substances,
including injury.
Lung injury can occur during prenatal development. The croup,
bronchitis, and asthma my brother and I had when we were young and
passed on to our children were most likely the result of injury to our
fetal lungs. My mother, who smoked through both her pregnancies,
inhaled the smoke from four packs of cigarettes each day.
Air pollution is also a factor in asthma. A study by allergist Dr.
E. M. Drost found that air pollutants destroy the elastic fi bers in the
alveoli.^2 But even when air pollutants don’t appear to damage the lungs,
the lungs’ immune cells, unless supplied with suffi cient enzymes to
neutralize airborne pollutants as they pass through the air sacs, will
react to toxic particles the same way they react to an injury—by trig-
gering the release of histamines.
Statistics published in an article in the May 2000 issue of The Atlantic
Monthly by Ellen Ruppel Shell rate the borough of the Bronx in New
York City as the asthma capital of the United States with three times
more hospitalization of asthma patients there than in any other area in
the United States. Shell attributes this asthma epidemic to the fact that
the Bronx is the hub of trains and trucks delivering cargo from all parts
of the country, and to the fact that Interstate 95—the major truck route
from Florida to Maine—cuts through the middle of the Bronx.^3