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Our family doctor said that asthma is not a disease, is he right?

I already searched and found every where asthma called as disease. Like http://www.webmd.com/asthma/guide/what-is-asthma

Asthma is a chronic disease of the airways that makes breathing difficult. With asthma, there is inflammation of the air passages that results in a temporary narrowing of the airways that carry oxygen to the lungs.

But I wonder why he told me that?

ashiquzzaman33
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1 Answers1

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This is very dependent on what one defines as a disease. There are people who only count acute conditions and/or infections as "diseases" though I wouldn't have expected a doctor to make this distinction. Under this definition, asthma would not be a disease, but a "chronic condition", for example.

I found an interesting article What is a disease which while mostly applicable to your question about asthma discusses the classification of osteoporosis

One example is osteoporosis, which after being officially recognized as a disease by the WHO in 1994 switched from being an unavoidable part of normal ageing to a pathology 

So that used to be not counted as a disease to being called one. I recommend asking your doctor about it if you are curious about their reasoning - it might just be that they meant it isn't an infectious disease. If, however, they think asthma is really not a disease that needs to be managed, consider switching doctors - untreated asthma can lead to serious problems.

YviDe
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