Acute bronchitis

Acute bronchitis is an acute infection of mucous membrane of trachea and bronchi produced by viruses, bacteria or external irritants.
Causes:Precipitating causes -- (1) Infection -- Either bacterial or viral, or descending infection from nasal sinuses or throat. (2) Complicating other diseases -- e.g. measles, whooping cough. (3) Physical and chemical irritants -- Inhaled dust, steam, gases like SO2, ether. (4) Allergic bronchitis -- following inhalation of pollens or organic dusts.
Symptoms:1. Toxemic -- Malaise, fever, palpitation, sweating, etc,2. Irritative -- Cough with expectoration, at first scanty viscid sputum, later more copious and mucopurulent;substernal pain or raw sensation under the sternum.3. Obstructive -- Choked up felling, paroxysms of dyspnea particularly following spells of coughing relieved with expectoration. In Chinese clinical results, acute bronchitis belongs to ke sou (cough) category. The traditional Chinese medicine considers, wind and heat affect lungs and they lost the clearance ability, thus produced sputum (phlegm) and resulted in cough with sputum or cough without sputum which is left inside the lungs, headache, cold and fever and so on. The lungs (respiratory system) start from the nose, throat as the door of respiratory, heat accumulated in lungs, lungs Qi (energy) pathway not smooth, therefore caused snuffle, sneeze and pain in throat, raucity of voice; heat in lungs pathway, thus injured of the pathway and caused improper circulation, therefore one can sees blood in sputum; decreased lungs function, implicate on spleen and stomach and caused Qi to move in opposite direction and resulted in nausea and vomiting; sputum affected the diaphragm, Qi cannot circulate properly and thus causing pain in lungs and abdomen during cough.