Asthma Answers

For myself, I tried for many years to manage asthma with just my rescue inhalers. It was a short term solution to a long term problem. It made the wheezing and the difficulty to breath go away, but they kept coming back.

Then, I went to a new doctor he prescribed me a corticosteroid medicine. It didn’t just treat the symptoms, it helped prevent my airways from becoming inflamed and prevented future asthma attacks.

There’s more than just medicine to treat asthma.

Something that I wish I had started doing sooner was an asthma action plan. That’s a step by step action that you can setup with the guidance of your doctor to prevent future problems and how to treat asthma attacks when they do occur. It involves using a patient’s results from the peak flow meter and their attack symptoms to determine the treatment. It really brings treatment to a whole new level, with more than just using a rescue inhaler because you feel symptoms.

It’s also important to work with your doctor by getting regular checkups. You have to let him know what changes you’ve had with your asthma for better or worse, and discuss any side effects from the medicines. This can really go a long way to getting you the right medicine.

The easiest way to treat asthma is to stay away from the triggers. This obviously easier said than done, but there are some things that can be done to make your life with asthma easier.

Dust has always been one of my biggest triggers. I can notice it when I go into a house that’s dusty and almost immediately, I’ll start having problems breathing. At my own house, I’ve taken a much more active role in cleaning and washing things on a regular basis. Both vacuuming more often or washing my sheets regularly in a hot water have made a huge difference.

Another problem for me has been mold. When I was growing up, we had a basement in our house that would get very damp during certain times of the year. It even flooded a few times. We got a dehumidifier down there and it definitely made a significant impact on reducing my asthma problems, even when I wasn’t in the basement.

If an asthma attack is triggered, it’s best to use your rescue medicines as early as possible before they become worse. There’s four core symptoms of asthma flare ups that almost all sufferers will notice in one way or another. There’s the difficulty of breathing, where you feel like you’re trying to breath through a straw. There’s the sound and feeling of wheezing that you just can’t miss. There’s also coughing, especially during the night which is often a sign of an attack. Then there’s also a feeling of tightness or pressure in the chest area.

Following all of the steps that your doctor provides to treat asthma and you can live a perfectly normal and healthy life without any interferences from asthma.