Understanding The Treatment Of Asthma

Main aim of treatment of asthma is to ensure:

1. The person symptom free or, minimal symptoms.
   
2. Sound sleep at night without any symptoms.
   
3. He should not miss any normal activities like work and studies, and other physical activities due to asthma.
   
4. To stop visiting hospital emergencies and admitting now and then.
   
5. Nil or, minimal side effects from the medicines.
   

Treatment of asthma has to be designer and it varies from person to person. Your doctor will tailor made the regime, which suits you most.

There are two types of medications for asthmatics.

• Quick relief or, in other words relievers
  
• Preventive measures or, preventers.
  

Relievers:

These should act immediately to relieve your symptoms by widening your airways. Their action lasts for 4 – 6 hours and help to relieve your breathing problem and cough, associated with the acute attack.

Preventers:

They are the key medicines for managing asthma and not meant for giving you immediate relief. Regular use of them keeps your airway protected from acute attacks.

Different ways of taking asthma medicines:

There are three routes, by which medicines reach lungs to relieve asthma

1. You puff
   
2. You swallow
   
3. Take injections
   

Puff or Inhaler:

Being the treatment of first choice, the most commonly used form of treatment today are inhalers. Though there are many myths and misconceptions regarding the inhalers, which I will elaborate later in this article, for the time being, I want to stress upon, this is the only way by which you can lead a normal life.

Here the medicines are directly going to your lungs. Like you are using the eye drops for your eye sore and ear drops for your ear problems. A minute quantity of medicine is required to bring upon a desired effect, relative to the oral medications and thus the side effects are eventually nil or negligible.

There are many types of inhalers found in the market. The major types commonly used are:

• Powder inhaler or, Rota haler
  
• Spray inhaler or, metered dose inhaler
  
• Nebulizers – Mostly used in hospital to control an acute severe attack. Here medicines are in a form of a mist and breathed by the patient by normal respiration.
  

Swallow or, oral medicines:

Tablets and syrups were used in rampant few years back. They work by reaching the blood stream from your stomach and then to the lung to produce the results. Much larger doses are necessary to achieve the desired effect thus results in higher side effects.

Injections:

They are required to control severe intractable attack of asthma, not controlled by inhaler or nebulizers.

Myths and Misconception regarding inhalers:

Myth I: Inhalers are the last resort for treatment of asthma

Truth: They are the first choice even in mildest cases.

Myth II: Inhalers are addictive:

Truth: This is the only way you can control asthma. No question of addiction is there but you have to take those regularly to prevent the attack.

Myth III: The inhalers are very expensive.

Truth: They actually save your life as well as money by increasing your efficiency, preventing hospitalization and expensive treatments. The best part is they protect your lung from acute life threatening attacks.