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Treating Asthma

While there is still no cure for asthma, there are ways to treat this disease that can help you have fewer symptoms.

Making a diagnosis

To help determine if you have asthma, your doctor may ask you about:

• Coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath or chest tightness that comes on quickly, happens often or occurs during particular times of the year
• Colds that seem to settle in the chest or take more than ten days to run their course
• Medicines you've used to ease your breathing
• Asthma in your family history
• Factors that seem to bring on symptoms or make symptoms worse

In addition to examining you, your doctor may test your lungs with a special device and, if necessary, have you monitor your breathing over several days with a hand-held meter.

Treatment: goals and medicines

Controlling your asthma can result in fewer symptoms and attacks, less need for quick-relief medicines, and being able to participate in normal activities with fewer symptoms. Generally, asthma treatment includes the following four steps:

1. Setting treatment goals with your doctor — and learning how to achieve these goals.
2. Avoiding the things that trigger or worsen your symptoms.
3. Utilizing asthma medicine effectively.
4. Tracking your symptoms so that, as they increase, you can act to prevent or stop an attack.

Two common types of medicines are used in asthma treatment:

• Quick-relief rescue inhalers give you relief from your symptoms within minutes.
• Maintenance inhalers, taken every day, help prevent symptoms and attacks.

As the name suggests, quick-relief or "rescue" inhalers stop asthma symptoms before they get worse. Most quick-relief inhalers are a type called short-acting bronchodilators — they ease the tightened muscles around your airways so you can breathe better.

Maintenance inhalers come in many forms. You may know them better as antiinflammatories, long-acting bronchodilators, or inhaled corticosteroids. Inhaled corticosteroids are the most effective long-term therapies available for persistent asthma. ASMANEX is one type of maintenance inhaler that your doctor may consider when developing a treatment plan for you.

When used every day, maintenance inhalers help you avoid asthma symptoms and attacks. They help prevent, reduce, or reverse swelling in your lungs and airways. They also help decrease mucus production, so your airways can stay clearer. Although it is not known exactly how corticosteroids work, these actions may contribute to how they help control your asthma symptoms. Over time, maintenance inhalers can help make your airways less sensitive to asthma triggers. A maintenance inhaler cannot replace a rescue inhaler for sudden attacks. But using a maintenance inhaler every day can reduce the number of attacks you have.

Asthma treatment for many people includes both types of medicine, the rescue medicine for quick relief when their symptoms get worse and long-term control medicine to help prevent flare-ups.

As you work toward your treatment goals, your doctor may adjust or change your medicine to get the best results for you.

Your treatment, your role

Successful asthma treatment takes both your doctor and you. To keep your symptoms under control, you need to follow your doctor's advice by taking your asthma medicine exactly as prescribed, tracking your symptoms, and avoiding the things that trigger your asthma symptoms.

For a personal, interactive tool to see what might be setting off your asthma symptoms, use the Trigger Tracer: click here.