Effective Asthma Treatments

Despite the fact that asthma treatment has progressed significantly over the last few decades, according to the resources online more than half a million people are year and about 4000 others die because of asthma. In fact asthma can be quite debilitating for people who are not properly managed medically, and especially for children. Asthma treatment is strictly individual for every patient and depends on the age and the severity of the symptoms.

Usually asthma is either hereditary or due to the environment and all the allergens and chemical triggers that enter our respiratory system from there and cause constrictions of the bronchiole airways along with excessive production of mucous.

Other triggers of asthma attacks can be stress, anxiety, strong excitement, excessive laughing. In addition symptoms are becoming much worse during physical exercise or respiratory infections. The cardinal symptoms that alarm for an imminent asthma attack are such as being out of breath, wheezing, coughing and waking up from coughing during the night and chest tightness. If those symptoms appear they should be treated immediately or the asthma attack will progress.

Prescription and non-prescription medication is available for asthma treatment. With the milder and the intermittent cases of asthma over-the-counter bronchodilators are usually more than enough efficient. Moderate to severe cases on their hand do require more profound asthma treatment consisting of inhaled corticosteroids for a long-term treatment and for prevention of the symptoms as well. With the help of those medications both lung inflammation and sensitivity to irritants are being decreased.

For immediate relief of the symptoms in case asthma attack occurs, physicians usually prescribe a short or a long acting bronchodilator. Many of the asthma treatments include a combination of therapies. Immunotherapy for example is a very effective asthma treatment that consists of exposing the patient to increasing amounts of different specific allergens over a certain period of time, usually a few years, and thus reducing and/or eliminating asthma symptoms. The same immunotherapy can be a good option for the patients whose asthma is primarily caused by allergens.

In case the medication does not control the symptoms of asthma sufferers, they should consult a physician. An easy to spot sign for that is the frequent use of rescue inhalers no matter if they are of the prescription or non-prescription type. In such cases a change in the asthma treatment is in order. People with asthma should also be encouraged to exercise on a regular basis in order to strengthen their heart and lungs, instead of having to limit their activity. With asthma well under control the symptoms don t appear even during a physical exercise and rescue inhalers are not needed at all. Information regarding the variety of asthma treatments is available online, as well as from your physician and from all the asthma and allergy centers across the country. Breathe easily!