Good question.
Your doctor will diagnose you with asthma when you have wheezing that reoccurs over an extended period of time.
You just have “reactive airways” when you wheeze with a cold, and it goes away. When you return to your doctor complaining of ongoing wheezing, you are eventually considered “asthmatic”.
Asthma is considered to be a disease that “inflames and narrows the airways”.
It is commonly accepted that asthma is not curable, and it lies dormant waiting to flare up at anytime.
The treatment for asthma is a combination of oral and inhaled medication to make your airways less inflamed.
Recently advisors to the FDA recommended that the drugs, salmeterol (Serevent) and formoterol (Foradil), not be used for young children and there is concern for young adults.
They want the drugs used for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), but not asthma.
These drugs are considered to carry too high a risk for asthma-related complications and death!
These drugs have been used routinely to TREAT asthma and COPD for years. Now they are saying that they are just too dangerous when used without steroids.
Steroids are used to reduce inflammation.
Does any of that make sense to you?
Heck, doesn’t make any sense to me, and I have been taking care of asthma patients for 23 years.
So if you wheeze, DO you have asthma?
Do you have a disease you will have to medicate the rest of your life?
Maybe you do, and maybe you don’t.
You can certainly reduce inflammation, and you can do it without dangerous drugs!
Less inflammation is always a good thing.
However,
There is a bigger issue here that we need to talk about. Read the rest of this entry »