5 Steps to Getting Your Asthma Under Control

Last week, I had the opportunity to talk to a group of respiratory therapy (RT) students at one of our local colleges. Each fall, this college's RT department selects a non-profit organization to help with fundraising, volunteering, and raising awareness of its mission and services for the community.

From that presentation, my business partner Gerri Rivers and I had the opportunity to speak to one of the students who is a mom with an asthmatic child. Her son has severe asthma, and has a really tough time with his asthma during the winter months. She was terrified that if her son didn't gain control of his asthma soon, he may not survive the coming winter. She felt scared, lost, and confused, and really needed some help navigating the health care system. Her story affirmed the reason why Asthma Allies exists. Her story also brought to mind how important it is for parents, caregivers, teachers, and others who care for a child with asthma to be aware of asthma symptoms, triggers, that child's Asthma Action Plan and especially, how to administer or assist with taking his/her medication.

A proper medication regiment is crucial for controlling asthma. Determining what medicines a person with asthma should take depends on several factors. A few of them are:

• the severity of the disease
• age of the person with asthma
• use of other medications
• other medical diagnosis
• personal goal of person with asthma

1. How severe is your asthma? Determining the severity of asthma is the first step to gaining control of one's asthma. To establish asthma diagnosis, a primary care provider will gather a medical history that looks at past episodes of wheezing, chest tightness, shortness of breath, and chronic coughing; frequency of those episodes; a history of allergies; and perhaps ask if there are close family members with allergies and/or asthma. Along with this medical history, a person may also undergo a physical examination of the upper respiratory tract, chest and skin, which may include spirometry, chest x-ray, and allergy tests. These are all dependent on the person and his/her primary care provider.

2. What are your personal asthma goals? Once diagnosis and severity of asthma is determined, the next step is to set some personal goals for the person with asthma. The overall goal of asthma therapy is to prevent asthma symptoms and allow the person to live as normal of a life as possible. That means having normal lung function; having the person with asthma satisfied on the asthma care he/she is receiving; and having no or very little side effects from the medicines used to control asthma. Of course, none of this matters without the input of the person with asthma. If you have asthma, you have a huge part to play developing your personal goals. Ask yourself what you would like to do that you can't do now because of asthma? Or what do you want to accomplish with your asthma treatment? Work with your primary care provider to set personal goals using the guidelines and your desired outcome of treatment.