Managing Asthma

What are the goals of asthma management? There are four main long-term goals of asthma management:

Normal lifestyle: The lifestyle should return to normal so that you are able to indulge in any activity of your choice. It is important to remember the limitations of control of environmental factors while attempting to normalize lifestyle.

Undisturbed sleep: It is important to control symptoms that occur either at night or early in the morning so that you are able to sleep without any disturbances.

Minimum intake of medicines: Effective asthma management dispenses with the use of bronchodilators every day. Bronchodilators are medicines that relax and dilate your airways.

Normalization of lung functions: The lung functions should return to normal or at least as close to normal as possible so that long-term deterioration in lung capacity can be minimized. The lung functions are measured by either peak flow or spirometry.

How is asthma managed?

Effective management of asthma involves three main steps:

• Education which helps you learn to manage asthma rather than it managing you.
• Environmental control which helps you prevent exposure to asthma triggers and therefore reduce the risk of future attacks.
• Medicines which not only control symptoms of asthma but also help maintain normal lung functions.