It’s known that effective asthma treatment requires routinely tracking symptoms and measuring how well your lungs are working. Working with your doctor to effectively track symptoms and measure how well your lungs are working helps you and your doctor adjust asthma treatments as needed so that you can live your life to its fullest. Huneycutt Family Medicine is a family owned and operated Loveland physician and clinic that puts the interests of our patients first and foremost. Today we’re going to give you some tips on how you can better manage your asthma outside of visiting us.
Taking an active role in managing your asthma treatment outside of our office will help you maintain better long-term asthma control, prevent asthma attacks and avoid long-term problems.
1. Learn how to track your symptoms. This includes shortness of breath or wheezing, disturbed sleep caused by shortness of breath or coughing, chest tightness or pain, how often you use your quick-relief inhaler, disruptions to work, school, exercise or other day to day activities, any asthma symptoms you experience during exercise, changes in the color of phlegm that you may cough up, hay fever symptoms like sneezing and runny noses, and anything that seems to trigger an asthma flare-up.
2. It’s also important to record how well your lungs work. If your lungs aren’t working as well as they should be, it could be that your asthma isn’t under control. There are two function tests that your doctor may want to give you: Peak flow test to measure how much air you can force out of your lungs and the Spirometry test to measure how much air your lungs can hold and how much air you can exhale in one second after you’ve taken a deep breath.