Ask the Advocates: What Should Everyone Know About Asthma?

During awareness month, we have asked our advocates a series of questions that we hoped would start conversations within this community. We asked questions about the hardest part of asthma, what they would do with a day free of asthma, and why it's important to recognize asthma awareness month.

For our final question, we asked our advocates, "If you could pick one important fact or piece of information that you wish everyone knew about asthma, what would it be?" Here is what two of our advocates shared!

What should everyone know about asthma?

Theresa shared:

"If I could pick one piece of information I wish everyone knew about asthma, it would be that asthma is not a one-size-fits-all disease. If you look at movies and TV shows, they almost always portray the asthmatic as a nerd and weak who is constantly puffing on their inhaler and sitting out of all physical activity. What the media fails to portray is that not all asthma presents the same way.

Everyone will have different triggers, responses to treatment, and symptoms. Some asthmatics have a cough as their only symptom, which is known as 'cough variant asthma.' What makes asthma so difficult to control is that medication management is very much individualized. What inhalers work well for me might not do anything for you and vice versa. Some people with asthma will get short of breath without wheezing when they have a flare-up while others have wheezing as their main symptom. Not everyone with asthma wheezes. This is a very common misconception.

It is super important for the general public to understand that when a person who has asthma starts to have a flare-up, it isn’t always a dramatic scene (although sometimes attacks can come on very suddenly and without warning) and our shortness of breath might not be totally obvious. People with asthma are some of the strongest people in the world because we have to be. We fight the battle to breathe every single day."

Leon said:

"I have had asthma throughout all of my life. In my younger years, I still remember our family physician coming to the house, assessing me, and then providing the much-needed shot of epinephrine. My breathing improved immediately. Throughout the years, my triggers may have changed, which was surprising since I didn't know much about asthma, nor did my folks. This was in the mid-1950s and the mid-1960s. Over the years, triggers for me were a combination of both extrinsic and intrinsic factors. I never really knew what was causing the 'attack,' I only knew I needed relief and the desire to breathe normally. Afterward, I would sit with my parents and we would try to determine, through episode-analysis, which trigger caused it – was it the cat, or just animal dander? Was it the cold ice cream/malted? Was it laughing hysterically at a movie or running home afterward at breakneck speed, just for the joy of running? Was it the tension I was feeling at some family dynamic? No matter the cause, the treatment was the same and centered on the oral medication, and/or metered-dose inhaler of the era.

It wasn't until I was hospitalized for the condition that I was bitten by the inquisitive bug. Suffice it to say that while in the hospital I befriended the respiratory technician providing my care. I found out much more about the actual field of respiratory therapy and furthered my education by attending school, graduating, becoming credentialed, licensed, and entering the profession.

So – why is my personal history with this disease so important? It is because, from my perspective, the single most important aspect of managing one's asthma is knowledge combined with understanding. Once one understands the physiology of an asthma attack, the management of that attack becomes much more clear. First, avoid triggers! But, if an asthma attack occurs, the knowledge of the disease removes one's fear and anxiety. This in turn enables one to focus on successful treatment. Do you have opinions as to what you would like to be better known about asthma?"

What would you say everyone should know?

After reading some of our advocates' responses, what would you say is a piece of information that everyone should know about asthma? Maybe it's a piece of information that you feel everyone in your life should know about your personal journey, or maybe something you feel that everyone in a more general sense should know about asthma. Share your thoughts in our comments section below, or share your perspective by starting a conversation with community members in our forums section.