Ask the Expert: Questions and Answers About Uncontrolled Asthma

Useful takeaways from this story.

Air quality plays a role in everyone's lung health, but it's especially important for people with asthma to pay attention.

associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, about how women can recognize the signs of uncontrolled asthma and regain control of their condition.

When you have two or fewer symptoms in a week, that's considered well controlled.

Building the complete brief

The page is ready to read now. The fuller skim-friendly version will appear here automatically.

The useful part

Air quality plays a role in everyone's lung health, but it's especially important for people with asthma to pay attention. associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, about how women can recognize the signs of uncontrolled asthma and regain control of their condition. When you have two or fewer symptoms in a week, that's considered well controlled.

How it works

If you're getting three or more symptoms in a week, that's a sign your medication isn't working well.
It's a sign that you're just on the edge of control, and it's a predictor of worse problems to come, like a flare-up.<...
Symptoms are chest tightness, coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath and trouble breathing.
Another sign your asthma is uncontrolled is when you wake up with asthma symptoms around 3 or 4 a.m.
That's the time when the natural steroids your body makes are at their lowest.

Details worth keeping

What are signs that asthma is well controlled? It might be time to change your inhaler or increase your dose. What symptoms indicate that asthma is uncontrolled?

Keep reading in the app

Open the app view to save this story, compare related coverage, and continue from the same source.

Open in app