Double dose of Advair made me sick

[rainbow_goddess]

I'm currently taking Advair 250 disc inhaler. My GP suggested I take two puffs in the morning and two puffs at night, instead of one puff in the morning and one at night, because I'm having trouble controlling my asthma on the one puff twice a day. I asked him if he would just prescribe me Advair 500 instead, as I didn't want to pay twice as much

Comments

[thefreshchuff]

You might want to try a new asthma doctor, if he's not taking your feelings/worries into consideration. :\

Also, Advair really messed me up too after I'd been taking it for a couple of years. It just stopped feeling at all effective. I was using my rescue inhaler about four times a week. Once I got put on Flovent every other day, I haven't used my rescue in a year. Maybe it's time to experiment with a different medicine altogether?

[wrin]

That's really interesting, what with it being the same inhaled steroid and all. There's some research to show that taking bronchodilators on a daily basis can actually worsen asthma. It's part of the reason why the long-acting bronchodilators have black box warnings from the FDA and why "just take a lot of Ventolin" hasn't been a viable asthma treatment strategy for roundabouts 25 years.

I personally think it depends on the individual (there's plenty of people running around with 24/7 bronchospasm and a long-acting bronchodilator is far better than a short-acting one) and control shouldn't just focus on drugs -- lifestyle factors play a huge part, most notably trigger avoidance and lifestyle adjustments.

[thefreshchuff]

I believe there's something else in Advair that Flovent doesn't have (my pulminologist's layman explanation, lol), and it was that second medicine that I was reacting badly too. But also, I went from Advair twice a day to Flovent every other day, and I think it was the general weaning-off of medication that made a HUGE difference.

I agree that so much of it is lifestyle too, or at least it is in some people's cases. At my worst, I was on a ton of different medicines for asthma and allergies and stomach bloating and this that and the other -- weaning myself off all those (I'm just on Flovent now, and that's not even every day) has cut down on my breathing and bloating problems a LOT. So who knows how much of my asthma is/was a product of over-medication. :\

[miafeliz]

Do you feel that your asthma meds have caused stomach bloating? I was taking something different for a totally different situation and one of the symptoms was bloating and that was obvious, but prior to that, I already had some bloating.

I hadn't thought of it.

[thefreshchuff]

Definitely contributed to it. Firstly, when I went off Singulair my bloating went down exponentially. Advair, after a couple years on it, was giving me terrible symptoms as well. Chest pains, heaviness on my chest, this weird burning feeling in the pits of my lungs when I'd try to breathe deeply. Everyone kept saying it couldn't possibly be the Advair, but as soon I stopped taking it, all those symptoms went away.

In another way, my bloating also affects my asthma. Every once in a while (if I, tmi, get constipated for a few days) I'll bloat up, and can immediately notice that it's difficult for me to take deep breaths, because I suppose my stomach's swelling and (because I have a very small frame) limiting the space my lungs have to expand. So it all kind of works together, the bloating exacerbating the asthma and the asthma medicines exacerbating the bloating, but once I went off a lot of medicines and found an inhaler that worked for me, my bloating went down a LOT.

[rainbow_goddess]

I don't have an "asthma doctor." I tried asking my GP to refer me to one, and he won't. I can't get a new GP because there literally are no GPs taking new patients in my city.