Yeah, BFA, the cigarettes will definitely affect your asthma and make it worse. It's time to stop smoking so the asthma doesn't get worse. And so you dont later develop emphysema or lung cancer--or don't prematurely age yourself (cigarettes are hell on youth and beauty, too).

If your boyfriend is lending your his "rescue" inhaler, that generally means it's some form of an albuterol inhaler. Albuterol is a bronchodilator, and it's basically a vaso-constrictor that shrinks the capillaries and swollen passages in the airways and thus reduces inflammation and airway construction. You should be able to look at the little canister and see what the main ingredient is. Look up the term "rescue" inhaler on the Internet and you should see lots of info there.

The inhaled steroids these days generally come in disk-administered powder form such as Advair, but they may still be in canisters if insurance is too cheap to pay for the newer stuff. The steroidal inhaled anti-inflammatories, even the canisters, typically have a different looking plastic inhaler device. If you don't see the word "albuterol" on the ingredients, don't use it. Those steroidal anti-inflammatories have to be used regularly every day and aren't good for episodic attacks of airway constriction. That's why you need an albuterol inhaler for "rescue."

You need to get to your doctor and get your own prescription for albuterol refilled as soon as you can. We don't want you getting in trouble by having a bad asthma attack.

By the way, people do grow out of asthma on occasion, just as they sometimes grow out of allergies. It's much more common for people to develop asthma/allergies when they haven't had those conditions before, but I know two folks who had asthma as teenagers and then outgrew it. I didn't have asthma as a child but got it as a young adult.
birdgirl73 Reviewed by birdgirl73 on . Inhalers? Well, I was diagnosed with Asthma when I was REALLY young, I don't even remember it but for some reason I stopped using an inhaler, either I was diagnosed wrong or.."grew out of it". So lately, I've been having a hard time breathing..tight chest, not feeling like I'm breathing in deep enough but I'm breathing in as much as I can, just having a hard time..my boyfriend offered to give me his "safety" inhaler until I could get to the doctor. Should I take him up on this? I can't find anything on Rating: 5