Advair Diskus is a prescription asthma inhaler that can provide relief during allergy season as well as the rest of the year. If you have wheezing and shortness of breath, your doctor may prescribe this inhaler for you. It may also be given to you if you have COPD or another lung disease.
How Advair Diskus Works
Advair Diskus works as an inhaler that contains salmeterol as well as fluticasone. Each one of these drugs belongs to a different class. Salmeterol is a Long Acting Beta Agonist (LABA) drug while fluticasone is a corticosteroid. Together, the drug works to reduce irritation and open up the airways to make breathing easier. This inhaler is used for long-term asthmatic relief and should be used on a regular basis to be effective.
It is not a fast-acting inhaler and therefore it should not be used to provide relief for an asthma attack or a shortness of breath. There are quick-relief inhalers that can be used for this purpose.
Knowing how Advair Diskus works is an important aspect of why consulting with your doctor is so important. You don’t want to begin taking the asthma inhaler without talking with your doctor to ensure that it is actually what you need and that it won’t work against other medications that you are taking.
Warnings to Be Aware Of
One of the most important warnings to be aware of is that serious asthma-related problems can occur if asthma is being treated with LABA drugs, which salmeterol qualifies as. Doctors will only recommend this drug when you have been using a corticosteroid and it has not been working to the fullest extent. Advair Diskus includes a corticosteroid as well as salmeterol for a balanced effect of the two drugs.
There are also some other side effects to be aware of with the drug, including:
Throat irritation
Headaches
Stomach aches
Hoarseness
If any of the above symptoms exist or get worse, you should talk to your doctor. Also, be sure to let your doctor know if you are prone to such symptoms with other medication(s) so that he or she can make the determination as to whether it is truly the best drug for you.
In other instances, people have experienced patches on their tongue, fevers, fainting and seizures, though these are not nearly as common. Talking to your doctor about all of your health issues will ensure help determine if Advair Diskus is the right medication to help you with your asthma in the long-term.
Discuss Issues with Your Doctor
When you make an appointment to talk to your doctor about Advair Diskus, there are some things that you want to think about. The more that you can provide to your doctor, the easier it will be to determine if Advair is the right drug to address your asthma or other health problems.
Think about some of the symptoms that you have been dealing with. Do you have asthmatic symptoms that are more severe during certain parts of the day? Are you short of breath after doing specific tasks? These are questions that you need to be prepared to answer when you visit your doctor.
You also need to talk about the medications that you are taking for asthma, allergies and any other prescriptions/OTC medications. If you are on an inhaled cortosteroid to control your long-term asthma, you may find that Advair Diskus works well for you.
Check in with your doctor as you have been using the inhaler to talk about side effects. Before you take any pills or nasal sprays, especially during allergy season, you will want to make sure they are okay before taking them.
The main reason that you will want to talk to your doctor about all of the medications that you are currently taking is to ensure that you aren’t taking anything that could counteract the effectiveness of the inhaler. Further, there are some drugs that do not work well with the drugs found in Advair Diskus and you don’t want to experience any undesirable side effects or make health problems worse.
There is an increased risk of death from asthmatic symptoms for those who take long acting beta2-adrenergic agonistic medicines (LABA) and if you take too many of these LABA medicines at the same time, it can be detrimental to your health. This means that you want to be very forthcoming about any and all medications that you use, even if you only use them periodically or from someone else’s medicine cabinet.
