Featuring: Dr. John Fleetham, MD, FRCPC, Respirologist

Duration: 1 minute, 3 seconds

The most important treatment for asthma is to avoid the specific irritants which are causing it.

So if you have asthma, it's important to avoid irritants such as fumes, smokes, quite often perfumes may provoke it. So allergies are very common in patients with asthma. And a simple way in terms of treating patients with asthma is to avoid exposure the allergens: house dust, grasses, and certain animals.

There are many simple medications for asthma. The standard asthma treatment is inhalers, where the patient inhales the medication and those tend to be of two types. There are medications which you can take to relieve the asthma, they tend to be called bronchodilators, and then there are medications called anti-inflammatory medications which you can take to prevent developing asthma in the future.

If you have questions about how to treat asthma go and see your family physician, and if you're difficult to treat he may send you to a respiratory specialist.

Presenter: Dr. John Fleetham, Respirologist, Vancouver, BC

Local Practitioners: Respirologist