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How Is Asthma Treated?
Your doctor can work with you to decide about your treatment goals and what you need to do to control your asthma to achieve these goals. Asthma treatment includes:

• * Working closely with your doctor to decide what your treatment goals are and learning how to meet those goals.
• * Avoiding things that bring on your asthma symptoms or make your symptoms worse. Doing so can reduce the amount of medicine you need to control your asthma.
• * Using asthma medicines. Allergy medicine and shots may also help control asthma in some people.
• * Monitoring your asthma so that you can recognize when your symptoms are getting worse and respond quickly to prevent or stop an asthma attack.

With proper treatment, you should ideally have these results:

• * Your asthma should be controlled.
• * You should be free of asthma symptoms.
• * You should have fewer attacks.
• * You should need to use quick-relief medicines less often.
• * You should be able to do normal activities without having symptoms.

Your doctor will work with you to develop an asthma self-management plan for controlling your asthma on a daily basis and an emergency action plan for stopping asthma attacks. These plans will tell you what medicines you should take and other things you should do to keep your asthma under control.