New coalition fights asthma attacks in schools [video]

The young woman was exhaling as hard as she could into the plastic spout she held tightly in her mouth, but everyone standing around her kept telling her to "blow-blow-blow-BLOW-BLOW-BLOW-BLOW."
With a final gasp she pushed the last remaining air from her lungs and then inhaled deeply, as her colleagues at the Family Health Center on Wilcox Boulevard cheered.
The staff at the health center had been training for several days on how to use their new spirometer, a $1,000 handheld device that measures a patient's lung capacity.....

Read more here: timesfreepress.com

------------------------------------------------------

A Drug For Alcoholism? Asthma Medication Reduces Craving To Drink Alcohol

Giving up alcohol isn’t the hardest part of overcoming alcoholism — the subsequent cravings are what lead most to relapse. A new study from UCLA may have a way to better address these cravings. According to the research, a drug commonly used in Japan to treat asthma also has the unexpected side effect of quelling a desire for alcohol by reducing the pleasurable effects of drinking. The findings could one day make the drug a candidate for use in alcohol abuse treatments.....

Read more here: medicaldaily.com

------------------------------------------------------

Is It Really Asthma? 
Many people prescribed asthma medication don't need it. Make sure you have been properly tested.

Doctors wouldn’t put a cast on a leg they thought was broken without an x-ray. Nor would they diagnose diabetes and start a patient on insulin without ordering a blood test, or at least a urine analysis. But too frequently doctors diagnose asthma without doing the standard test of lung function — spirometry.
These findings of a recent Canadian study mean that people who have not been tested may be misdiagnosed with asthma when they may have another serious cardiopulmonary condition such as ischemic heart disease. Or they may have nothing seriously wrong at all.....

Read more here: thedoctorwillseeyounow.com