Warning signs of an Asthma Attack

The longer you live with your asthma the better you will get at recognising the early symptoms of an asthmatic episode,

or attack. Unfortunately, different people suffer asthma attacks in different ways. They have their own set of symptoms that lead into an attack, so there isn’t a definitive way to predict an attack.

The more attacks you have the easier it will become to predict the next one, and even a small change in your breathing or the way your throat and chest feel will alert you to what is coming so you can take the necessary precautions to ward off an attack. Until you have this experience, however, it may be that you are on the verge of having an asthmatic episode before you even realise it. Below is a list of the common early symptoms that asthmatics regularly report prior to an attack:

* An itchy throat that isn’t relieved by coughing or swallowing,
* Coughing or wheezing that isn’t related to a cold or other infection,
* A feeling of tightness in the chest,
* Difficulty breathing, especially if you are at rest,
* Pale and clammy skin, or cold sweats,
* Fast heartbeat that can be felt in the chest. This is often described as a pounding heartbeat.
* Sudden headache, and
* Reduced response to your normal asthma medications

Many of the symptoms mentioned above are regarded as classic warning signs, but you as an individual may not experience all, or even any of them, so you need to keep an account, possibly in an asthma journal, of how you feel before an attack and what signs and symptoms are common to all of your attacks. In this way you will quickly be able to compile a list of warning signs specific to you which you can hand to your family and friends so they can recognise an impending attack as well. 

Often the warning signs of an asthma attack only occur in the moments before the attack takes hold and so there is very little you can do to prevent it. All you can do is treat it as quickly as possible. Some people start to experience warning signs hours or even days before an attack, although they may not realise that the symptoms are in fact warning signs. For example, some asthmatics experience flu-like symptoms, such as a runny nose, blocked sinuses, headaches, wheezy chest, etc. that are actually an allergic response to an allergen. Over the course of the next few hours (or days if the concentration of the allergen is quite low, but constant) the airways also become affected resulting in an asthmatic episode.

It is these kinds of symptoms and early warning signs that you have to look out for and become familiar with before you can really take control of your asthma.