By Betsy Crick

May is Asthma Awareness Month – one of the most common lifelong chronic diseases. One in 14 Americans lives with asthma, a disease affecting the lungs, causing repeated episodes of wheezing, breathlessness, chest tightness, and coughing.  Asthma costs the United States about $56 billion each year.

Asthma in South Carolina

Children, young adults and older adults suffer from asthma.  South Carolina 2013 data shows that:

• About 311,539 adults and 102,440 children suffer from asthma
• 5,219 hospitalizations were for asthma – and children accounted for 28% of those hospitalizations
• 61 South Carolinians died from asthma

Learn How to Control your Asthma

Although asthma cannot be cured, it is possible to manage asthma successfully to reduce and prevent asthma attacks. Successful asthma management includes knowing the warning signs of an attack, avoiding things that may trigger an attack, and following the advice of your healthcare provider.

Use your asthma medicine as prescribed and be aware of common triggers in the environment known to bring on asthma symptoms, including smoke (including second-hand and third-hand cigarette smoke), household pets, dust mites, and pollen. According to the Surgeon General, children with asthma exposed to tobacco smoke experience more frequent and severe asthma attacks.

For more information on asthma, please visit our website.