I stopped Advair and felt like I did have a elephant sitting on my chest for 4 days. Slowly the feeling went away. It would return periodically afterward , but not as bad. I never had that feeling before Adair. I am a lifelong asthmatic. I do feel the Adair was very helpful, but think it made my breathing shallower overall which is why I stopped the once a day. I do feel like I am breathing deeper now, but I have used it on occasion since and do need to see my Dr. about it.
Advair has been an interesting experience.
I was put on Advair 250 twice a day for acid reflux-related asthma. I used it for about four weeks before I decided to quit it cold turkey, as I gained a lot of weight from the steroids and have never weighed so much in my life. The day after I quit it I got really bad withdrawal symptoms--particularly, my asthma became the WORST it's ever been in my life. My chest felt as if it had concrete poured into it. It got so bad that I was waking up every couple of hours and couldn't get any sleep. I was tempted to go back on the Advair, as I was using my albuterol inhaler every two hours, but I kept reminding myself that it was just the Advair causing extreme withdrawal symptoms and that it would get better. As I was determined to stick it out and quit the steroids, I endured three days of terrible withdrawal symptoms.
Now, I'm happy to say that I'm no longer dependent on Advair and I'm back to my normal self. After about 3 days of breathing hell (which is known as "rebound inflammation"), everything normalized. I'm back to the rare usage of albuterol and don't use steroid inhalers at all. I'm posting this to let people know that quitting Advair can be rough for the first few days, but it DOES get better. I recommend quitting on a Friday, so you'll have recovered from the withdrawal by Monday and the start of the work week.