asthma?

[LGD]

I've written once before regarding my asthma diagnosis. I've had slight wheezing, some coughing (more of a hawking) and mild persistent shortness of breath since January. After a wildly positive methacholine challenge in May, my pulmo put me on pulmicort. Pulmicort hasn't been helping me much at all with my symptoms, and the doctor mentioned he wants to put me on prednisone for a couple of weeks to see if that clears me up. I'm wondering if this sounds like relatively normal protocol. I'm pretty scared of prednisone (just from what I've read), and am trying to find out what diets, vitamins, etc. I can go on so that I help limit any potential side affects from this drug. I don't smoke, drink, and exercise relatively frequently.  My "asthma" symptoms don't come and go, rather they are constant and are made worse by certain triggers (animals, pollen, humidity, exercise). Any thoughts? Thanks for helping.

[National Jewish]

As indicated in our last response, the diagnosis is still not totally clear.  Prednisone is a reasonable approach to not only help with the symptoms, but also help with the diagnosis.  A short course is usually tolerated well by most people.  I would suggest watching your fluid intake during the time on prednisone.  Hopefully, this course of medicine will relieve the symptoms you are experiencing.  Please read our oral steroid information at http://www.nationaljewish.org/disease-info/treatments/quick/oral-steroids.aspx to learn more about the side effects and their prevention.  Talk with your doctor about preventing and watching for these side effects.