any idea why my 3 year old gets constant coughs/chest problems??

[mad4myboys]

He has mild asthma which he has had for a year. He is always getting chest infections, croup or general bad coughs. WHY??

He is healthy, allergies have been sorted. Has multi vitamin supplement... anyone?

brings them home from nursery ?

older sibs bring home from school ?

the grown-ups bring home from work ?

tbh, asthma, mild or otherwise, is going to make him more susceptible to any bugs going around

the good news is, he is more than likely to grow out of it

Hi Mad4myboys, I full understand where you are coming from. My dd is just 3 and seems to always have a cold and with it comes the most dreadful cough which last a couple of weeks. Sometimes at its worst she coughs so much she is sick and hardly gets any sleep in the night as she coughs all the time. When was your little one diagnosed with asthma as I have been told by my Dr that they cant diagnose it is my dd as she is too young and I have thought for ages that she has asthma.

hi, i had mild asthma, havent needed inhaler since having ds1. There is also alot of it in the family. GP gave inhaler with aerochamber when he had another chest infection which ended up with a bad cough for ages which actually turned out to be asthma! They are saying they cant 'diagnose' it as 3 is too young to get them to do the peak flow meter (something you have to huff/blow in it really hard to get a measurement)

if i was you (im not medical or anything)if you think it is a problem i would ask to try inhaler? Is it in the family?

Hi, my two half brothers have asthma quite badly. I will ring docs tomorrow I think and see what they say. It just seems that she gets rid of one cold/cough and then a week later she gets it again and cough is that bad that she is always sick with it which means she tends to lose weight. Thanks for replying so quickly, I will let you know tomorrow how I got on. Also, did you find the inhaler worked with your lo. x

he was given the blue inhaler first (ventolin) which is a preventative IIRC which worked great for a while but then he got very poorley with a chest infection about 6 months later which made asthma worse and he was given the brown one which is steroids. That def helped too. This winter i have only been using the blue one so far....

Please make an appointment with the asthma nurse, and study the asthma association website to make sure you are managing the asthma properly and using the inhalers correctly. It is so important, and I really worry about how many people don't really understand how vital it is.

If you are using the preventer properly, and increasing the dose when necessary, you shouldn't really need to use the reliever very much at all.

Every child is different, but it is worth really getting to grips with active management and keeping a peak flow diary. It can make a huge difference.

The blue inhaler (ventolin) is not a preventer, it is a reliever, and is often not very effective on its own. In fact it has recently been found not to be really suitable for small children, so it is worth getting a specialist opinion, as there are several other choices of inhaler. My boys did very badly on ventolin (there were fewer types of inhalers back then), but improved once they switched to atrovent, together with a preventer (pulmicort - the brown one).

HTH

IME the winter months is the time when you need to use the preventer - in order to prevent attacks IYSWIM.

Mind you - ds2 needed his preventer all the time as he got coughs and colds in the winter, and hayfever in the spring and summer, so there was never really a time he didn't need it!