Often when I talk about the need for an inhaler for a child who has wheezing, I see a lot of angst, anxiety, fear and some times even ridicule in the parents! There are several wrong beliefs and a big taboo against use of inhalers. A lot of people believe that once someone uses an inhaler they are dependent on it for life! The truth is nothing even close to this.
There are certain viral infections or chronic irritation as in Asthma that causes the breathing tubes in lungs to go into a spasm. The only medicine that helps in relieving the spasm right away is salbutamol or albuterol. The most efficient way (that means a way with the least dose and the quickest action) is to deliver the medicine directly to those breathing pipes with an inhaler and spacer.
A lot of parents don’t realize that they are already using the same medicine that comes in an
inhaler in their cough syrups. In fact cough syrups have 1000 times more medicine per dosage than an
inhaler. After being circulated in the whole body and giving a lot of side effects, the effective dose
of syrups for the lungs is negligible. On the other hand, an inhaler provides the medicine directly to
the lungs, so works instantly and better at 1/1000th of the dose! The rescue medicine delivered by an
inhaler is out of the body in few hours so there is no question of getting hooked on to the inhaler.
When we don’t let us kids suffer with fever and give them a fever reducer then why do we let our
kids with wheezing suffer and shy away from breathing-tube-spasm reliever medicines? Food for thought…..
