Asthma day: awareness and everyday care

In either sense, the practical focus is recognising symptoms, using prescribed medicine correctly, reducing avoidable triggers and knowing the warning signs of a serious flare.

Well-managed asthma should interfere as little as possible with sleep, exercise, work or school. Waking with cough, limiting activity because of breathlessness, or needing a reliever more often than your personal plan allows can signal that control needs review.

Awareness events can be a useful prompt to check inhaler technique and update an asthma action plan, but care should continue throughout the year. Symptoms vary over time and may change with respiratory infections, dust, smoke, weather, exercise or allergens.

Take controller medicine on the schedule prescribed, even on symptom-free days, and keep the appropriate reliever accessible. Check the inhaler mouthpiece, dose indicator and expiry information, and use a spacer if one has been prescribed for your device.

Follow your action plan when symptoms change. Record night waking, activity limits, cough, wheeze and reliever use so a clinician can see the pattern. Arrange a routine review if asthma is disrupting normal life or the plan no longer seems to match your symptoms.

Get urgent help for severe or rapidly worsening breathlessness, difficulty speaking in full sentences, blue or grey lips, confusion, marked drowsiness, or poor relief after following the emergency steps in your asthma plan. Sit upright, use the prescribed reliever as directed, and do not drive yourself if you are struggling to breathe.

Bring your inhalers and ask the clinician to watch how you use them. Clarify which medicine prevents symptoms, which one provides quick relief, what changes should trigger the action plan, and whether nasal allergy symptoms or persistent cough also need assessment.