Now, what types of asthma treatment are there? Your doctor will most certainly show you two kinds; relievers and preventers. Everybody who has asthma has a reliever. It is the typical inhaler that is becoming extremely popular in most schools. Did I say extremely popular? Make that alarmingly popular. You can tell that asthma is reaching record levels just by the number of reliever inhalers you see at schools these days. As their name suggests, the job of the reliever is to relieve each and every asthma symptom. There are side effects, though. Muscle shakes could occur, or the heart beat could increase.

Preventers are also inhalers but these aren't so much for attacks but to help to control the swelling and inflammation in the airways. They also make the airways less susceptible to asthma triggers (pollution, for example). They have to be taken every day because the aim of the preventer is to build up a protective effect in the sufferer. You can easily distinguish preventers from relievers by their color. Relievers are blue whereas preventers can be orange, brown or red. Although preventers contain a type of artifical steroid found naturally in the body called Cortisone, your kids are not going to develop huge muscles. It has nothing to do with anabolic steroids. What could occur is that the user might get a small mouth infection which is known as thrush.

Other known side effects of Cortisone are stunted growth, weight gain, and infections are allowed to spread which wouldn't otherwise. In some cases death (the worst side effect) occurs if the medication is stopped very abruptly. Not something you'd want to give your child, now is it?

As well as having the same side effects as the reliever, preventers can also cause cataracts, diabetes, and mood swings. All in all these asthma treatments are probably not the best thing for your kids to be taking, but there do exist other free, reliable, and above all safe methods of preventing and even eliminating asthma.