Asthma can be better controlled according to expert Dr. David Slade

People who suffer from asthma have exciting new treatment options

Asthma plagues about 25 million Americans and that number is only getting higher.  In fact, up to ten percent of asthma patients have developed a more severe asthma that is difficult to control, even when taking many medications.

A survey was conducted in 2016, that revealed that approximately two-thirds of people with asthma mistakenly believe their asthma is controlled and feel a false sense of confidence in managing their condition that may be driving recurring symptoms, and doctor, emergency room and urgent care visits.

According to AsthmaControlTest.com, A simple, 5-question test can help clarify if an individual’s asthma symptoms could be better controlled. The Asthma Control Test takes only two minutes to complete and can help people with asthma and their physicians improve treatment.

Visit AsthmaControlTest.com to take the test and Rethink Your Normal.

Dr. David Slade, a leading national asthma expert, pulmonologist and GSK Medical Affairs Lead on Asthma and Donna Matlach, a ballroom dancer with severe asthma and co-founder of the Severe Asthma Foundation spoke with Michelle Tompkins for TheCelebrityCafe.com about asthma, new treatment options, what is the Rethink Your Normal campaign and more.

Michelle Tompkins: Can we begin by first introducing yourselves and telling me where you're both from and where you live now?

Dr. David Slade:  Sure. Go right ahead, Dana.

Donna Matlach:  Well, I'm from Buffalo. My name is Donna Matlach and I'm from Buffalo, New York. And I now live full-time in Phoenix, Arizona because of my asthma.

Michelle Tompkins:  Thank you. And Dr. Slade.

Dr. David Slade:  Sure. I'm Dr. David Slade. I live outside of Philadelphia, but I grew up not far away from Buffalo in upstate New York in Syracuse. So I'm a pulmonologist with GlaxoSmithKline.

Michelle Tompkins:  And doctor, can you please tell us about your educational background?

Dr. David Slade:  Absolutely. I'm a pediatric pulmonologist. So I did my pediatric training in upstate New York in Syracuse, and then I did specialty training at Duke University in North Carolina. And then I stayed there to do some additional research.

Michelle Tompkins:  And what is your current job title, sir?

Dr. David Slade:  I'm the US lead in GSK in US medical affairs for asthma and respiratory biologics.

Michelle Tompkins:  Now, how many people suffer from asthma in the United States.

Dr. David Slade:  It is, unfortunately, a staggering number. So it's 25 million currently in the United States. The number is growing over time. And what's worse, is around 10 percent of those 25 million would be considered severe asthma or severe asthmatics.

Michelle Tompkins:  I'm actually one of the people who does have asthma. So how is it determined if someone has severe asthma rather than regular asthma?

Dr. David Slade:  It really depends a lot on your symptoms. So we look at a number of things. We look at how well the lungs work, the lung function, which is a test that you can do at your doctor's office or if you see a specialist, you can do it at their office. We look at the level of symptoms that you have on a daily or weekly basis including with someone like yourself who has to take their inhaler when they feel tight or wheezy. And the last thing that we really look at are the number of asthma attacks or a full-blown kind of severe exacerbation where you're going to the emergency room or the hospital.

Michelle Tompkins:  Now, for people who don't know, what is asthma?

Dr. David Slade:  So, asthma is a chronic lung disease that can start in childhood, although there are plenty of people who don't have symptoms as a child, that they start later on in life. It can even happen that you have some symptoms as a child and like Donna can tell you, that your symptoms kind of go away for a period of time in young adulthood and then kind of have a resurgence unfortunately when you're an adult and even get worse over time. Typically, you'll get things like coughing and wheezing, shortness of breath and kind of inflammation or sort of a swelling in the lungs that happens.

Michelle Tompkins:  Now, who typically gets asthma?

Dr. David Slade:  We know that there are risk factors, I'll say it like that, but we don't know that there's one precise or multiple precise causes. So it's not uncommon to have some symptoms as a child. People with allergies or even eczema are at greater likelihood, even having parents who have asthma, so there's probably a genetic component to it. And it might be a bit more common in women versus men potentially related to some hormones, but again, it's not precise need to find.

Michelle Tompkins:  Now, how do people get asthma?

Dr. David Slade:  So, sometimes for children, some of the wheezing that they experience can be proceeded by something like a respiratory infection, although not always. Some of the other triggers, the things that cause the upsurge in symptoms are things like cold weather, exercise, even things like being exposed to like a perfume or being in a workplace that's dusty. Donna may be able to kind of add even more color to what some of the triggers are and symptoms.

Michelle Tompkins:  I'll ask Donna her story in a couple of seconds after we get some of the medical stuff out of the way.

Dr. David Slade:  Great.

Michelle Tompkins:  Can the nature of asthma change over time?

Dr. David Slade:  Absolutely. You can— people can find that whereas their symptoms may be somewhat infrequent early in life or certain times of the year, they can happen at any time.

Michelle Tompkins:  How has asthma usually diagnosed?

Dr. David Slade:  Typically, it's diagnosed at the doctor's office when you kind of go and sort of advocate for yourself and say, "Doctor, I'm not feeling well. I keep having all of this stuff happening to me. I wheeze, I can't exercise, et cetera." They may or may not choose to do the lung test. If they do, it's not one that's painful or scary. So, typically, it's done at the doctor's office with a lung test.

Michelle Tompkins:  What is a lung test?

Dr. David Slade:  So we call them pulmonary function tests at the hospital. But basically, you would take a deep breath in, you would blow out really hard into a tube, and then you would see a readout of it on the computer. For children, they might even have something like a birthday cake on a screen, and then kind of encourage the child to blow out the candles as they're blowing into this tube. And al it really does is it sort of measures the amount of air that you can blow out in a certain period of time.

Michelle Tompkins:  I wish I had a birthday cake to blow out when I was little. It would be a far more pleasant experience.

Dr. David Slade:  I'm sure it would [laughter]. I wanted a birthday cake myself.

Michelle Tompkins:  And it is. But the blow tube isn't bad, you're correct on that. What is the misconception people often have about asthma?

Dr. David Slade:  I think the biggest one, and this is kind of a personal story for me, is that if your asthma symptoms are worsening over time, sometimes that worsening can be subtle and it can sort of creep up on you and your life almost like a circle, it just kind of slowly grow smaller, smaller over time. You become accustomed to it, and you don't necessarily challenge that. So my personal example is my wife has asthma and I noticed over time that she was doing less, she was exercising less. It was just harder for her to do certain things. And I asked her about it and she said, "Well, I'm going to wheeze. I'm going to be short of breathe, and then I'm going to have to sit down and I just can't do that right now." And so we had a talk about not kind of settling for letting asthma sort of control her and what she wanted to do.

Michelle Tompkins:  So, Dana, you've been neglected a little bit, let's talk. Tell me about your story, please.

Donna Matlach:  Well, as Dr. Slade said earlier, as a child I was one of those children who was diagnosed with a mild type of asthma. However, I outgrew it, it went away. In 2007, it came back and as again, another mild form of asthma. By 8, it became uncontrollable. I was on a cocktail of medications, which I like to say, because they tried every type of medication you can imagine, and inhaler and tests. And I was using a nebulizer every hour. And like Dr. Slade's wife, I was unable to perform the simplest of tasks, like walking short distances or bending over to tie my shoes, without having an exacerbation.

Michelle Tompkins:  Now how has asthma affected your daily life now? Or does it?

Donna Matlach:  Well, actually, right now I'm somewhat controlled after many years of-- well, five years of trying different things and searching. My husband and I traveled the United States just looking for someone that could help because my symptoms were having me up all night or I was going to the ER at least once a month. I was at the doctor's office a couple of times a month, and it totally-- we loved to dance, and we couldn't do any of those just simple things. I couldn't even laugh without wheezing. But it affected my life. And it changed it dramatically because, growing up in Buffalo, like Dr. Slade said, the cold was my trigger and the humidity. And so we moved to Arizona, where we are now. And that seems to be, along with everything else that I'm doing, helping with controlling my asthma. And mine is severe, very severe.

Michelle Tompkins:  Other than the move, what treatment options do you utilize?

Donna Matlach:  Well, there's many different treatments that you could use, and Dr. Slade could probably explain that better than me. But what I have for my asthma is inhalers and other medications. And I am monitored very closely. But I know Dr. Slade can probably tell you what other treatments are available.

Michelle Tompkins:  Dr. Slade, what are some common treatments that people should be thinking of right now when it comes to their asthma?

Dr. David Slade:  Sure. So there are different types. The most common one-- and I would say it's really more to kind of get you feeling better when you feel wheezy. Obviously, you know very well about this as an asthmatic yourself. So we call them the rescue inhaler or the bronchodilator. So it's a medicine that kind of opens up the lung passages when you feel like your chest is tight or you're wheezing. That's one that every asthmatic patient should have with them. Typically, you'll sort of carry one with you around to different places, or children will be sent to school with one. That doesn't really treat symptoms, though. So the main kind is really an inhaled steroid medicine. There are multiple different inhalers that are made, all different kinds of steroids. But that's really the mainstay of treatment. The other kind is-- there are even still combination medicines where you have different asthma therapies together in the same inhaler. Typically, those are used for patients who are more, say, in the middle of the spectrum or more on the severe end of the spectrum. It really depends. And beyond that, there are even medicines that can be injected into the body. And, again, they are typically for the more severe types of patients.

Michelle Tompkins:  Now what is rethink your normal?

Dr. David Slade:  So that kind of goes back to where we were talking about not letting your world become smaller because of asthma symptoms and because you're sort of being accustomed to allowing asthma to limit your daily activities, like what Donna was talking about, being able to just tie her shoes, or cough, or laugh. The idea is that you are advocating for yourself. You are doing something like taking the Asthma Control Test. Using that information and then going to your doctor and really sitting down and spending some quality time with your doctor, talking about your symptoms, what you want to be able to do, and then seeing if there are other ways that your asthma therapy can be adjusted.

Michelle Tompkins:  Now where can we go to get more information on this?

Dr. David Slade:  Sure. So asthmacontroltest.com is a great place to start. It's just a series of questions that you would take and answer. And the idea is to be kind of candid with yourself. Nobody else is going to answer them for you. It's just the idea of being honest and open about the level of symptoms that you have. And then you can kind of take that information and, again, kind of go to your doctor and say, "Hey, this is really where I'm at, and it's not where I want to be."

Michelle Tompkins:  Is there anything else either of you would like to add?

Donna Matlach:  I'd like to say, ‘Don't let the asthma dictate your life.’ I had to do many research projects and go to many hospitals and different doctors to get some answers. But having an asthma action plan really helped me. And I had to keep in mind that not all asthma is the same, which, as Dr. Slade was saying, that's rethinking your normal. My normal asthma was easy to control. But, obviously, it changed very quickly. And never, ever give up. Leave no stone unturned. Be your own advocate and keep on searching for answers.

Michelle Tompkins:  Those are very good tips. Thank you very much. Good luck to you both, and thank you very much for this valuable information.

Asthma can be treated and you can get more information at www.asthmacontroltest.com.