Asthma Center for Teens

Use this printable sheet to help manage your asthma.

Use this printable sheet to help manage your asthma.

Use this weekly diary to keep a record of your asthma symptoms, peak flows, and the amount of medicine taken.

Here's steps to remove or minimize triggers at home that cause asthma flare-ups.

Asthma is more common these days than it used to be. The good news is it's also a lot easier to manage and control.

Two different types of medicines are used to treat asthma. Read about how they work, and why people might need to take them.

If you have asthma, you're more likely to be allergic to a pet than someone who doesn't have asthma. Find out what you can do.

Tips and advice for teens on refilling a prescription.

Inhalers and nebulizers are tools that help you get asthma medicine into the lungs. Find out how to use them.

Each day you breathe about 20,000 times. Find out more about the lungs and breathing process.

Doctors use several different types of allergy tests, depending on what a person may be allergic to. Find out what to expect from allergy tests.

When something keeps the air from moving in and out of the airways in your lungs, it's called an airway obstruction.

The airways in your lungs are like tubes or straws.

An allergen is a medical word for anything that causes an allergic reaction.

Many people who have asthma have some kind of allergy, too.

All warm-blooded animals shed tiny flakes from their skin called dander.

Asthma is a problem with the lungs that causes the airways to swell and produce lots of thick mucus.

An asthma action plan is a set of written instructions that can help a person manage breathing problems.

When a person has a lot of trouble with wheezing, coughing, or shortness of breath, it's called an asthma flare-up, or attack.

When a person breathes, air comes in through the nose or mouth and then goes into the trachea (windpipe). From there, it passes through the bronchial tubes, which are in the lungs.

A narrowing of the airways is known as bronchoconstriction.

Bronchodilators are medications commonly used by people with asthma.

Not all steroids are the bad, muscle-building kind that some athletes take illegally.

A cough is a reflex that helps your body clear your throat and lungs.

Dust mites are microscopic bugs that live in household dust.

Some people have asthma symptoms (such as coughing, wheezing, or trouble breathing) only when they're playing sports or being active.

Histamine - a chemical found in some of the body's cells - causes many of the symptoms of allergies, such as a runny nose or sneezing.

Many people have allergy-induced asthma, which means that their asthma symptoms are triggered by allergic reactions.

This is a way of treating allergies with a series of regular allergy shots.

An inhaler is a device that gets medicine directly into a person's lungs.

Many people with asthma need to take medication every day to control their asthma.

The term "lung function" refers to how well a person is breathing.

A nebulizer is an electrically powered machine that turns liquid medication into a mist so that it can be breathed directly into the lungs through a face mask or mouthpiece.

A peak flow meter can tell you how well your lungs are working.

During the spring, summer, and fall, plants release pollen (a fine powder that is carried by the wind from plant to plant in order to fertilize them).

Quick-relief medicines are asthma medicines that work fast to stop or prevent asthma symptoms.

A retraction is a medical term for when the area between the ribs and in the neck sinks in when a person with asthma attempts to inhale.

A spacer makes it easier to use an inhaler.

A spirometer is an instrument that doctors use to measure how well a person's lungs are working. To use one, a person breathes into a mouthpiece.

Sulfites are food preservatives that can cause breathing difficulties in some people with asthma.

An asthma trigger is anything that brings on coughing, wheezing, trouble breathing, and other symptoms in a person with asthma.

A wheeze is a high-pitched whistling sound made when air flows through narrowed airways in the lungs, usually when people breathe out.