Swim team symptoms and conditions

Wow!!! I can't believe it! I just found this site. I've actually been on Advair 500/50 for years now, about 7 years at least. Just as a bit of a background, I'm 24 years old, used to be extremely active, played water polo, was on the swim team, and was just overall very active in high school. I've had severe chronic asthma since I was 8 years old, so in order to help me stabilize my asthma, my critical care pulmonologist put me on Advair. It was a "miracle drug"! However, while my asthma was under control, I was experiencing all these other symptoms that everyone else has been talking about.
Anyway, to make things worse, I just talked to my (new) doctor and she told me that the Advair makes it so that some organ (I'm sorry, I don't remember the name) actually stops producing prednisone (or the same stuff that your body naturally produces itself to keep your lungs working correctly) if on it for long enough. It makes sense because for the first few years it was prescribed to me, I really only filled the prescription as I was getting sick as a backup, but other then that I was generally under control. For the last I'd say about a year, I've been consistent and used it regularly as the doctor actually prescribed, every day, twice a day, whether I was sick or not. Now, I can't go even a week without it, otherwise I'm in the hospital.
During the last year or so that I've been consistent with taking the medication, I've had major depression, gained 45 lbs, fatigue, anxiety, dizziness, nausea, heart palpitations, heartburn, leg pains, sore throat, sinus infections (we just finally decided I was just allergic to our animals and I've been on decongestants for pretty much the whole year, doing sinus flushes, etc and I'm still all stuffy!), unexplained bruising, crazy mood swings, muscle pains, headaches, heartburn, etc. I thought I was just completely crazy, I kept believing it was all in my head!!!
I'm going to my doctor today and asking her to prescribe me something else. The funny thing was, I was just on my way to the hospital b/c my doctor's been treating me for the last 3 weeks for vertigo accompanied by the heart palpitations and the nausea, she finally is giving up and is sending me to the emergency room. I figured before I went that route, I'd look into it myself. Go figure!

My 15 y.o. daughter has has first hand experience with weight gain on Advair. About 6 years ago at about 9 y.o., she gained 20 lbs in 6 months - and it started happening exactly when she started the drug. She was very active (swim team, gymnastics, etc) and did not overeat. It is very frustrating that both her pediatrician and her asthma/allergy specialist deny that her small dose of Advair is to blame.

For some reason, and I have talked to others that this has happened to, switching to Singulair did not help her with the weight problem. Seems the people who are hypersensitive to inhaled steroids are also sensitive to Singulair. Concerned about her rapid weight gain, and because she was always so thin, I took her to an endocrinologist to rule out any other problems. After a lot of bloodwork, he concluded that he could not rule out that it was a side effect of the Advair and/or Singulair, and that they may have elevated her blood sugar. I have read tons and tons of postings on the internet about children & adults rapidly gaining weight from inhaled corticosteroids (i.e. Flovent, Advair), along with the round face, bloated stomach, stretch marks, thin skin, easy bruising, etc. but nobody ever says what happens after stopping any of these drugs. Do people ever go back to normal? Do kids look like themselves again? Do any of the side effects disappear?

She is now 15 y.o. and cannot reverse her weight gain no matter what (30 lbs overweight). The last 2 years, she has only been on a small dose of Pulmicort (a different class of corticosteroid even safe to take when pregnant) since she has mild persistent asthma, and allergy shots have helped trememdously. My husband and I have been looking for 6 years now on how to avoid our daughter's weight gain with asthma drugs. If you run into any info., please let us know. Any experiences or info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!