Advair HFA and drugs

Although I have asthma, I was in my physician's office for another purpose when the doctor noticed my cough. After listening to my breathing, she offered me samples of Advair Discus 100/50. "This will take care of that cough," she said.

Sure enough, the cough I'd had for 2 weeks disappeared completely after only the second dose. I thought I'd hit the medicinal jackpot!

Then came Advair day 3. I noticed that my heart rate was elevated constantly, even when I was lying down, and my blood pressure was higher than normal. I figured I was coming down with a cold.

On day 4, I awoke to the experience of having all of the muscles in my body feeling stiff 24/7. This is no exaggeration. And of all things, my lats (the muscles running down your sides starting at the armpit) were completely tensed at all times. It was one of the most unnatural and uncomfortable feelings I've ever had.

By day 5, my entire body was completely rigid. I had to chew gum all day just to release excess tension. I was growing more and more agitated by the minute. I wanted to take care of things that needed to be done (dishes, laundry, etc.) but found myself only able to read or watch TV.

On day 6, the fear began to set in. I was terribly anxious about something, but I had no idea what. Since my brain couldn't figure out why my body was literally in flight-or-flight mode 24 hours a day, it began parceling out all the angst to all of the small aspects of my life. I became unable to do anything because I was afraid of everything.

On day 7, my cough returned, and my mind went crazy. Fearing the worst, I told my husband that I was going completely out of my mind, but I had no idea why. We are 35, and have known each other since we were 14, and I have never seen such a look on his face. I told him we were going to have to get some kind of mental help immediately because I was ceasing to function at all.

On day 8, I'm still coughing, and still going out of my mind. I have to get on the computer to look up psychologists on my insurance company's website. I start the search, but then, a thought occurs to me. I opened a new tab and googled Advair and Anxiety. And there was the answer. I called my husband at work, and told him I was going off the Advair and why. He seemed skeptical, but thought I should definitely give the Advair a trial discontinuation.

Day 9, I wake up 24 hours after my last dose, and my cough is gone. I feel more relaxed than I have in days. Perhaps I am not going crazy after all.

It took about 4 days to go completely back to normal. According to my physician, the reaction I had was to the Salmeterol. I therefore should avoid any products containing any long acting beta-adrenoceptor agonist: Formoterol, Bambuterol, and sustained-release oral Salbutamol. I'm just glad I didn't end up institutionalized.

I've been on Advair for 12 years.I'm 27 years old and fed up with all this medications that doctors prescribe.We are so brainwashed into thinking that we misbehave if we don't see a doctor.Let me tell you what: The majority of the doctors, only know to prescribe medication.They get bonuses from the pharma industries every time they prescribe their "new discovered"medicine.
Advair is supposed to be preventive, what you don't know it's for how long.Exactly!!!.....'cause it's not meant to cure Asthma, it's meant to keep you hooked for the rest of your life.
My worse symptom is a very fast heart beating.I'm a martial artist and every time i exert a fast burst of energy(while i'm sparring for example), my heart goes into pumped up mode.It beats very, very fast and i have to stop because it hurts.Sometimes i keep going no matter what and feel like i'm exercising for two people.When i stop, i breath very deeply for 5 minutes and all of a sudden it stops and beats regularly.
It's not fun, and one more thing: I'm from Argentina and my mom sends me the medicine from there cause it's way cheaper, sometimes i run out(i procrastinate sometimes), i'm left off with no medicine for a few days and boy.....I'm a wreck.The time you stop you go right back to where you started.I've been researching about an alternative to this "S***".I'm afraid 'cause i don't want to feel discomfort with my lungs anymore, but i strongly believe that there should be a natural alternative to all this laboratory drugs and i'm on a mission to find it.

I just turned 34 and I am a woman. I have struggled with mild asthma from early teens. I was always able to control my mild asthma with a rescue inhaler as my asthma was triggered primarily by cats/some dogs. However eventually that faded away and I was in control as long as I wasn't around cats. At age 31, I had my daughter (she is now 2 1/2), I rarely had asthma symptoms during my pregnancy and before. However about 1 week after my c-section I had to go to the ER because I couldn't breathe. They thought maybe I was having a pulmonary embolism from the previous c-section surgery. Fortunately I wasn't, but unfortunately for whatever reason, my asthma had been triggered (even if I wasn't around animals). My doctor put me on a Advair, another rescue inhaler, and ZPac. It helped right away.

I noticed a big difference in my ability to breathe. However 2 1/2 years later, I'm still on it. 250/50 once a day. I've tried going off of it several times but I'm unable to breathe. I don't want to be on a steroid long term, but I also have to be able to breathe after about 2 days being off of it. It's like gasping for every breathe. Not fun at all. The side effects I've had are hives to anything cold, itchy skin, stiffer feeling joints, occasional mouth sores, lots of phlegm (coughing up phlegm especially in the morning). I've never suffered from leg cramps or depression from Advair, in fact prior to having a child I was on Lexapro for anxiety and after being put on Advair my depression/anxiety has gone away. In fact, I've lost weight (30 Lbs) and am now down to the same size I was in college! I've asked two different doctors my OBGYN and Family Doctor if it's safe as we are planning for another child. They say yes. My OBGYN has said if I can't breathe I'm not going to be able to carry full-term. Which I guess makes sense. My Family Doctor said you can use Advair only as needed as it is not a bad drug to go off and on again (unlike antidepressants where you should never just stop them cold turkey). He said (he also suffers from asthma) that asthma can be triggered by stress (and my life has been extremely stressful over the last year).

Is there anyone who has had similar side-effects? Do you believe the benefit of Advair outweighs the negatives? I'm wondering if there is a better non-steroid drug that I can take that is SAFER for pregnancy and for my future. Open to suggestions...

Thank you to everyone who has posted on here. This is my second day of quitting Advair. Got sick and tired of becoming a 57 yr old with the body of a 90 yr old. I am fighting back. Only going to use my emergency inhaler if needed. Advair is ruining my life. I have been on it since 04/11/06 and have never been the same since the beginning. I am saying "NO" to Advair.

I was started on Advair HFA about 35 days ago. A little background about me is that I'm 35 years old, in good physical shape. I'm a competitive cyclists doing road races anywhere from 45-100 miles, I work out 2-4 hours everyday. I've had lifelong chronic asthma, but have fought the disease with my healthy lifestyle. I also play the saxophone.

Since I've been on Advair I've developed a constant sore throat. Been coughing up stuff constantly when I'm out training on my bike. Can't seem to sleep for more than a few hours at a time. The worst side affect has been the leg cramps which are killing my training for up coming races. I have constant leg cramps that force me to get out of bed over and over to work them out. My energy levels have dropped to the point that I can't do even half a workout without being totally wiped out. This is coming from a guy that averages 60miles a day on the bike, the other day I couldn't even do 15 miles and had to stop from the constant cramps and tiredness. This stuff is a nightmare. I've gone back to using nothing but my albuterol inhaler. I'll continue to do lung exercises 4 times a day and completely clean up my diet and basically get this stuff out of my system. Let this be a warning that you can't get something positive without something negative as well.

I am a part-time professional singer and attorney. I developed an odd cough-variant asthma this winter at age 42 -- it had scary breath shortness and wheezing plus lots of phlegm coughed up. I had never before had the shortness/wheezing/asthma, though I have always had allergies and occasional bronchitis following a cold. The asthma/allergy specialists put me on Advair 500 twice a day with each attack, plus an oral prednisone burst/short taper, nebulized (not just rescue inhaler) albuterol (beta 2 agonist), and antibiotics (a different one each time). I also take Claritin, Rhinocort and Astelin for my allergies. I had four attacks of asthma this winter that were treated this way; after the fourth, they put me on Advair 250 maintenance for a month. With each attack, I would get hoarse, have trouble sleeping, and get odd muscle cramps I never had had. The hoarseness was worse each time, but I was able to sing through it at my regular gigs. I attributed the side effects to the prednisone. With my fifth attack, they told me to ramp up the Advair to 500 and do all else the same, but as an experiment to see how this would alter those side effects, I decided to treat it with everything but the prednisone. The hoarseness, sleep trouble, and muscle cramps were all much worse. I found this site, noted the recommendation of several other singers to try Asmanex instead of Advair, and asked the docs about it. They agreed that all these symptoms could be related to the Advair and gave me Asmanex 250 twice/day instead instead of the Advair, plus all the other meds for the attack. The symptoms went away within a week, although it took a little longer for me to get over the asthma attack this time. I am extremely grateful to this site and all the users posting comments. I can sing again, sleep again, and exist without weird muscle cramps during treatment of my asthma. Thank you very much.

two years ago I had the pneumonia vaccine. Less than a year ago, I had a cold. .. and while taking Advil, my cold quickly turned into pneumonia and I had to go through two different antibiotics to get rid of it and this ended up going on for about 2 months to get free from it all. A real mess! By then I came off Advair as I thought it might be related to the reason I got Pneumonia!

A year later, I have a cough --getting over a cold - and my primary care doctor wants to put me back on Advair again. To be honest, I don't want to touch the stuff. I'm very sensitive to drugs. If they give me pain killers at the E.R., I am a "sinker". I know my doctor is trying to do the best, but I'm really hesitant about it! I think my cough will get better on its own..with my inhalers.. atrovent, etc. although it's constant. But I have a suspicion that Advair could have been a part of the reason I got pneumonia. Any ideas on any other help?

I have used Advair 250 for a few years now and have noticed a few of the same symptoms as the other posters, but my main concern is whenever I go off the drug for too long my asthma gets drastically worse. I have become extremely dependent on this expensive drug that I can barely afford and I fear it is just weakening my health while only mildly suppressing my asthma. I feel stuck with this drug now. I feel like a slave to it. It's an awful feeling.

My daughter was on Advair, Singulair, and Zyrtec to control her severe asthma and allergies. We were so thankful that these medications kept her from having to be hospitalized 2-3 times a year for uncontrollable asthma attacks. About six months after she began taking these medications she began to have headaches, she had difficulty sleeping, she was irritable, she had stomach pains, leg cramps,and eventually depression and social withdrawal. She went from an outgoing and happy teenager to a bitter and angry person. In 2003 she committed suicide. Six months after her death reports started to surface about the link between singulair and depression and suicide. Perhaps for my daughter it was a combination of the three drugs. Whatever you do be cautious and do your research before taking any allergy or asthma medication. Go to the Singulair website and you will be astounded by what you read. Please try to get the word out about these medications.

I have used Advair for about 4 years now. My dental hygiene has always been impeccable, but recently I have had to have three root canals in a very short period of time and my dentist has gotten very concerned about how rapidly my teeth have developed so many problems. He immediately asked if I was using an asthma inhaler and I told him about Advair. He said that drugs like this cause dry mouth at night and this reduces the immune response in the salivary glands. These root canals have come at great expense and I am experiencing a lot of dental sensitivity too. The day he told me about this I threw my diskus away! I have been using some homeopathic stuff ever since and I haven't had a problem. My dentist told me to send my recent bills - some $6,000 - to my asthma doctor and ask her to pay for them!! Can't wait for that appointment. :-))

There was an expert on the Mike and Juliet show the other day that said that Advair was not meant to be taken for a long period of time. It is suppose to be a short term medication but the doctors and pharmaceutical companies will not tell you that. For some people this medication really works , and for others the side effects outwieght the benefits I personally don't think the the doctors know anything about half of the medication that the prescribe. They just look in a book and pick a drug that fits your condition. They never tell you the long term side effects from the drugs, and that really makes me upset. I have taken several drugs that the doctor prescribed for me and they don't tell me that it is harmful until I come back in with a serious problem. I think we should stick to the good old home remedies, because people who didn't take these drugs 50 years ago had a longer life expectancy than we do now and the seen to be doing fine.

I tried to cut down on my Advair usage because it's so darned expensive - close to $200 a month. I only did one puff in the morning. I continued taking my Singulair as prescribed, once a day, at night. I had to go back to using Advair twice a day when I found I couldn't walk up two flights of stairs without difficulty breathing. But the thing that I hate the most is the coughing and the yellow mucus. Does anyone have this problem? I breathe better after expelling the mucus but sometimes it's so hard to do, I have actually coughed up blood. I have, also, lost my regular voice. At times I sound completely hoarse, and forget about singing, That's gone. I ask the pharmaceutical companies, if I must continue taking these drugs, can you make a version I can afford!

Very prone to thrush mouth-even after brushing and gargling, weakness in muscles, Doctors do not know the affects of taking Advair for longer than 6 months

I have just tried Advair, and after 4 days, joints all over my body started to ache. My eyes hurt alot and my vision got blurry. Lastly, I just have a general feeling of unease. I quit the advair and was much better within 3 more days.
All pain is gone and eyes feel normal again, although my eye sight seems diminished. I took no other drugs and felt fine before taking the Advair.

I am 44 and suffer from mild copd. I can get by with Albuteral, and will do
so from now on. I know that one is safe.

Good luck to all.

I'm a 37 year old male and I've had asthma since I was a small child. I did the albuterol inhaler for many years but they took that off the market because of environmental reasons, so I had to switch to something. I wound up with the Advair 100/50. I noticed fairly early on that when I went to take the second prescribed puff at the end of the day, I didn't really feel I needed it. So, the combination of me being strongly skeptical of drugs and Advair being expensive led me to skip taking the second puff. The next morning, when I went to take my FIRST puff of the day, I noticed I didn't feel I needed that puff either, so I didn't take that puff. Long story short, I take ONE puff of this Advair every 3 to 5 days. It's been working well for me for about 3 or 4 years. I also take many healthy supplements like Omega Fatty acids, multivitamins, Vitamin C, minerals, etc.
So my message here is: Try taking LESS Advair... As little as possible. If your doctor figures it out, tell him/her whatever you feel like. Lie if you want. NOTHING (repeat) NOTHING is more important than your health and unfortunately the ONLY person who REALLY cares about YOUR health is you. You have to protect yourself. Don't let your doctor's ego win out over your health. You don't owe your doctor any anything except payment for your office visit.

man im only 17 and ive had this awwwwfffuuullll cough twice a year for like 3 years now and it stays for a month. today my doctor gave me advair again...ive had it before in the past but i had forgotton all about it. i only took one dose of it when i got it..and man i just remember why i hated advair so much. i feel like i am on speed. im shaking and twiching and cant relax my body it feels like i just took an illegal drug! my head hurts and i can barely sit still. my dad things im just trippin but im not i kno its that advair. i am so happy that i found this site. lets me kno that im not going crazy. does anyone else get the case of the shakes due to advair?!!?

I have only been on Advair for 2.5 weeks and am getting off today. I am having heart racing, anxiety, and the feeling of shortness of breath (even though the peak flow monitor shows my breathing is fine). In addition I feel like I am coming out of my skin with a miserable feeling in my head. I know this is the Advair because this is a side effect I have with decongestants too. My mother and sister have been taking this for years and now I am wondering about their weight gain and my mother's cataracts. I also have some of the other symptoms that others have mentioned but not sure they are related. I have the frequent urination at night also, I think some of us are more prone to have that side effect with certain drugs. The people that mentioned the rash or itchness, it is not just a side effect but a reaction and the insert says to call your doctor with that symptom. Remember it is a steriod and you cannot just stop this medication without informing your doctor and maybe weaning off of it.

I started on advair in 2001 for about 2 months, and all was good. I started back on 250/50 in late 2005, until March 2006. I take no other meds except advair. I've noticed hardening of viens in my neck which went away when I stop my dosage. My liver has been giving me trouble as well. The doctors say it's not the drug. I've totally stopped using these meds. My symptons are subsiding. I feel they don't know enough about the long term effects of the meds. I'm african american and as we know most of these drugs have varying side effects on different ethnicities.

I was put on Advair and Singular in December 2005. I was on both drugs all of January and almost all of February 2006. My asthma started to get worse, breathing very labored, painful eyes, joints, muscles, heavy chest, hoarseness, and total loss of energy. I also gained more weight. After looking up side effects, I immediately got off both drugs.

My symptoms have improved dramatically, but my energy level remains low and I have developed some type of infection in both eyes. Both are very painful, and the left eyelid feels lumpy. This definitely was a case of the cure being worse than the disease. I actually felt like I was dying a slow death. I'm just hoping the drugs did not cause me permanent damage. I am now on a total vegetarian (raw food) diet, hoping to rid my body of these drugs.

Within six weeks of beginning Advair I was diagnosed with a yeast infection in my mouth and throat. My headaches are severe and cannot be controlled with drugs that formerly worked. An ENT I consulted said that symptoms for which Advair is prescribed are more often caused by severe indigestion, even when one doesn't feel the effects of indigestion. I have read this elsewhere. Does anyone else know anything about this? How about any tension side effects? I don't think I've unclenched my jaws for the last month. Is this drug really a good idea?

Used it, in conjunction with a salmeterol reliever, to get off steroids. Inceased suddeness and severity of attacks, twice having to be ambulance driven to the ER. Absolutely unable to shed the 60 pounds put on with steroids- despite having been a healthy weight for 35 years, before taking these drugs. Have now given up all but the occaisional use of Salmeterol reliever, all symptoms gone.

I have a depressed attitude, feeling "speedy" but tired. I can't sleep. I got rid of the reflux by eliminating milk products from my diet. I cut down on the Advair but still have the depression. The ingredient in Seravent is in Advair. Seravent is one of those drugs related to Vioxx

Advair is a simple prescription for doctors to write without a second thought. When I was on it, it helped me breathe, but there are enough side effects that if you don't HAVE to have it, don't use it.

Advair gave me reflux and large amounts of pleghm.

I went to the doctor today. Told him I hadn't taken Advair for a month. My breathing test ended up being 84% of a normal breathing person for my height and weight. What was my breathing percentage ON Advair? 62%. You do the math. I'm staying off any drugs as long as I can.