Advair Diskus and inhaler

I hope this helps someone.

I was never allergic to anything in my life until I went around this cat at the age of 33. I sneezed and got a really scratchy throat. I thought it would go away, but it turned into a cold. I thought the cold would go away, but it turned into bronchitis and then pneumonia. I was jogging everyday at the time and realized something was wrong when I couldn't finish my run.

I was hospitalized for two days and upon discharge I was stocked up with a cocktail of drugs: Singular, Advair, Albuterol inhaler, and Claritin. Needless to say, I took them all, because I was scared of dying. Thank God I'm not a good medicine taker, because I missed many doses and only took them as needed. I think this is why after 3 years I have only started to see the effects of these meds in the last 8 months.

Okay... I have major joint stiffness(all over) especially neck and fingers, heart palpitations, nervousness, short patience, horrible memory, lack of motivation. Oh my God! The weight gain...Please!

Before this, I was completely healthy. After reading this I will reduce myself to my inhaler and Claritin. I notice they are cool. Otherwise, if I keep my stress level down my breathing does really well. It would probably help if I got rid of the cat. Shhhh...Don't tell anyone. LOL.

I have since put my self on a juice fast using a high powered juicer to cleanse my system of all the trash the doctors gave me.

God bless you all and I speak life and breath into each of our lives.

BreathWrite.

My dosage has been 250/50 and I have been using the medication for about 3 years. I have experienced increased mucus, hoarseness, and thrush. I now have the thrush under control by thoroughly rinsing my mouth after using the inhaler. The hoarseness was not caused directly by the Advair, rather it was caused by frequently clearing my throat due to the mucus. My wife is a speech language pathologist and noticed my frequent throat clearing and explained that throat clearing irritates the vocal chords and causes hoarseness. By avoiding harsh throat clearing the hoarseness has gone away. I still have issues with thick mucus but it is minor nuisance compared with the improvements to my breathing.

Hello all! My 9 year old son has been taking Advair inhaler for about 1 1/2 years with 2 puffs a day. One at night and one in the morning. He is too young for him to notice any symptoms and for him to explain them to us and we didn't know about any side effects until reading this forum. He has the sniffles all the time which sound kind of stuffy too and some blotched skin on his forehead. He also might have another symptom regarding his bowels, not being able to control them is what I'm getting at and everyday has accidents. I don't know if that's because of Advair or laziness. I would make an intelligent guess and relate it to the Advair under muscle spasms? Does anyone have this symptom and are just too embarrassed to tell your doc? I am at my wits end with this "symptom". Also I heard very strong reports that cow milk is responsible for asthma. Humans were not designed to drink animal milk at all. The Molecules are way too large for us to digest. Almond milk is best and better for you. Now think about it, we are the only species that drink milk after we are nursed from out mothers. The animals do not go back to drinking after they are weened. I've also heard a study that after grown cows drink cow milk they got very sick or died. Anyone else heard that?

I'm a 40 year old female with severe asthma (since I was about 4). I have taken more meds in my life than I can count and nothing has worked like Advair Diskus 500/50. I absolutely LOVE this stuff (so far). I have been taking it 2x a day for two months and no longer need any other meds, not even my inhaler which I always used as my security blanket. I have also had major skin issues since childhood and my skin is now softer and smoother than ever. I don't have any weight gain issues, sore throat, cough, headaches, etc., but I am noticing that lately my body feels TIRED and my legs feel crampy at times, mostly when I wake up after a full night's sleep. I really think this med is well worth it for me, but maybe not for all. Is everyone here rinsing their mouth out after each use? Maybe that is the cause of the sore throat side effect. I wish everyone good health!

hi...........I"ve just finished reading many of the posts on this site and I can't believe how similar my experience has been to others...I went on advair 3 weeks ago for illness induced asthma along with my rescue inhaler. since then I have had horseness/loss of speech altogether,pain in my calfs and thighs, tightness (like a band) across my chest, and itch everywhere. I feel groggy when I wake in the morning and I've always been a morning person! I'm going to try to go off the Advair and just use my rescue inhaler. Thanks everyone for posting.

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!

OMG! This site is awesome! I honestly thought I was going crazy and something else was wrong with me! I quit smoking back in Dec 2007 and early Jan 2008 I was diagnosed with bronchitis. The bronchitis eventually got worse and at the end of Jan dr put me on steroid packs and an inhaler to assist me with the congestions. Early Feb I was diagnosed with Chronic bronchitis and was sent to a lung specialist. My lungs were only expanding 40% capacity due to the infection in my lungs so I was prescriped the inhaler, antibiotics, seven days of seroid and the Advair twice a day. I have now been using the Advair about three weeks and even though I feel a whole lot better my side effects are bad. I have a lot of congestion still, especially in the mornings, I cough almost all day long, I sleep maybe four or five hours a night (if that), my mood swings are aweful, I have a sharp pain under neath my left arm pit every once in a while, my rib cage hurts 24/7, I get headaches at least once a day, my nose is bleeding at least once a day and my hands tingle all the time. I did not realize that all these symptoms were side effects to the Advair dosage... 250/50???? OMG... I have to stop taking it. I've never had allergies or asthma up until the chronic bronchitis but if these are side-effects to the Advair I wonder if I was just not better off fighting the bronchitis through antibiotis only. I have not experianced weight gain though, and I am thankful for that as I do not need to gain any more weight. :-) Thank you all for sharing your comments as I now know that I might be just fine using allergy medicines and an inhaler from time to time instead of using Advair twice a day.

Ive only been on Advair for almost a month. I couldn't believe how quickly my asthma disappeared. I was using my inhaler daily and tried other things but nothing helped. I went to a pulmonary specialist and prescribed Advair for a month. I'm so glad i have to go back and see him this Saturday b/c I want to tell him I will no longer take this. I'm 26 years old and had developed asthma when I was 7 years old. It went away when I was 14 and just came back full force 3 years ago. I would have tried anything to be able to breathe normally again.
I've had the hoarseness in my voice and a bad cough where I'm spitting up mucus everyday since I've been on Advair. I figured if this was what I had to live with to have the chance to live a normal life asthma free that id take it, it wasn't so bad. But this past week I've had blinding headaches non-stop. Ive been nauseous, sweating, coughing, I've been sore like I just finished a long workout, chest pains, tightness in my chest and my legs have felt so weak. This morning I woke up with the worst cold too; which I know Advair weakens your immune system but this is crazy. I stopped taking Advair this morning & I'm going to tell my doctor I need to try something else.

I have mixed feelings about Advair. Quick history-at 30 I was dx with Asthma, at 32-COPD. I went on Advair after the COPD dx. Primarily-it certainly helped my breathing-gloriously. I have since gone on and off Advair periodically. Before last year (Pneumonia)-I had not been on the Advair for more than four months. BUT the Pneumonia combined with the COPD reduced my lung capacity by 25%. I allowed my Dr. to prescribe it indefinitely. However within a year I had gained thirty pounds. I started reading more, and found out that the AMA recommends only a six month duration of Advair therapy. My asthma symptoms had worsened over the last three months of that therapy. My untrained hypothesis is that if you exceed the recommended six month treatment-you will suffer the above outlined side affects. I simply quit it. Granted, my asthma symptoms increased for about three weeks-so I kept my handy little inhaler nearby, and gave myself one month to see if the asthma symptoms would decrease. They did. The long term-I have now been off of the Advair for nine months, and I rarely use my inhaler (knock on wood). The long term benefits of the extended Advair use has been a decreased problem with SOB- yes upon exertion(that is one of the symptoms of COPD), it is still present, but I can usually ride that out with patience, and rest. In conclusion-I would not hesitate to go back on the Advair upon my next COPD exacerbation, but I will absolutely stay within the six month suggested period. And, this time I will eat a lot of lo cal foods. Smile. It is always nice when people with chronic illness can smile over their disease. This has been my experience over the last five years that I have been introduced to Advair. One more suggestion-see if you can get your doctor to try you on the 250/50 before jumping right on the 500. The 500 is noted to have the side affect of increased SOB, and Asthma attacks-more often than the 250. One more note-although your doctor might forget to mention this-Advair is a steroid- and, steroids are known to cause weight gain. What can be done to reduce this affect-I do not know-Prednisone will do it too,now a combination of the two-which I have, of course, utilized a half dozen times or so in the last five years of my dx- is almost a guaranteed weight gain. If you manage to find out how to avoid that particular side affect-please let me know, and suggesting a vigorous work out to a patient with COPD in a bit insensitive, but if you have any other plausible ideas-I am anxious to hear them.

I have always been extremely active. I surfed every day, was swimming, I worked out at the gym several times per week. I am now 34 years old. In my 20’s I used an inhaler maybe one every few months if I got really sick but never ever needed it as a crutch to live. When I was 30 after going into a doctor for bronchitis I asked for an inhaler but they prescribed Advair in addition to an inhaler. They said this would help me to heal faster and stop the symptoms. Well I started taking Advair twice as prescribed. It did relive my shortness of breath but now I felt shaky, couldn’t sleep well and 3 weeks into it I started feeling dizzy all the time. I never had a asthma attack before. If I was sick I might use an inhaler but never did I feel my life threatened until now. After feeling dizzy I stopped the Advair. Well one day later I had such a bad attack I ended up in the hospital. Advair undeniably has made my problem much much worse. I noticed ever since I started Advair if I stop taking it my breathing gets so bad I can barley walk across the room. I never ever had this problem before taking this garbage. Its now 4 years later and I still take it but it took me 4 years to wean off this crap. I only take it when I feel really bad but then discontinue as soon as I can. I should also add I take my inhaler every day now. Never used to take it at all. I feel Advair put my system over the edge where there was a small breathing challenge burst into a full fledge illness after I started on Advair. I must ad in the 4 years I have been eating about 80% raw organic foods, taking lots of vitamins and supplements. I feel this is all I can do to start to live a normal life and hopefully be off Advair all together.

I have been on Advair Disk Inhaler for almost 2 years and I actually LOST almost 10 lbs without trying. I suspect it is the Advair that made me lose the weight. I was looking this up to see if others have this side affect (not that I am complaining) - but I see others are GAINING weight. Guess I am pretty lucky or maybe it has nothing to do with Advair and perhaps I should be concerned about it.

I'm very glad that I found this site! I took Advair for appx. one month. I experienced the weight gain and awful sores in my mouth. I rinsed my mouth each time I used my inhaler. I stopped taking it 3 days ago. The sores are disappearing and I feel like I'm losing some of the weight that I gained.

My 8 year old son began using Advair this year after a bout of wheezing sent us to Urgent care. When he was finally officially diagnosed with Asthma this fall, our GP gave us Advair again. My son did great as far as asthma and breathing - didn't need his rescue inhaler once. Unfortunately he gained 8 pounds in 3 weeks and his face and stomach began to look extremely puffy. He also had 3 nosebleeds in quick succession, one when he slept which was a much larger nosebleed than he'd ever had before. I immediately discontinued his use of Advair when I went online and looked at the side effects. Unfortunately I had to talk to the nurses at my clinic several times to explain to them that I was CERTAIN an 8 lb weight gain was not normal and that I was no longer giving this medication to my son, no matter what our GP said. It seems that the clinical trials didn't show weight gain as a significant symptom, but later reporting by doctors has shown it. Doctors don't seem to have this information!