Asthma Action Plans are a recommended asthma management tool all around the world. They help us understand what to do depending on our symptoms, with green meaning all good, yellow meaning we should take extra care, and red meaning something is really wrong and we should seek medical help. Think of it like the same meaning as a traffic light. Each asthma plan should be personalized – mine may not look like yours.
So what are these symptoms you should monitor? All plans ask you to monitor the following asthma symptoms:
- Cough
- Wheeze
- Shortness of breath
- Chest tightness
- Waking at night due to asthma
- Limitations to activity
I remember, before ADAMM, we’d be sitting on the couch, and my husband would say various things like:
“You just coughed”; “you were coughing a lot last night in your sleep”; and “you sound short of breath”
And my response invariably was “No I didn’t.” or “No I don’t!”
You see, monitoring asthma symptoms is more difficult than it would seem. Most people breathe around 22,000 times every day! If we had to keep track of that, we couldn’t do anything else, and it’s why asthma monitoring is so difficult for all of us. It’s a fact that most of us actually become so accustomed to our symptoms that we don’t recognize them anymore, and so monitoring them on our own is very difficult. And if you’re a child, or a busy adult, who really has time to understand and record each event?
That’s one of the reasons I love ADAMM – it’s the ultimate asthma symptom monitor. ADAMM seamlessly tracks coughing day and night, checks for wheeze, shortness of breath and watches my activity. Every cough is captured, and all my activity is tracked. Then it sends all that information to my app so I understand what’s going on. I don’t have to track it all the time, but I can check in when I want to. It monitors my asthma symptoms for me so I don’t have to. ADAMM’s easy stick-and-go feature also means that I have to remember only 1 thing every day, not my many asthma symptoms.
Share your story – do you have an asthma action plan? How do you keep track of your symptoms?
Nightingale is a virtual care service that provides you with daily tips and reminders, one-on-one coaching with respiratory therapists, and an award-winning wearable, ADAMM, that measures your symptoms of asthma to help you and your therapist recognize trends and triggers. In contrast with traditional, in-person consultations, Nightingale provides convenient at-home education with repeated, ongoing check-ins. For your child or for yourself, Nightingale is the way that those living with Asthma live their healthiest lives.
