Free Your Child from Asthma [Paperback]

Gary Rachelefsky (Author), Patricia Garrison (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 23, 2005

The leading asthma specialist's proven four-week program that can help your kids--and you--breathe easier

If you're frustrated by ineffective doctor's visits and medications, in treating your child's asthma, you can turn to this groundbreaking asthma-relief program. This book shows how in just four weeks, you can work with your doctor to ensure proper treatment, minimize attacks, reduce emergency room visits, and effect a turn-around in your child's asthma.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Minimize your child's asthma symptoms, avoid unexpected attacks, and say good-bye to emergency room visits!

You take your child to the doctor, follow a treatment plan to the letter, and administer the prescribed drugs, yet the coughing and wheezing persist. And then there are those frightening emergency room visits. The daily anxiety of asthma has taken both an emotional and a physical toll on your child and has left you helpless to give him or her long-lasting relief.

It doesn't have to be this way, according to Dr. Gary Rachelefsky, a leading asthma specialist who has treated thousands of children over the past 30 years. In Free Your Child from Asthma, you'll find out why so many children with asthma aren't getting the care they need and how, in just four weeks, you can help put your child on the fast track to a symptom-free life.

Get the knowledge and skills you need to:

• Recognize the early warning signs of an attack
• Identify asthma triggers and what to do about them
• Make sense of medications and their side effects
• Work with your child's doctor to get the right care and treatment
• Steadily reduce the amount of medication needed

About the Author

Gary Rachelefsky, M.D., is clinical professor and associate director of the Allergy/Immunology Training Program in the Department of Pediatrics at UCLA School of Medicine. He is also the president of the Respiratory and Allergic Disease Foundation and the director of the Allergy Research Foundation.

Patricia Garrison is a health care writer who has worked actively on national campaigns for childhood asthma.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (December 23, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071459863
• ISBN-13: 978-0071459860
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,982,988 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best childhood asthma book out there., January 26, 2006

By 

B. Drew "B. Drew" (New Jersey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Free Your Child from Asthma (Paperback)

Excellent and perhaps the best resource out there for any parent with a child that suffers from asthma. Dr. Rachelfsky very clearly outlines everything that you may want to know, and even takes away a lot of the mystery from the myriad treatments for asthma.

Written in plain language, the book leaves you with plenty of detail but never leaves you confused.

After reading through the book, you will better understand what asthma is, how it's treated, and more importantly make you able to work WITH your doctor and ask better questions.

You'll also be able to decide if your doctor is providing the best care available.

Overall, this is a must-have book if your child has asthma... and after reading it, you'll belive that you can control asthma and asthma doesn't need to control you!

5.0 out of 5 stars Does your child live off on Albuterol?, October 13, 2011

By 

W. Battalora (Pennsylvania USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Free Your Child from Asthma (Paperback)

Does your child live off on Albuterol? If so, read this review and read this book.

My husband and I are well educated people, both with advanced degrees. He has a PhD in biology and can make sense of the chemical symbols in the drug information sheets. Yet even after our child has been diagnosed with asthma several years ago, even after his emergency room visit two weeks ago, we were still clueless. We "thought" that we knew enough to interpret what the asthma action plan we received from the doctors. This book has made us very contrite. Now we finally understand the nature of the problem. We understand why it is so important to follow the asthma action plan EXACTLY.

This book clearly defines what asthma is: airway inflammation that is easily triggered by allergen or exercise or a cold and turn into airway constriction. If the inflammation doesn't get controlled by inhaled corticosteroids (i.e. Flovent), the child will be perpetually in danger of having something triggering airway constriction which will require a short-acting Beta-2 Agonist (i.e. Albuterol). I got this message very clearly through the book but never from any doctor. Our pediatrician, allergist, and even the ER doctor we met have simply given us the prescription without explaining why the whole entire health is pinned on eliminating the airway inflammation. We simply didn't understand why regular Flovent is so vital.

The book has lots of good information: Why it is very important to knock out the wheezing ASAP and don't let it linger. List of drugs, their purpose, and side effects, along with what "low dose" "medium dose" and "high dose" are for that drug. How to use the nebulizer and the inhaler (we have been doing it wrong for years, and the doctors never questioned or asked us to demo). Use of peak flow meter. Again, we had not taken this seriously either).

Now we have two HEPA filters running all the time: one in the child's bedroom and one in the kitchen where the cat is allowed to come in for visits. The cat also gets vacuumed twice a day; just grab him by the nape and vacuum him with a soft brush wand. Otherwise the cat lives in the porch (with a cat door to the yard) and gets a little heating pad (bought in a drug store) that is sandwiched in the middle layer of his bedding. Just be careful not to give your cat too much localized heat or he will temporarily lose some patches of fur).

This book will give you all the knowledge you need and feel confident about what you are doing about asthma. It will let you talk intelligently with the doctors. It will even let you know how and when to talk to doctors about reducing the level of medication on the asthma action plan.

This is a very very informative book. I read it in one day and typed up a 3-page summary that I stuck into his asthma medicine bag.

Two days ago my two sons were sprinting and racing each other. The younger is the one with asthma. After the sprint he didn't wheeze. I now know why, and it feels good.