There are more and more celebrity asthmatics "coming out" and telling the world that asthma is not a life sentence but that you can still be a great sportsperson, actor, television personality or whatever.

The medical management of asthma has improved greatly since the early days of reliever medication that led to serious concern for increased deaths from this condition. Before drug treatment asthma rarely killed although sufferers could be bed ridden for periods of time. There was an international convention set up to improve the management of asthma that led to the introduction of the steroid preventer medication. Now, anyone using reliever medication on a regular basis is advised to use a preventer as well. However the latest and increasingly popular drug is a combined long acting reliever combined with a steroid preventer. Although this appears to give better control questions as to its safety have been often aired.  

The message that every asthmatic should be given is that they could improve the management of their asthma and reduce medication safely if they were willing to put a little effort in for themselves. All asthmatics over-breathe or suffer from hidden chronic hyperventilation and it is this underlying problem that needs to be addressed. The Buteyko Method does just this and retrains the individual to breathe normally again thereby significantly improving their own health and asthma symptoms.

Bill Bailey is the most recent sufferer who has spoken in the Daily Mail on Sunday 3rd January 2010 of his ongoing efforts with asthma, we all now know of David Beckham, Rebecca Adlington, Paula Radcliffe, Darren Gough, Frank Lampard and Sebastian Coe to mention just a few well known figures who have been confidently living with asthma.

Asthma can affect anyone if they are predisposed genetically and they hyperventilate. In fact Dr Buteyko claimed asthmatics should not see themselves as suffering from a disease but rather that they are specially able to react to hyperventilation whereas the remainder of us may hyperventilate and suffer the long term consequences without knowing about it.