I'm going to have to defend steroids here now.
Maybe you know this already, maybe you don't, but I'll throw this out there anyway. Steroids are GOOD. In fact, they're probably the best thing one can take to keep asthma at bay. These corticosteroids are not the same as the anabolic steroids that plague professional sports. Anabolic steroids are derived from testosterone and have all kinds of wacky side effects, despite what Jose Conseco might say. Corticosteroids are a man-made version of the the steroids that already produced in your own body in your renal glands that sit on top of your kidneys. Synthetic version of a natural substance.
When you get a bug bite, the bite mark swells up and the blood vessels underneath are engorged with blood, causing the area to get inflammed. Sometimes you put a cortizone cream on it to make it go away. But even if you don't, it'll still go away because your body will produce the steroid and rush it to the site of the bite, where the steroid will act on the area to reduce the inflammation.
This is what asthma corticosteroids do. When you take it everyday, the inhaled steroid works directly in your lungs to temper any inflammation that might flare up from an asthma attack. In essence, you outright prevent any asthma attack from happening in the first place. And another benefit of steroids is that they aid in the healing of lung tissue that no other asthma remedy or diet can provide. Asthma attacks are brutal on the lungs and the constant swelling and constriction of the airways can damage lung tissue in the long term. Steroids help in the healing process, even when lung tissue is already damaged.
And that's why I'm a major proponent of using corticosteroids for control asthma. This way, you don't treat as asthma attack, you avoid the attack altogether. That being said, nothing bulletproof, so I take my albuterol with me always, just in case I need the rescue medicine. But albuterol will never ever treat asthma, it'll simply relieve you temporarily.
