BREATHING EASIER

My preschooler has asthma, so this story caught my attention:

The National Institutes of Health announced new guidelines for treating asthma. Instead of just focusing on attacks, NIH wants doctors to spend more time on prevention. They want patients to get written plans on how to manage the disease. And they want doctors to periodically monitor a patient's lung function to determine future risk -- even if they have few symptoms.

Why the focus? For one, kids are going back to school, where they're likely to catch colds. Colds are a major trigger for asthma attacks. I know all about that. We start listening for wheezing at the first sign of a cough.

Also, asthma's becoming a huge and costly problem -- 22 million adults and 6.5 million children have it. The CDC says for kids it's increasing 4 percent a year. And asthma deaths among children have tripled in the last 30 years. Every year, asthma causes 14 million lost school days.

So it's a big problem. But be encouraged -- some kids DO grow out of it. I hope mine is one of them.