Wheezing is one of the most common asthma symptoms you may experience and is often the main reason many people seek care. Parents and patients are often scared the first time they hear wheezing.

With wheezing, you will hear a high-pitched whistle sound as you breathe through your mouth or nose. While most commonly heard as you exhale or breathe air out of the lungs, wheezing can occur when inhaling or breathing in.

The wheezing sound results from the airways of the lungs narrowing as a result of inflammation and constriction. This makes it more difficult for air to flow through the lung.

The inflammatory response that is part of asthma is the reason this inflammation occurs. ?Not all wheezing is asthma since diseases like pneumonia, COPD, or certain vocal cord problems may lead to wheezing.

What Does It Mean If I Hear Wheezing?
Do you ever hear this sound when breathing? This is what wheezing sounds like when a doctor listens to your chest with a stethoscope. Wheezing is never normal and should not be ignored.

Wheezing is one of the classic symptoms associated with asthma. Based on your history and some or all of these other symptoms, your doctor may make a diagnosis of asthma:
-- Chronic cough, especially at night
-- Chest tightness
-- Shortness of breath

How is Wheezing Treated?
In and of itself, wheezing does not necessarily need to be treated. It is, however, very important to find our what is causing your wheezing. Wheezing certainly requires treatment if you begin to develop symptoms.

If you hear yourself wheezing the first thing you want to do is to step back and see if you were exposed to something that might be triggering your asthma.

This could be dust, molds, dust mites, environmental smoke, pollen, or any number of other allergens. One of the easiest ways to avoid wheezing is to avoid the cause from the beginning. Since you spend more than 90% of your life indoors, it will be key to look at your indoor environment first.

After you have made sure nothing in your environment is triggering your asthma symptoms, you can think about active treatment. Your rescue inhaler should provide immediate relief of wheezing and associated symptoms. Medicines such as albuterol act as a bronchodilator.Your asthma symptoms improve by relaxing the muscles in the tightened airways during an asthma attack. As a result of using your rescue inhaler, airways in the lung increase in size allowing more air to move more freely and provide you relief of symptoms.