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Hey everyone, I am a new member who is shivering in the midwest, dealing with a moody hubby and teenager who always has trouble this time of year and am nosing about your Pheonix area forums because my hubby's new tech job assignment takes him there. He tells me there are more jobs than can be filled in his specialty, and of course he was glowing with the effects of sunshine and new horizons. He was also heckled in a y ie shop when he asked the clerk what would fit a size 8-10. Hey people, that's skinny here in the midwest!!
Anyhoo, having lived in CA for a while, I would be happy to be within driving distance of that whole area, and two of my children(4 total) have a dad who lives in Orange. My daughter tells me that her asthma is nearly nonexistent when she visits. Could I expect a similar effect in AZ?My littlest was just diagnosed also, so I'd hate to move somewhere that would make it worse.
Also, we have good schools where we live . From my research Gilbert sounds like a decent fit for us, and the schools sound good. I have read that Az is no place for children,but wonder...... Any input would be helpful. Thanks!!
I wrote a previous response to a similar question. In short, Phoenix is an excellent place to raise children because the cost of living is considerably less than cities this size. So you have many of the ammenities of a large city but nowhere near the same costs.
Phoenix is an excellent place for asthma suffers. I suffer from asthma as well. There is a misperception that the pollution in Phoenix makes this city a bad place for asthma sufferrers. Pollution can affect asthma but cold weather and humidity affect asthma much more. In New York, I had to use an albuterol nebulizer because the humidity and cooler temperatures would cause me to have flare ups and NY isn't as cold as Chicago, Denver and other cities. In Phoenix, I can get by with an Advair diskus and haven't needed to use by nebulizer except on rare occasions. The dry and warm weather helps alleviate most of my symptoms.
It depends upon what the kid's triggers are. Mine are smoke, mold, and cold. I'm fine most of the time, save for a few days after it rains when I seem to have some problems. Overall, I'm down to a low dose of asthmanex and singulair. Occasionally, I'll take some Zyrtec D after it rains. When I lived back East, I was on a higher dose of asthmanex and taking the zyrtec and the singulair year round. On the other hand, I have a friend who can't leave the house during the summer because the combination of the heat and ozone is her trigger.
Find out what your child's flares are and research.
i lived in az from the age of 7 until 26. as a kid, my asthma was completely seasonal; it always got worse during the fall and completely diminished during the summer months. as far as az not being a good place to raise kids, i don't think that's true at all. my husband and i had great childhoods there. i don't recommend moving your kids to west mesa, which is where i grew up, because that area has deteriorated in recent years, but my husband grew up in scottsdale, which is a great place for a family. gilbert is much more affordable, with lots of new construction and tract homes. very family friendly area, very safe. i don't think the school systems in az are ranked well nationally, but there are three major universities there that offer a lot of scholarships to high school seniors. i, and most of my friends, went to college at arizona state university for free, so i think that's a major advantage to growing up in az.
I'm surprised to be reading these posts as if you do a search on here you will find many say that Phx is very bad for asthma. My grandmother lived out here for over 30 years and every year her asthma got worse. Before she moved back to NY she was in the hospital at least yearly due to her breathing problems. Now that she's been back in NY (her home state) she has much less of a problem. She says the cold weather is better for her. I have ALWAYS heard that Phx is bad for asthma. I never have heard a single person say otherwise (except for this thread). I find that strange.
I can't speak to the asthma problem. In the Bay Area of CA I was constantly bothered with hay fever, and in the spring it was difficult for me to go out of the house. Here I don't have that problem at all.
Gilbert is a great place to raise children. It is one of the safest areas in the valley, and is a very friendly town. There are lots of activities for children.
Here's a link for a great master planned community Val Vista Lakes - Your Community that has lots of activities for kids and adults. Breeze through the site and you'll see the tennis courts, junior olympic swimming pool, volley ball court, sand beach swimming pool, weight room, cardio room and hand ball courts.
There are many other nice communities in Gilbert, depending on what you need and where the job location will be.
Asthma Cities: Phoenix and Tucson at Top of the List
In a 2003 study conducted by statistician Bert Sperling, 25 cities were identified as "hot spot" locations for people with asthma. Tucson topped the list as the city in the nation with the most asthma incidences. Phoenix was close behind at number three. The asthma study was sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline which makes asthma medication.
The factors incorporated in determining the asthma "hot spot" cities, in order of their weighting, were:
asthma prevalence
asthma mortality
pollen scores
number of asthma specialists based on population
asthma medications prescribed
air pollution
smoking laws
climate
prevalence of tobacco use.
The ten cities with the highest asthma prevalence according to this study were:
1) Tucson, AZ
2) Kansas City, MO
3) Phoenix-Mesa, AZ
4) Fresno, CA
5) New York, NY
6) El Paso, TX
7) Albuquerque, NM
8) Indianapolis, IN
9) Mobile, AL
10) Tulsa, OK
11) Cincinnati, OH
12) Fort Worth-Arlington, TX
Is it true?
The question must be asked: why do the two major cities in Arizona seem to be the worst places for asthmatics? The answer is, they aren't. I imagine that it might be a question of cause vs. result. In other words, are people who live in Arizona more prone to get asthma, or are people with asthma more prone to come to Arizona?
In the days of smaller populations and cleaner air, people relocated to the Arizona desert in order to mitigate asthma symptoms. A possible reason for this ranking is historical in nature. Arizona's territorial government had a goal to make Arizona a health destination. Asthma treatment centers and attractive facilities sprung up, and asthmatics moved to the Arizona desert for relief. The fact that it was warm, dry and sunny made it that much more attractive. Asthmatics married, families expanded and a concentration of people with asthma in major Arizona cities grew.
So, although this study may be of interest to some, it doesn't mean that those cities high on the list are the worst places for asthmatics. It just means that there are many of them there. Remember, the highest weighted number used to create these survey results was incidences of asthma.
Another Asthma Study
The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA) conducts a study periodically of America's asthma capitals to call attention to "the most challenging places to live with asthma."
In 2006 the cities considered the worst for people who suffer from asthma, based on 12 factors, were:
1) Scranton, PA
2) Richmond, VA
3) Philadelphia, PA
4) Atlanta, GA
5) Milwaukee, WI
6) Cleveland, OH
7) Greensboro, NC
8) Youngstown, OH
9) Saint Louis, MO
10) Detroit, MI
Remember that #1 is the worst. Out of the 100 cities included in this research, the greater Phoenix area came in at #18 and Tucson came in at #86.
Asthma Triggers
Wherever they live, people can minimize the affects of asthma by eliminating things that trigger the symptoms. These asthma triggers may include:
Allergens or irritants - If a person's asthma is triggered by allergens, such as animal hair, airborne pollens such as hay fever, and house dust or molds, it is important to try to reduce exposure to those allergens. Some things are not allergens, but rather are irritants and can trigger asthma symptoms. Examples of these include tobacco smoke, strong odors or sprays, chalk dust and changing weather conditions.
Viral or sinus infections - Viral infections, such as colds, can trigger asthma. This especially impacts children.
Exercise - mouth breathing, exercising in cold, dry air, or prolonged, strenuous activity can trigger asthma attacks.
Reflux disease - this affects almost 90% of people with asthma
Medications or foods - Aspirin or ibuprofen are sometimes found to be triggers, as well as beta-blockers (used to treat heart disease, high blood pressure or migraine headaches). Food triggers affect children more than adults, and foods may include milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, soy, wheat, fish and shellfish.
Anxiety - anxiety and stress can cause fatigue, which may increase asthma symptoms.
Asthma Treatment
DISAPPOINTED BY VALLEY'S BILLING
Date: February 25, 2001
Desperate to help their baby breathe, Bob and Beverly Wininger fled Kentucky 26 years ago for the warm embrace of Phoenix.
The young couple left behind generations of family, friends and familiarity as they sought a better climate for Christine, just 2 years old and severely asthmatic.
"We grew up real fast," recalls Bob Wininger, who was 23 when he moved. His wife was barely 20. "It's one thing to have a baby with Grandma and Grandpa around. But when you're on your own ..."
In the rush to help Christine, they left Louisville on two days' notice. They flew into Phoenix with just their suitcases. It was weeks before Bob could return with a donated U-Haul to claim the family's possessions -- Christine's crib, a wooden highchair, a box of tools -- which filled less than half the van.
Despite the sacrifice, the family never found the cure they chased: the "free and simple medication of Arizona's clear, warm dry air," touted by news reports at the time.
Little Christine battled asthma even as she basked in the desert air. Her father remembers collapsed lungs and respiratory arrest. Her mother recalls endless emergency room waits, begging doctors to see them as their child gasped for air.
The Winingers were among thousands of health seekers who flocked to the desert Southwest for most of the 20th century, following doctors' orders to soak up the warm, dry air to cure their respiratory woes.
While the climate worked well for tuberculosis and bronchitis, the Valley never quite lived up to its billing as an asthma haven.
"We'd only been here a month," says Beverly Wininger, "and she was wheezing and back in the hospital again. We'd left our family and everything, and here we were again."
Phoenix's arid climate was promoted as answer
Today, it's rare to find doctors who prescribe Phoenix as an asthma cure. Pollution, suburban sprawl and leafy-green landscaping imported by East Coast and Midwest transplants ended that years ago.
But in the late 19th century, many thought the arid climate was the answer to breathing problems.
In 1881, the territorial government created an immigration commission, much like today's Tourism Department. Its first commissioner had tuberculosis. His mission: Make Arizona a health destination.
An 1890 map gushed about the Valley as a health resort: "The many people cured here of diseases of the lungs and bronchial tubes, considered incurable elsewhere, are living proofs of the remarkable healing powers of the climate."
Healthy, smiling people beamed from brochures. Treatment centers, a cross between hospitals and resorts, offered long-term asthma care. Tucson became home to the Brandes School, which served asthmatic children. It later became the National Foundation for Asthmatic Children, which promised " 'pulmonary cripples' a chance to regain health and happiness."
Today, Arizona owes much of its asthmatic population to these health seekers, many of whom married each other and, because asthma is inherited, raised a new generation of asthma sufferers. One study now ranks Arizona fourth in the nation for its asthma rate.
"The genetic pool had a higher percentage of asthmatic parents in it," says Dr. Bob Barbee of the University Medical Center in Tucson. "So we kind of grew our own."
The climate wasn't a cure, but the people kept coming. The desert's low humidity did reduce the likelihood of molds and dust mites, common asthma triggers. And the warmth kept people positive.
"You can sit in Chicago all winter and stare at the dirty snow and not go outside," Barbee says. Or, you can sit in the desert sun and feel better. In either case, studies show, lung function doesn't change, but the patient's outlook does.
Besides, there wasn't much else asthmatics could do. And the Valley at midcentury had far less of the allergy-inducing pollen and air pollution that trigger many asthma attacks today.
"Our therapeutic treatment was so marginal in the '40s and '50s," says Dr. William Morgan, a local asthma and allergy doctor, "that this was the best solution they had."
Although there are no long-term studies tracking asthmatics who moved to Arizona 40 or 50 years ago, Barbee helped direct a study of obstructive lung disease in Tucson that stretched from 1971 to 1996. It included 906 asthmatics.
Researchers found that children, with their developing immune systems, pick up new allergies quickly. Adults, whose immune systems react more slowly, might get a good 10 years out of a new environment before developing new allergies that could trigger asthma.
"The odds would be, over time living here, you would develop the same kind of allergic responses here as you would have back in Wisconsin," Barbee says.
By the time Christine Wininger and her parents arrived in November 1974, asthma treatment was farther along than simply breathing in dry, warm air. But the steroids the toddler was taking weren't working.
Her family was willing to try most anything. Christine was just 2, and she couldn't breathe.
Edge for sufferers lost to Valley's urbanization
Unfortunately, the dust, crabgrass and olive trees in the Valley only aggravated the asthma that had chased Christine out of Kentucky.
"I have vague memories when I was very little of my mom running down the hospital corridor with me in her arms," says Christine, now 28, recently married, and living in Idaho. She sports scars on her wrists and ankle where doctors plunged intravenous needles during frenzied emergency room trips.
"Left arm! Left arm!" she would scream to her mom. Right-handed Christine wanted to be sure her good arm was free of needles.
Doctors and researchers say the Valley's urbanization, with its air pollution and foreign pollens, eroded any edge the desert gave to asthma sufferers. Allergies cause about 75 percent of asthma.
Since 1970, the Valley's population has exploded 330 percent, to 5.1 million. Urban living puts more people in frequent contact, making it easier for viral infections to spread.
Cramped office workers sit side by side breathing recirculated air. Growing numbers of students share the same class space. And more people and more cars fuel the Valley's Brown Cloud, microscopic specks of dust and soot that lodge in the lungs and complicate breathing.
Although state officials have only recently been measuring the haze, they have found that what used to be considered a bad-air day in 1993 had become an average day in 1999.
Bob Wininger remembers when it hit him that his young family had not moved to paradise. Christine's doctor gave him one of those good news/bad news speeches: Christine had lost her allergies to Kentucky pollens. But she had picked up allergies to Valley grasses and trees.
Such stories are nothing new to Morgan, who has treated Valley asthmatics for 23 years.
"If it's not one thing," he says, "it's another."
Worst and best experiences
For Christine, asthma was a steady struggle, punctuated by crisis. She missed a lot of school, but managed to keep a B average.
The worst episode, she says, occurred at age 12 when her lips turned blue after three days of struggling to breathe. She couldn't stand. Rushed to Mesa Lutheran Hospital, she awoke to find a tube down her throat, a machine breathing for her.
Her best days came the summer she spent at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver, renowned for treating asthmatic children. More a dormitory than a hospital, Christine met kids from across the country with problems like hers. Gone were snide suggestions that laziness kept her from running and playing. She found a support group before she knew what the term meant.
"It was more like being in a boarding school," she says. "I learned a lot about the disease ... nobody before bothered to explain it."
But the center had its problems.
The steroids prescribed by the center's doctors brought Christine some relief, but they also disfigured her developing body.
"When I went up to see her after three months, I didn't recognize her," her mother says. She burst into tears when she saw Christine's bloated face and deep stretch marks.
To add insult to her trauma, Beverly said doctors wanted to send Christine to a psychiatric ward. That fits with a now-discarded belief that asthma was more an emotional problem than a physical condition. The parent-child relationship was a suspected cause, leading wags to joke about asthmatic children needing a "parentectomy."
Christine and her mom returned to Phoenix, where Christine enrolled at Moon Valley High School.
Despite hopes that she would "grow out of asthma," Christine continued to struggle with the illness.
"I had asthma right up until I was 23," she says. "I used my little breathing machine every day."
Doctors are skeptical about sudden "cures" for asthma. But Christine said she hasn't had any wheezing since she used a dietary supplement called CMO, which claims to modify the immune system, preventing asthma symptoms.
Looking back, "I don't think it did us any good moving out here," says her mom, Beverly Beach, who divorced Bob in 1980 and remarried.
Christine sees it differently. She wasn't cured, but in arid Phoenix, at least she could go outside.
When you can't breathe, she says, echoing the thousands of health seekers before her, even the smallest step forward is progress.
Wow! What amazingly eloquent and informative posts you all took the time to write.Thanks so much . I am not that surprised that there are contradictions in the studies and results for asthma and allergies. We live in Indiana where there are agricultural as well as humidity and temp issues. Taking some in depth tests to discover triggers for each of my 2 children w/ asthma (neither seems to be as serious as Christine,what a heartbreaking story) is an excellent suggestion.As I said, my daughter who visits Orange, CA is better there, and the area ranks high for pollution .Her sister suffers from SADD and daddy missing issues, which could be helped(??) by a move west. So hard to figure out what would be best w/ each childs' needs. We would not move soley to improve asthma, but as I said it would be hard to see either child substantially decline.I found the info about the history of people moving to the Phoenix area creating a population of high asthma offspring very fascinating. It's like the idea that Austrailians are risk taking adventurers because thats where all the convicts and rebels were sent.
IN response to the educational aspects,Gilbert appears( from the GreatSchools website )to be well rated. I will be visiting the area when I join my husband for a business trip next week, and will take a look at Gilbert to get a feel for the area. I must say that Kayleebear's info about free college as a possibility is interesting. Four children to consider. I'm trying to put my needs last, but I really miss the color and interest of my childhood near San Diego. People can complain about excessive immigration from Mexico, but I long to hear Mariachis as I am walking down the street some weekend. It's not so much the cold and snow,which is fun for kids,its the neverending symphony of grey and brown that is Winter/Spring in this area. For some people, it can be very hard to take.
One last query,what is a typical school year like there? We have two weeks off for Christmas, two and ahalf months off for summer. Thanks again for all your responses.
I never had asthma until I moved to Phoenix. I'm a runner and an athlete and, upon moving to Phoenix, I've had to have all kinds of asthma medication as well as year-round weekly allergy shots. Things bloom all the time.
And it's not simply cold that aggravates asthma; it's dry air (of which there is TONS in AZ). Cold AND dry air is the worst, but the hot dry air is almost as bad.
You also should research Valley Fever before bringing your kids out here. If you live here long enough you'll get it and it directly affects the lungs.
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This might clear things up a little.
