Recent publications in the field of asthma therapeutics and studies performed over the last decade in the treatment of chronic heart failure suggest a phenomenon called ‘temporal hormesis’. This phenomenon can be defined as the beneficial action of drug after chronic administration as opposed to its detrimental acute effects. Temporal hormesis may be related to the classification of the drug molecule as an agonist, antagonist or an inverse agonist. This phenomenon may be a more general principal applicable in the treatment of other diseases apart from asthma and chronic heart failure.