The term chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) refers to a group of progressive lung diseases that leave you short of breath and tired because you can’t breathe fully. it is incurable
COPD is the kind of disease that flares up from time to time. The two most common types of COPD are emphysema and chronic bronchitis.
The exchange… your lungs contain about 600 million air sacs. When you inhale, oxygen from the incoming air is exchanged for carbon dioxide in your blood through tiny capillaries attached to these air sacs. This exchange is vital to your health and physical functioning.
When you have emphysema the number of air sacs in your lungs is reduced or they become misshapen or blocked. The result is that your lungs cannot properly process the exchange of oxygen for carbon dioxide. This reduced capacity compromises your ability to breathe effectively.
When you have bronchitis the airways in the lungs swell or become thicker than normal, causing them to become blocked or obstructed. This makes it harder to exhale and leads to chronic (ie long-term) coughing.
What causes COPD?
The simple answer to this question is chronic inflammation.
There are two types of inflammation… acute and chronic.
acute inflammation refers to a short-term immune response to sudden injury. For example, if you cut your finger, the cut will likely be red and swollen the next day. This indicates that your immune system has released chemicals to fight foreign invaders (which may have been introduced into your body by the cut) and is doing its job of fighting infection. As long as you are fairly healthy, your finger should heal after a few days.
Chronic inflamation it occurs when the inflammatory response is not turned off. It’s your immune system keeps pumping out inflammatory chemicals. In other words, inflammation occurs when it is not needed. It is obviously detrimental to your health.
It is becoming increasingly clear that chronic inflammation is the root cause of many chronic diseases such as COPD.
Chronic inflammation is also at the root of type 2 diabetes.
Link between COPD and diabetes
Although they have the same root, the link between COPD and diabetes is not clear. There is no hard research data to show that people with COPD are at increased risk of developing diabetes or vice versa.
However, studies show that about 15% of COPD patients admitted to hospital also have diabetes. In the population as a whole, the prevalence of diabetes is somewhat less than 10%.
A search of the literature published in cardiovascular diabetes considered COPD as a risk factor for the development of diabetes and vice versa. The researchers concluded that there was a bidirectional risk between the two diseases.
It appears that COPD increases the incidence of diabetes for several reasons. COPD, for example, causes you to gain weight (since you are less active) and therefore increases your insulin resistance.
On the other hand, diabetes seems to increase the occurrence of lung infections and worsen COPD by causing an increase in flare-ups.
Additional research indicates that high blood glucose is related to impaired lung function. a study in Chest showed that diabetes was related to a reduced ability to force air out of the lungs. This association worsened with smoking.
It seems very likely that damage to the nervous system caused by diabetes (diabetic neuropathy) may weaken the respiratory muscles making breathing shallow and less effective… although this link between diabetes and COPD has not been established with certainty.
How to fight COPD
There is no cure for COPD.
However, there are many things you can do to slow the progression of the disease. Many of these are the same things you should do to help manage your diabetes.
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leave the tuxedo
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Eat a healthy diet
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exercise regularly
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Avoid polluted air
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Use breathing exercises to train your lungs
give up the tuxedo…it’s a no-brainer if you have COPD. Smoking damages your lungs (probably the main cause of why you have COPD) and you desperately need to prevent further damage to your lungs if you want to slow the progress of the disease.
Quitting smoking takes a bit of willpower, but if you’re determined enough, you can do it. In addition, there are various smoking cessation aids available, such as patches and pills, if you are having difficulty quitting.
eat a healthy diet…means following a plant-based, low-sugar, low-fat, low-carb, low-salt, low-GI, high-fiber diet, such as beating diabetes diet and drink plenty of water. This type of diet will help you lose excess weight, one of the consequences of COPD, thus facilitating your daily routine and giving you more energy to walk, etc.
working out…it’s not something you can’t do just because you have COPD. In fact, the best way to maintain lung function is to engage in some form of exercise on a regular basis. Doing a little gardening or taking a gentle walk a few days a week is a great way to start.
Try walking, swimming, biking, or doing yoga. But be careful not to exercise so hard that your lungs can’t keep up, this could cause a flare of your symptoms.
Yoga is particularly good for COPD sufferers because it focuses on controlled breathing. In fact, yogic breathing contains some of the breathing exercises that are done during respiratory therapy.
Avoid pollution…is another no-brainer if you have COPD. Lungs weakened by COPD are especially vulnerable to air pollution. Therefore, heed air quality warnings and avoid situations where air quality is likely to be poor, such as dust, chemical fumes, open campfires, etc.)
respiratory therapy
One of the best things you can do for your COPD and to improve your overall health is to do regular breathing exercises.
Breathing exercises will improve your respiratory function, which will slow down the progression of COPD. In addition, breathing exercises will deliver a better quality of life.
Here are three such exercises:
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Pursed lips breathing
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Belly-breathing
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Lung muscle training
Pursed lips breathing…is a breathing exercise where you inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth while pursing your lips. You should exhale at half the speed or less of what you inhale, that is, if it takes 4 seconds to inhale, take at least 8 seconds to exhale through pursed lips.
This breathing trick keeps the air waves open longer, reduces the work of breathing, and improves the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide.
Belly-breathing… is particularly useful for reducing shortness of breath during exercise or strenuous activities such as climbing stairs or lifting heavy objects. It does so by exercising its respiratory muscles.
Lie down and put one hand on your stomach and the other on your chest. The hand on your tummy should go down on the exhale and up on the inhale.
Lung muscle training… use of a respiratory muscle training device was found to provide significant increases in strength and endurance. The research was carried out in 2007 at the University of Modena in Italy.
IN respiratory muscle training (RMT) is a tube that is placed over the lips and breathed through. The device partially blocks the flow of air, making it difficult to inhale and exhale. The airflow restriction can be varied by moving a dial. Also, you can remove the restriction entirely if you wish for the inhalation that some therapists recommend.
RTMs are used by athletes to increase their endurance and improve lung function during cardiovascular exercise. This writer, who has a mild form of COPD, found that using an RTM is a great way to strengthen his respiratory muscles and prevent the progression of his COPD.