Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, is a common result of smoking. If you smoke, just figure that you'll end up getting COPD. It's just one of the many choices people who smoke make without realizing it, when they light up those cigarettes. Let me explain what COPD is for those who don't have a background in healthcare. Basically, COPD, commonly referred to as emphysema, is the progressive destruction of those little air sacs in your lungs known as alveoli. The airways also become rather floppy and will narrow when you exhale or breathe out. This traps the inhaled air in your lungs, which eventually leads to a breakdown in how effectively your lungs can put oxygen in your blood and get carbon dioxide out of your blood. This process is referred to as gas exchange. So the lungs are becoming much less efficient at their designed job, which is to get the good air in and the bad air out.
This isn't the textbook definition, but it will do for our purposes. So what are COPD symptoms like? Here is a very brief list.
1. Shortness of breath. Technically, this is called dyspnea (disp-nee-ah). That feeling where you just can't seem to get enough air in and you begin to have a real concern that you might be suffocating, because you can't catch your breath. No matter what you do, the breath just doesn't seem deep enough and it doesn't come fast enough.
2. Chronic cough. You just get that little tickle in the back of your throat. You cough and cough, hoping to get a some relief, but it doesn't come. Right when you think you've got it licked, it shows up again for another round. The cough never seems to go away for very long.
3. Increased mucous production. This is called phlegm (flem). We normally get rid of lots of mucous out of our lungs everyday without realizing it. But, the normal mechanism for mucous removal becomes weakened and then eventually killed, which means you have to really work at removing the mucous now. There are little hairs in your airway, called cilia, that grab the mucous in your lungs and move it upwards to the back of your throat where it gets swallowed. Smoking destroys these cilia, which grounds the mucociliary elevator.
4. Wheezing. Because the airways have been damaged by smoking, they can no longer maintain their muscle tone. As a result, the airways constrict or narrow. This is called bronchospasm. Now, you're breathing through what seems like a very tiny straw, which leads to - you guessed it - more and more shortness of breath. A rescue inhaler can help widen or open these airways, but the damage is done. The process is not reversible and will only continue to get worse.
5. Frequent respiratory infections. Because the mucous is no longer readily removed, it just kind of sits there waiting for you to cough it out. The lungs make a wonderful home for bacteria because they're dark, warm, and moist. Perfect conditions for pneumonia to set in.
So here are just five symptoms you may experience with COPD. The only option people have to stifle their COPD symptoms, is to remove the cause. There are several environmental factors which can cause COPD. Exposure to biomass fuels and indoor wood burning stoves, pollution and second-hand smoke are all known causes. But the biggest risk factor by far, for developing COPD is tobacco smoking. I don't think anyone is surprised by this. COPD is the 4th largest health concern in the world, in terms of deaths per year. Sadly, it's prevalence rate has not declined in the last decade like the other top 3 health concerns have. Bottom line, quitting smoking is the best way to limit the effects of COPD.
