COPD (short for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) is a lung disease caused by one or more health problems and includes chronic bronchitis and emphysema. Over time, this disease makes breathing difficult. It is a very serious disease and currently the fourth leading cause of death in the United States behind medical errors. The good news is that COPD is often preventable and treatable.

What are the Symptoms of COPD?

Signs and symptoms of COPD include:

• Constant coughing, sometimes called "smoker's cough"
• Shortness of breath while doing everyday activities
• Producing a lot of sputum (also called phlegm or mucus)
• Feeling like you can't breathe or take a deep breath
• Wheezing

My mother experienced all of these symptoms. I noticed the prescribed medications would temporarily mask the symptoms but as soon as the drugs wore off, the symptoms returned without any noticeable or lasting improvement in my mother's condition. Early on I thought the drugs were providing a slow but steady healing process. I eventually realized they were not.

 

How is COPD Detected?

If you are at risk for COPD or have symptoms of COPD, you should be tested. The basic test of how your lungs work is easy and is called Spirometry. For this test, you blow air into a mouthpiece and tubing attached to a small machine. The machine measures the amount of air you blow out and how fast you can blow it. Your doctor will also ask for a complete health history and do a health exam. They may also want you to have a chest x-ray and/or other tests. If you are diagnosed with COPD, you and your doctor will discuss a treatment plan just for you.

The spirometry test revealed that my mother's lungs had deteriorated down to that of a person 111 years old. These results did not change the treatment regimen but it did cause severe depression in my mother. After this test she sat in her room staring at the wall. When I asked her what was wrong she said, "I can't believe I did this to myself." It seemed like the purpose of the test was making sure the patient knew what they had done to themselves by smoking and relieving all liability that might otherwise be placed on the medical staff or the pharmaceutical companies that developed the medications and treatments.

 

How is COPD Treated?

• If you are a smoker, the single most effective treatment is quitting smoking.
• Take your medicine as prescribed by your doctor. These are usually inhalers that can open your airways and keep them from getting swollen. Some may be taken with a nebulizer, a machine that changes liquid medicine into a fine mist which makes it easier to inhale deep into the lungs.
• If your COPD is severe, oxygen therapy may be used to help with shortness of breath. This may be needed all day and all night or only part of the time. Be sure to understand how to safely use oxygen.
• Pulmonary Rehabilitation is a program that teaches you about COPD, how to exercise and how to manage your disease, and provides support and counseling.
• In some rare cases, surgery may be recommended for people with very severe COPD.

The American Lung Association has many useful publications designed to help you understand and manage your COPD.

More mention of "managing" the disease but no mention of curing the disease or even stopping its progression. After researching the drug companies that produce the drugs prescribed for emphysema and COPD I saw how they carefully avoid telling you that the drugs will not help you survive the disease. The drugs, according to the manufacturers, are designed for "slowing the progress" of the disease but not stopping it.

Understanding COPD: What is COPD?

COPD is a lung disease that over time makes it hard to breathe. COPD (short for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) includes chronic bronchitis and emphysema. Obstruction in COPD means that the flow of air in and out of the lungs is less than it should be. When that happens less oxygen gets into the body tissues and it becomes harder to get rid of carbon dioxide which is the waste gas. As the disease gets worse, it is harder to remain active due to shortness of breath. Most importantly, COPD can be prevented and can be treated.

With chronic bronchitis the lining of the breathing tubes become swollen and produce a lot of mucus that gets coughed up. With emphysema the walls of the air sacs in the lung are broken down and the air spaces get larger and air gets trapped. Some people have both chronic bronchitis and emphysema, so we now prefer to call the disease COPD.

I believe that smoking introduces a pathogen into the lungs that continues proliferating even if the patient quits smoking. If that is true, the only prevention would be if you never smoke. Quitting would not prevent this pathogen from being introduced into the lungs. The treatments they speak of are the drugs that "slow the progress" of the disease but do not stop it.

 

How Serious is COPD?

COPD is the 3rd leading cause of death in the U. S. It causes serious long-term disability and early death. At this time there is no cure for COPD. More than 12 million people are known to have COPD and up to 24 million may have the disease due to some not even knowing it. The number of people dying from COPD is growing. Deaths due to COPD in women are higher than in men. COPD is often not found until the disease is very advanced because people do not know the early warning signs. Sometimes people think they are short of breath or less able to do the things they are used to doing because they are "just getting old". But shortness of breath is never normal. The good news is that COPD can be found early and there is much that can be done to treat and help manage the disease.

My mother experienced all of these symptoms. I noticed the prescribed medications would temporarily mask the symptoms but as soon as the drugs wore off, the symptoms returned without any noticeable or lasting improvement in my mother's condition. Early on I thought the drugs were providing a slow but steady healing process. I eventually realized they were not.

 

What Causes COPD?

• Smoking is the major cause of COPD. The poisons in cigarette smoke can weaken the lungs' defense against infections, narrow air passages, cause swelling in air tubes and destroy air sacs. About 80-90% of all COPD is caused by cigarette smoking.
• Pollution in the air and irritating fumes and dusts, especially on the job, can also cause COPD.
• A small number of people have a rare form of COPD called alpha-1 (AAT) related emphysema. This form of COPD is caused by an inherited lack of a protective protein in the blood.

The spirometry test revealed that my mother's lungs had deteriorated down to that of a person 111 years old. These results did not change the treatment regimen but it did cause severe depression in my mother. After this test she sat in her room staring at the wall. When I asked her what was wrong she said, "I can't believe I did this to myself." It seemed like the purpose of the test was making sure the patient knew what they had done to themselves by smoking and relieving all liability that might otherwise be placed on the medical staff or the pharmaceutical companies that developed the medications and treatments.

 

The link to the page with this information is:

The American Lung Association

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is one of the most common lung diseases. It makes it difficult to breathe. There are two main forms of COPD:

Smoking is the leading cause of COPD. The more a person smokes, the more likely that person will develop COPD. However, some people smoke for years and never get COPD.

• Exposure to certain gases or fumes in the workplace
• Exposure to heavy amounts of secondhand smoke and pollution
• Frequent use of cooking fire without proper ventilation
Symptoms
• Cough, with or without mucus
• Fatigue
• Many respiratory infections
• Shortness of breath (dyspnea) that gets worse with mild activity
• Trouble catching one's breath
• Wheezing
Because the symptoms of COPD develop slowly, some people may not know that they are sick.

The best test for COPD is a lung function test called spirometry. This involves blowing out as hard as possible into a small machine that tests lung capacity. The results can be checked right away, and the test does not involve exercising, drawing blood, or exposure to radiation.

COPD Treatment

There is no cure for COPD. However, there are many things you can do to relieve symptoms and keep the disease from getting worse.

Persons with COPD MUST stop smoking. This is the best way to slow down the lung damage.

Here they claim there are things that can be done that will prevent the disease from getting worse yet if you check with the drug manufacturers they will tell you this is simply not the case that this disease is progressive. Their drugs will "slow the progress" but will not stop the progress. In other words they will not stop the disease from getting worse.

Medications Prescribed for the Treatment of COPD:

• Inhalers (bronchodilators) to open the airways, such as ipratropium (Atrovent), tiotropium (Spiriva), salmeterol (Serevent), formoterol (Foradil), or albuterol
• Inhaled steroids to reduce lung inflammation
• Anti-inflammatory medications such as montelukast (Singulair) and roflimulast are sometimes used
In severe cases or during flare-ups, you may need to receive:
• Steroids by mouth or through a vein (intravenously)
• Bronchodilators through a nebulizer
• Oxygen therapy
• Assistance during breathing from a machine (through a mask, BiPAP, or endotracheal tube)

Antibiotics are prescribed during symptom flare-ups, because infections can make COPD worse.

You may need oxygen therapy at home if you have a low level of oxygen in your blood.

Pulmonary rehabilitation does not cure the lung disease, but it can teach you to breathe in a different way so you can stay active. Exercise can help maintain muscle strength in the legs.

Walk to build up strength.
• Ask the doctor or therapist how far to walk.
• Slowly increase how far you walk.
• Try not to talk when you walk if you get short of breath.
• Use pursed lip breathing when breathing out (to empty your lungs before the next breath)
Things you can do to make it easier for yourself around the home include:
• Avoiding very cold air
• Making sure no one smokes in your home
• Reducing air pollution by getting rid of fireplace smoke and other irritants
Eat a healthy diet with fish, poultry, or lean meat, as well as fruits and vegetables. If it is hard to keep your weight up, talk to a doctor or dietitian about eating foods with more calories.
Surgery may be used, but only a few patients benefit from these surgical treatments:
• Surgery to remove parts of the diseased lung can help other areas (not as diseased) work better in some patients with emphysema
• Lung transplant for severe cases

All very good suggestions. I made sure my mother took all of her prescribed medications on time every day. I made sure she did not miss Pulmonary Rehab once. I watched her deteriorate down to End Stage Emphysema. The disease progression seemed like it was accelerating especially the year she was given 7 prescriptions for antibiotics and 4 prescriptions for prednisone.

The link to the page with this information is:

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

COPD is a long-term (chronic) illness. The disease will get worse more quickly if you do not stop smoking.

• Irregular heartbeat (arrhythmia)
• Need for breathing machine and oxygen therapy
• Right-sided heart failure or cor pulmonale (heart swelling and heart failure due to chronic lung disease)
• Pneumonia
• Pneumothorax
• Severe weight loss and malnutrition
• Thinning of the bones (osteoporosis)

•Tiotropium Oral Inhalation
Tiotropium is used to prevent wheezing, shortness of breath, and difficulty breathing in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD, a group of diseases that affect the lungs and airways) such as chronic bronchitis (swelling of the air passages that lead to the lungs) and emphysema (damage to air sacs in the lungs). Tiotropium is in a class of medications called bronchodilators. It works by relaxing and opening the air passages to the lungs to make breathing easier.

• Albuterol
Albuterol is used to prevent and treat wheezing, difficulty breathing and chest tightness caused by lung diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD; a group of diseases that affect the lungs and airways). Albuterol is in a class of medications called bronchodilators. It works by relaxing and opening the air passages to the lungs to make breathing easier.

This was the first medication or treatment that stopped working for my mother. It provided temporary relief of symptoms in the first year and even into the second. It eventually stopped providing the relief and was replaced by DuoNeb which contained albuterol sulfate and ipratropium bromide, the medication in the Combivent rescue inhaler. DuoNeb worked for a while longer but eventually it stopped helping also.

 

• Formoterol Oral Inhalation
Formoterol is used to treat wheezing, shortness of breath, and breathing difficulties caused by asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD; a group of lung diseases that includes chronic bronchitis and emphysema). It also is used to prevent breathing difficulties (bronchospasm) during exercise. Formoterol is in a class of medications called long-acting beta agonists (LABAs). It works by relaxing and opening air passages in the lungs, making it easier to breathe.

• Ipratropium Oral Inhalation
Ipratropium oral inhalation is used to prevent wheezing, difficulty breathing, chest tightness, and coughing in people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD; a group of diseases that affect the lungs and airways) such as chronic bronchitis (swelling of the air passages that lead to the lungs) and emphysema (damage to the air sacs in the lungs). Ipratropium is in a class of medications called bronchodilators. It works by relaxing and opening the air passages to the lungs to make breathing easier.

The ipratropium bromide worked very well in the beginning both as a rescue inhaler in Combivent and for use in the nebulizer as DuoNeb. Early on the Combivent rescue inhaler would last two weeks or more. When my mother deteriorated down to end stage emphysema it was much less effective sometimes only lasting a few hours. The problem was it no longer provided the relief it had at the beginning. End Stage Emphysema or End Stage COPD is the time period the patient gets very scared. They can tell they are getting worse and they can also tell the medications that once provided temporary relief from the symptoms are no longer providing this relief.

The link to the page with this information is:

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

How I Reversed My Mom's Emphysema

My mother in September 2007. Early stages of recovery from emphysema. She is still wearing a cannula in her nose that is attached to the oxygen concentrator machine.

The long tubes connecting the patient to the machine are not changed frequently enough in my opinion which eventually caused severe migraine headaches.

Soaking the spare tube in apple cider vinegar and giving my mother olive leaf extract nasal spray solved the problem. Her doctor prescribed antibiotics which did nothing.