Living With COPD
One of the most common diseases that affects the aging population of California is COPD. COPD ( chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), is a progressive disease that makes it hard to breathe. “Progressive” means the disease gets worse over time. There is no cure, doctors try to treat the symptoms and relieve the patient’s discomfort. COPD can cause coughing that produces large amounts of mucus, wheezing, shortness of breath, chest tightness, and other symptoms.
To understand COPD, you need to be able to understand how the lungs work. The air that you breathe goes down your windpipe into tubes in your lungs called bronchial tubes, or airways. The airways are shaped like an upside-down tree with many branches. At the end of the branches are tiny air sacs called alveoli. The airways and air sacs are elastic. When you breathe in, each air sac fills up with air like a small balloon. When you breathe out, the air sac deflates and the air goes out.
In COPD, less air flows in and out of the airways because of one of the following reasons:
? The airways and air sacs lose their elastic quality.
? The walls between many of the air sacs are destroyed.
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