COPD, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, can be tough to manage. With symptoms like wheezing, chest tightness, coughing, and overall shortness of breath, it’s no wonder that everyday activities become more difficult.
There’s no cure for COPD, so it’s often that many patients often feel hopeless when it comes to improving their breathing. But it’s important to remember (even though there’s no cure) that the disease is manageable.
There are many ways to manage your COPD, rooted in easing your breathing and supporting your lungs.
Choosing the right foods for you is all about choosing which nutrients you need the most. Your body needs nutrients to function successfully, and by getting the right nutrients, your body can support the lungs and the air transferred into them.
For a few days, or maybe a week, it would be vital to pay attention to the foods you eat and how they make you feel after you eat them. If you’re starting to notice that your favorite snack causes you to be tired for the next hour or so, take a look at the label and figure out what could be the cause. Is it sodium? Is it carbohydrates?
Take note and continue the process.
If you eat a snack or a meal and you find that you have more energy, or at the very least, the same amount of energy, take a look at what’s in that food. Then compare it to the other ingredients you took note of. Find out what’s helping and what’s hurting you.
Foods like French fries may have been fine before your COPD diagnosis, but could now cause you harm due to the increased sodium. Foods you didn’t care to eat before, like avocados, could now be essential going forward because they provide the right fats and fiber.
These small changes to your diet can better aid your lungs and help your body function better with COPD.
RELATED: 4 Breathing Techniques to Ease COPD Symptoms
Every health tip in the world seems to have this one, but it never seems to be taken seriously.
Besides the fact that drinking water is a general necessity, it more specifically helps with breathing when it comes to living with COPD.
Coughing, a symptom of COPD, might be extremely difficult to handle due to the mucus that comes up through the mouth. The mucus can be thick, and the thicker the mucus, the more painful the cough will be. Drinking water can help thin the mucus, therefore allowing the expected coughs to pass through smoothly.
Another way water helps is by preventing dehydration.
Since your body is already dealing with COPD, dehydration (and the fatigue that comes from it) will wear out your body faster, making it harder to function and breathe.
Many people are dehydrated without knowing it, so it’s important to be intentional about drinking water every day. This could better aid your COPD and make your body stronger and more energized.
RELATED: Managing COPD: Tips for Improving Quality of Life
Yoga is a great way to help with breathing and the perfect choice of exercise when you have COPD. The entirety of yoga has a strong foundation in breathing, gentleness, and peace of mind. All exercises and stretches are taught with this in mind, making yoga the most practical form of exercise for people with COPD.
Most of the stretches and poses in yoga help access different sections of your body, guiding the body to those places. This not only strengthens your muscles but also your flexibility and physical foundation. The steady intentional breathing that accompanies these practices will help improve your lung health.
There are two main categories of yoga to consider when planning out your workout. There’s strength and conditioning yoga that can help with body mobility and breathing. For safe weight-loss practices, there’s power yoga, which comes in many different forms.
Yoga is also a good option to improve your breathing and your body health because it’s available on media platforms, such as YouTube, for free. So if you can’t afford to go out and take a class, or you don’t feel confident trying yoga in front of others, there’s always the option to do it from the comfort of your own home. Just make sure to run it by your doctor!
COPD may not be curable, but it definitely is manageable.
It’s all about choosing the right ways to better strengthen your body so that you may aid your breathing, lungs, and overall body strength.
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