Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Symptoms

Here's what you should know about chronic obstructive pulmonary disease symptoms to get the right treatment and learn to manage and live with your COPD.

Most people don’t recognize chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) symptoms during the early stages of the disease. Often people associate COPD symptoms with getting older. If you have any of the following COPD symptoms, talk to your doctor. Ignoring COPD will only make the illness worse. It can lead to chronic bronchitis and emphysema.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease symptoms

• Shortness of breath 
• Chronic cough
• Frequent respiratory infections
• A light blue color in your fingertips or lips
• Exhaustion
• Wheezing
• Producing lots of mucus

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Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease causes

Smoking is the number one cause of COPD, but nonsmokers are also at risk of getting the disease. You might not smoke, but you are at risk of developing COPD if your partner smokes or you are around someone who smokes.

Cigarettes cause between 85 and 90 percent of all COPD cases. When one cigarette burns, it releases more than 7,000 chemicals. Most of those chemicals are harmful.

The toxins from cigarette smoke weaken your ability to fight infections. Cigarette smoke also narrows air passageways in your lungs and causes swelling in air tubes. Cigarette smoke also destroys air sacs in your lungs.

Long-term exposure to air pollution, indoors and out, plays a role in COPD, too. Being around dust, fumes, and chemicals can bring on COPD. 

You can also inherit a risk of developing COPD. A small number of people have alpha-1 deficiency-related emphysema, a rare form of COPD in which your body is unable to produce a protein called alpha-1. The protein protects your lungs. Of the more than 12 million people in the U.S. who are diagnosed with COPD, less than three percent have this form. 

You can reduce your risk of COPD if you stop smoking. If you don’t smoke, avoid being around people who do. Your house and workplace should be smoke-free, too. 

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease treatment

If you have COPD, talk to your doctor about changing your eating habits and lifestyle. It can be hard to eat certain foods because of shortness of breath. Your doctor may recommend eating smaller, more frequent meals. You might also be told to slow down and rest between bites, and your doctor may suggest that you take nutritional supplements to make sure you’re getting the required vitamins and minerals your body needs. 

The thought of exercising with shortness of breath may sound perplexing, but exercise strengthens muscles that help you breathe. So, talk to your doctor about exercise. He or she may recommend you take short walks. 

Your doctor may also prescribe bronchodilators, medications that increase airflow to your lungs. Bronchodilators are also used to treat asthma. For COPD and asthma, bronchodilators are used with inhalers, small devices that help the medication go right to your lungs. 

The type of medication prescribed will depend on if you have mild or severe COPD. For severe cases, your doctor may also recommend an inhaled steroid, which helps reduce airway inflammation. 

For severe COPD, you may receive oxygen therapy, which increases the level of oxygen in your blood. Surgery is usually the last resort if your medications or other therapies don’t work.

Surgery can include a bullectomy, the removal of dilated air space in your lungs measuring more than one centimeter. Extreme cases also include lung transplants and lung volume reduction surgery. Lung volume reduction surgery improves breathing.

If you have COPD symptoms, talk to your doctor. Getting treatment early will make the disease more manageable.  

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