Coping with COPD

Are you coping with COPD? You can only do your best. Here are some tips: Practice breathing techniques, adopt a mantra, adjust your diet, and exercise.

Simply catching your breath is exhausting when you suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD). Your doctors will tell you about inhalers and oxygen therapy. What you may not hear: Compared to other illnesses, your emotions especially affect COPD, which actually gives you some control.

Most of the time, COPD is the result of many years of smoking. Especially if you didn’t try to quit, you might hold yourself responsible for your suffering and the burden and expense you’ve put on your family and caregivers. That’s a big load of guilt, and it’s common to feel angry and depressed as well.

You can only do your best. Some suggestions include practicing breathing techniques, adopting a mantra, adjusting your diet, and exercising. Although you’ll still have COPD, you’ll know you’re doing your part.

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Breathing

When you’re afraid you can’t breathe, your body tightens up, and that can make breathing even more difficult. Ask your doctors for breathing exercises. Examples include pursed breathing, letting the air out of a rounded mouth as if you’re whistling, and belly breathing, when you fill your belly on an inhale and relax your abdomen as you exhale.

Such exercises may not feel like a magic solution, but they’re likely to help you walk around or get other exercise, according to research.

Adopt a mantra

Negative thoughts register in your body as alarm bells and sap your energy, says Dawn Fielding, executive director of the nonprofit Chronic Lung Alliance. Whenever you feel yourself launching into self-criticism or despair, stop and instead think of your mantra, which might be “One day at a time,” or “Just do your best” or “Another day in paradise” — any encouraging or humorous phrase that feels meaningful to you.

The right phrase will make your heart rate slow a little and make it easier to breathe.

Mind your diet

Food that increases the carbon dioxide in your blood will increase your breathing, exactly what you don’t want when you have COPD. Notice which foods affect you and steer clear of them.

Carbonated beverages, including seltzer, can be a problem. Cake, cookies, pasta — anything sweet and made with white flour — could set you off.

Caffeine, even in soda, is too stimulating for someone with COPD. Water, on the other hand, thins the mucus that is clogging your throat. You can try waters infused with flavor, although not sugar or fizz.

Exercise

People with COPD often develop weakness in the diaphragm and other muscles related to breathing. If you react to your breathing issues by sitting around, like anyone else you’ll get weaker.

Wearing a pedometer or fitness tracker could help encourage you to move. Fielding recommends aiming for at least 2,000 steps a day. People with COPD also often find arm and chest exercises especially exhausting, but strengthening your upper body can help you breathe more easily.

At the moment, there is no strong evidence that any particular kind of exercise is best for COPD patients, so try some options to see what works best for you. Compare how you feel when you work on a treadmill at a continuous speed, or you can try an interval routine that moves between different intensities.

Also consider working out with Styrofoam weights in a pool; water-based exercise seems to be about as effective as land-based exercise, according to one analysis.

Your doctor can refer you to a pulmonary rehabilitation program, which normally includes coaching on exercise and nutrition, along with other information to help you live with the disease.

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