Chronic Bronchitis: Another Name for COPD

Do you cough almost every day? Has your daily coughing lasted at least three months? And is that cough productive, as in, do you bring up mucous with your cough? Have you ever been told you have chronic bronchitis, the Latin word for inflammation of the airways? According to the National Institutes of Health, another name for chronic bronchitis is COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Emphysema is also a form of COPD.

Left untreated, COPD may eventually rob you of the ability to breathe, to simply, easily and mindlessly breathe. Once that's gone, it doesn't come back. There is no way to "cure" COPD. However, there is a bit of good news that can lessen the blow of being diagnosed with COPD. COPD is reversible if caught early enough.

Do you know what one thing is most responsible for causing COPD? Cigarette smoke. The single most important thing you can do to prevent COPD is to stay away from cigarette smoke. Don't smoke and don't breathe in second-hand smoke. Sure, there may be smokers out there who have smoked since they were ten and don't have COPD, but if you are one of the ones that ends up with COPD, that isn't going to carry a lot of weight. It won't make much difference to you if Joe Blow down the street smoked all his life and doesn't have COPD if you've been diagnosed with this disease. Not all smokers get COPD, but smoking and hoping is like playing Russian roulette. It just isn't worth it.

If, however, you have been diagnosed with chronic bronchitis, you can potentially reverse that disease process or at least slow it's progression. What single, most important thing can you do to reverse or slow the progression of COPD? You got it. Stop smoking NOW. Stop breathing in someone else's smoke NOW.

Doctors may also prescribe inhalers to help reduce inflammation and scarring of the lung tissue caused by chronic inflammation. In addition, there are several breathing exercises that help force the stale, deoxygenated air back up out of your lungs. There are some resistance training tools you can use to help strengthen the muscles that are responsible for helping move air in and out of your lungs. There's even a cone-shaped tube that helps loosen and bring up mucous out of the lungs. Sometimes, thinning out the mucous with an over-the-counter pill makes breathing easier and certainly less exhausting than struggling with trying to bring up thick mucous. My favorite is exercise. Special pulmonary rehabilitation helps strengthen your core muscles to help them use oxygen more efficiently and, as a bonus, keep your heart healthier and stronger.

So, the bottom line is, if you're a smoker who hasn't been diagnosed with COPD yet, quit now while you're ahead. If you're a smoker who has been diagnosed with COPD, quit now while you're still in the race. Follow your doctors' advice to the letter, exercise, eat healthy, strengthen those inspiratory and expiratory muscles, keep those secretions thinned out and breathe through your resistance tubes twice a day, every day. By the way, taking up the harmonica may get that old diaphragm muscle back in the game.