You appreciate every breath you take if you suffer with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. Many disorders can complicate COPD, including cor pulmonale, a heart problem caused by lung disease and weight loss caused by the high work of breathing. Sleep apnea, a common age-related disorder, can complicate COPD and rob you of restful sleep, according to a 2009 report published in the American Journal of Respiratory Critical Care Medicine. You can find therapy for each disorder.
COPD
COPD is a constellation of lung disorders. It includes emphysema, a breakdown of millions of alveoli, the microscopic, oxygen absorbing, air sacks at the ends of your airways. This lets your airways collapse and makes breathing difficult. Bronchitis, airway inflammation and extra mucus production, is also a common part of COPD. Asthma, airway-narrowing muscle spasms, also complicates many COPD cases. These disorders occur to different degrees in each COPD sufferer, but all make breathing difficult, coughing excessive and oxygen scarce. Therapy includes oxygen, medication to relax your airways and limit mucus production and antibiotics to treat common pneumonias.
Cor Pulmonale
Your heart pumps every drop of your blood through your lungs to absorb oxygen and release carbon dioxide. When COPD destroys alveolar blood vessels, your right ventricle, the heart chamber responsible for lung circulation, meets resistance pumping blood through fewer blood vessels. This balloons and weakens your right ventricle, causing cor pulmonale. Coughing clamps the remaining blood vessels and strains your right ventricle further. Therapy includes oxygen, heart-strengthening medications, airway clearring medicine and water pills to lower the blood volume to pump.
Sleep Apnea
Your throat muscles weaken with age. Weight gain is also common. When you sleep, this combination allows your tongue to fall backward into a narrower airway and you choke. This is sleep apnea. You can stop breathing for 10 seconds or more, up to 200 times every hour. Your oxygen levels yo-yo wildly, causing heart and brain damage. If you also have COPD, you develop the "overlap syndrome," double trouble for your health. About 1percent of the U.S. adults have this condition, as reported in 2009 by Pulmonary and Sleep Disorders researchers at University College in Dublin, Ireland. Continuous positive airway pressure, CPAP, therapy can resolve the sleep apnea completely.
Weight Loss
The work of breathing in COPD can be so great that calorie burning can exceed calorie intake. The struggle to breathe can also make a person feel so weak that appetite decreases and nutrition falters, further aggravating weight loss as COPD progresses, according to Cleveland Clinic nutrition specialists. However, treatment for sleep apnea includes weight loss to decompress your upper airway and decrease nighttime choking. High calorie, high nutrition diets are usually recommended for COPD patients who have lost too much weight.
Psychological Effects
Few disorders cause as much emotional distress as COPD. The condition can directly effect your heart, lungs and brain, and indirectly much more. The major symptom, shortness of breath, can not be relieved by any medication. It can leave an advanced COPD sufferer with a constant experience of suffocation. Psychological care and support become imperative.
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