Many of you reading this article have heard the term COPD but don't really know what it means and now you have been diagnosed with it.
In general, the term means chronic obstructive pulmonary disease which is a progressive disease made up of many components that makes it hard to breathe.
The two most common components of this disease are emphysema and chronic bronchitis.
In emphysema, the walls between the air sacs are damaged, causing them to lose their shape and become floppy.
This damage can also destroy the walls of the air sacs themselves, leading to a reduced amount of gas exchange.
In chronic bronchitis, the lining of the airways is constantly irritated and inflamed.
This causes the lining to thicken and form thick mucus as a response to the irritant, making it difficult to breathe.
Most people who have COPD have both conditions.
COPD gets worse over time with smoking being the number one major factor in how fast the disease progresses.
Other factors can be long-term exposure to other lung irritants such as air pollution chemical fumes or dust.
To understand COPD it helps to understand how the lungs work.
The lungs actually have two components working together for the good of the whole.
The first component is named ventilation.
The muscles of your body give off lactic acid when they are working, this lactic acid, is in turn, converted by the body into carbon dioxide which is then exhaled when you breathe out.
Contrary to popular belief, the need to breathe is based first on our need to remove carbon dioxide and secondly on perfusion, which is the need for oxygen.
Perfusion, the second component of the system supplies the blood with fresh oxygen which is then carried on your hemoglobin, (red blood cells), throughout the body to wherever it is needed.
Within the lungs, your bronchial tubes branch into thousands of smaller, thinner tubes called bronchioles.
These tubes end in bunches of tiny round air sacs called alveoli and this is where the gas exchange of oxygen for carbon dioxide takes place.
This gas exchange is accomplished by the small blood vessels called capillaries that run through the walls of the air sacs.
As the oxygen is being transported into the body the carbon dioxide moves from the capillaries into the air sacs.
The whole process is called gas exchange.
The airways and the air sacs are elastic and when you breathe in each air sac fills up with air like a small balloon.
When you breathe out, the air sac deflates and the carbon dioxide is expelled.
In COPD less air flows in and out of the airways.
The causes of this decrease in air flow can be one of the following.

• The airways and air sacs lose their elastic quality
• The walls between many of the air sacs are destroyed
• The walls of the airways become thick and inflamed
• The airways make more mucus than usual, which tends to clog them

COPD is diagnosed by physician assessment and clinical observation along with a complete pulmonary function test.
This test measures many areas of lung function to determine where the disease is most prominent and how advanced the disease is.
A second test for diagnosis is an arterial blood gas which is a very specific blood test drawn from an artery.
It measures the amount of carbon dioxide and oxygen in the blood.
These two tests are very useful in determining whether a person can take in enough oxygen and breathe out enough carbon dioxide which leads to more disease specific medication.
The ideal treatment of COPD is a team approach which includes your pulmonary physician, respiratory therapist, and physical therapist under the umbrella of a pulmonary rehabilitation program.
The rehab team works to restore patients to their highest functional capacity.
Pulmonary rehab focuses on improving quality of life by decreasing respiratory symptoms and complications through education of the disease process and triggering events, such as windy days, allergy season, and individual triggers.
The program encourages self-management and control over daily functioning.
This is accomplished by individual monitoring, knowing when the bad times are about to happen and how to manage them.
Here, the team approach can really help in identifying triggers and plannng a course of action to help minimize their impact.
If you or someone you know is newly diagnosed with COPD or any of it's components get into a pulmonary rehabilitation program as soon as possible but even before that, stop smoking! Ask your doctor if rehab is right for you.
It will help in educating you on the disease process, give you a plan of action to help slow the disease process down, and give you the tools to manage the disease without giving up the things you love to do.
Maybe most importantly, you will know you are not alone in the struggle to breathe with other COPDers being able to give personal experience and insight in to the emotional and physical aspects of living with and managing COPD.