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Why Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) Is More Likely Than You Think
Plus: how to boost your metabolism at any age
The 10almonds Team
October 05, 2023
Today’s almonds have been activated by:
🧠 BRAINTEASER
Keep Your Brain Young With Today’s Brainteaser
You’re searching an attic when you find 5 short chains each made of 4 gold links. It occurs to you that if you combined them all into one big loop of 20 links, you’d have an incredible necklace. So you take it to a jeweler, who tells you the cost of making the necklace will be $10 for each gold link that she has to break and then reseal.
How much will the necklace cost? |
⏰ IN A RUSH?
Today’s 30-Second Summary
If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is not so much one disease, as rather a collection of similar (and often overlapping) diseases—progressive, and serious.
About half of people with COPD don’t realize they have it yet
There are things we can do to reduce our risk, and to manage our symptoms if we get it (see today’s main feature for more on this)
Being unable to easily participate in spoken conversations is not just an inconvenience; it’s also a [causal, fixable] risk factor for age-related cognitive decline.
Today’s sponsor, Hear.com, are offering the most cutting-edge dual-processing technology in hearing aids that isolate and separate speech from background noise.
Read on to learn about these things and more…
👀 WATCH AND LEARN
How To Increase Metabolism At Any Age: 7 Workout Tips (8:25)
Metabolic menu:
Want to know more? You can visit Cori’s website here 🙂
🫁 MAIN FEATURE
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD): More Likely Than You Think
COPD is not so much one disease, as rather a collection of similar (and often overlapping) diseases. The main defining characteristic is that they are progressive lung diseases. Historically the most common have been chronic bronchitis and emphysema, though Long COVID and related Post-COVID conditions appear to have been making inroads.
Lung cancer is generally considered separately, despite being a progressive lung disease, but there is crossover too:
COPD can be quite serious:
“But I don’t smoke”
Great! In fact we imagine our readership probably has disproportionately few smokers compared to the general population, being as we all our interested in our health.
But, it’s estimated that 30,000,000 Americans have COPD, and approximately half don’t know it. Bear in mind, the population of the US is a little over 340,000,000, so that’s a little under 9% of the population.
How would I know if I have it?
It typically starts like any mild respiratory illness. Likely shortness of breath, especially after exercise, a mild cough, and a frequent need to clear your throat.
Then it will get worse, as the lungs become more damaged; each of those symptoms might become stronger, as well as chest tightness and a general lack of energy.
Later stages, you guessed it, the same but worse, and—tellingly—weight loss.
The reason for the weight loss is because you are getting less oxygen per breath, making carrying your body around harder work, meaning you burn more calories.
What causes it?
Lots of things, with smoking being up at the top, or being exposed to a lot of second-hand smoke. Working in an environment with a lot of air pollution (for example, working around chemical fumes) can cause it, as can inhaling dust. New Yorkers: yes, that dust too. It can also develop from other respiratory illnesses, and some people even have a genetic predisposition to it:
Is it treatable?
Treatment varies depending on what form of it you have, and most of the medical interventions are beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say, there are medications that can be taken (including bronchodilators taken via an inhaler device), corticosteroids, antibiotics and antivirals of various kinds if appropriate. This is definitely a “see your doctor” item though, because there are is far too much individual variation for us to usefully advise here.
However!
There are habits we can do to a) make COPD less likely and b) make COPD at least a little less bad if we get it.
Avoiding COPD:
Don’t smoke. Just don’t.
Avoid second-hand smoke if you can
Avoid inhaling other chemicals/dust that may be harmful
Breathe through your nose, not your mouth; it filters the air in a whole bunch of ways
Seriously, we know it seems like nostril hairs surely can’t do much against tiny particles, but tiny particles are attracted to them and get stuck in mucous and dealt with by our immune system, so it really does make a big difference
Managing COPD:
Continue the above things, of course
Exercise regularly, even just light walking helps; we realize it will be difficult
Maintain a healthy weight if you can
This means both ways; COPD causes weight loss and that needs to be held in check. But similarly, you don’t want to be carrying excessive weight either; that will tire you even more.
Look after the rest of your health; everything else will now hit you harder, so even small things need to be taken seriously
If you can, get someone to help / do your household cleaning for you, ideally while you are not in the room.
Where can I get more help/advice?
As ever, speak to your doctor if you are concerned this may be affecting you. You can also find a lot of resources via the COPD Foundation’s website.
Take care of yourself!
❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE
Hearing So Clear It Has No Peers
Have you heard the good news?
A team of top German engineers has just unveiled the world’s very first hearing aids with dual processing, and the results are clear... Literally!
Why is this so special? Thanks to this cutting-edge German technology, these tiny devices capture speech and noise separately, resulting in groundbreaking levels of noise reduction and speech clarity.
Hear.com is so confident you’ll love their product, all devices come with a 45-day no-risk trial. They’ve already got 385,000 happy customers and counting, and their award-winning customer service will help with anything you need.
Please do visit our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free
🌏 AROUND THE WEB
What’s happening in the health world…
Reduced mortality risk seen for patients with vitiligo
Autologous breast reconstruction linked to higher patient satisfaction
How to get hay fever relief from fall allergies
Sociodemographic factors before MS diagnosis tied to disease severity
The importance of supplemental screenings for dense breasts
What to expect for the flu, RSV and COVID-19 respiratory season
Study finds vitamin D deficiency associated with increased risk for atrial fibrillation
More to come tomorrow!
📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW
The Oxygen Advantage: Simple, Scientifically Proven Breathing Techniques to Help You Become Healthier, Slimmer, Faster, and Fitter – by Patrick McKeown
You probably know to breathe through your nose, and use your diaphragm. What else does this book have to offer?
A lot of the book is aimed at fixing specific problems, and optimizing what can be optimized—including with tips and tricks you may not have encountered before. Yet, the offerings are not bizarre either; we don't need to learn to breathe through our ears while drinking a glass of water upside down or anything.
Rather, such simple things as improving one's VO₂Max by occasionally holding one's breath while walking briskly. But, he advises specifically, this should be done by pausing the breath halfway through the exhalation (a discussion of the ensuing physiological response is forthcoming).
Little things like that are woven throughout the book, whose style is mostly anecdotal rather than hard science, yet is consistent with broad scientific consensus in any case.
Bottom line: if you've any reason to think your breathing might be anything less than the best it could possibly be, this book is likely to help you to tweak it to be a little better.
What did you think of today's newsletter?We always love to hear from you, whether you leave us a comment or even just a click in the poll if you're speeding by! |
May every day bring you healthy inspiration,
The 10almonds Team