Archive for the 'Respiratory Disorders' Category

Pertussis, also known as whooping cough, is a serious childhood illness. The disease is known as whooping cough because children who have it often make a distinctive whooping noise when they inhale.

It is important to note that not all children who fall prey to this bacterial disease will exhibit the distinctive whooping cough; any illness which begins with typical cold symptoms that develop into coughing with difficulty breathing should be evaluated by a health care professional.

Not only is pertussis highly contagious, it can also cause infections in the middle ear, dehydration, pneumonia, seizures, and can be fatal.

In the five year period between 1999 and 2004, 91 infants died from pertussis, all of them younger than 7 months of age. Before the vaccine was developed, 5,000 to 10,000 children died from pertussis in the United States each year.

Children who are less than one year old cannot take the pertussis vaccine. Because the children who are most at risk are too young to be vaccinated, it falls to the adults in their lives to be vaccinated against pertussis.

Persons with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) appear to have significantly increased risk of developing depression when compared with other patients with chronic health condition like diabetes and other healthy individuals.

COPD is a progressive health condition that makes the affected persons hard to breathe.

This particular chronic breathing disorder can cause wheezing, chest tightness, coughing that produces large amounts of mucus, shortness of breath and other symptoms. Smoking habit is main risk factor and leading cause of COPD.

According to Lisette van den Bemt from Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center, The Netherlands,” the link between COPD and depression is found earlier, but this study specifically adds that we found temporal relationship, in clear words; COPD did lead to a greater risk for diagnosis of depression”.

But, it seems that the greater risk of depression is not actually result from having chronic health condition, but it is specific for COPD patients.

According to a study conducted by van den Bemt’s team, almost 999 COPD patients are at high risk of initial diagnosis of depression, 978 are at risk of diabetes and 2494 without any chronic health conditions.

Are you seriously worried about cough? Coughing not only annoys you, but also makes others surrounding you disturbed.

Whether it is due to your allergies, cold or other health issues, relief from cough is very important to make yourself comfortable.

How can you get relief naturally?

If you have wet cough, you don’t need to take care of it because it is mucus cleansing process of your body. But if you have dry cough, it can be really frustrating problem for you.

1. At night, rub bottom of your feet with menthol creams and cover it with socks. You can also generously rub your neck and chest as well to get some relief from cough.
2. Mix equal amount of water and lemon juice and make a consistent lemon solution. Add 1 teaspoon of honey to it and drink the syrup twice in a day.
3. Inhale essence of few essential oils like eucalyptus, cedar wood, black pepper, peppermint or rosemary quite few times in a day.
4. Avoid eating spicy hot foods, sweets, dairy products and also limit alcohol intake.
5. If you have trouble sleeping at night with cough, try taking steam. If you add few drops of essential oil or menthol cream to your steam, the effect will be good.

You have a small child who has a recurring cough or who seems to have shortness of breath frequently.

You go to the pediatrician for help and learn your child has something called reactive airway disease. The question is how terrified should you be for the health of your child.

There’s no need to panic

First, you’re probably wondering exactly what is meant by reactive airway disease.

Your pediatrician probably tried to explain it to you but doctor’s speak just isn’t effective when you are worried about the health of the most precious thing in your life.

Basically reactive airway disease is a generic term used to diagnose breathing and respiratory problems experienced by young children and infants. In some cases, pediatricians will prescribe asthma medication for the treatment of the disease.

One of the common issues of confusion is that reactive airway disease is the same as asthma so let’s talk about this in more detail.

Is RAD just asthma?

Not always. Basically, physicians want to be really careful about labeling respiratory problems in kids as asthma until they have a chance to see if the problems are chronic. Sometimes breathing and coughing problems can be caused by other issues, such as exposure to chemicals.

Sarcoidosis is an inflammatory disease that mainly starts in your lungs or lymph nodes.

If it becomes persistent, then it becomes more potent to affect any organ in your body including skin, nervous system, eyes, heart and also liver.

This inflammation mainly involves production of tiny lumps of cells in different organs of your body.

These lumps are mainly known as granulomas, because they look more like grains of sand or sugar. These granules like lumps are very small and can be visible only with a microscope.

The symptoms of sarcoidosis mainly depend on the organs that are affected by the inflammation. Some of you can develop the symptoms in specific part of your body like shortness of breath due to lung problems and others can experience vague symptoms. In certain cases, it doesn’t show any signs of the disease.

Early diagnosis can be helpful to prevent complications involved in sarcoidosis!

Sarcoidosis mainly affects your lungs and sometimes you will not feel the symptoms of the disease, until the disease is recognized in your regular chest x-ray. If the inflammation reaches the advanced stage, then it can end up with a cough, which persists for a long time and you can also experience shortness of breath.

Are you suffering with any heart disease? Then you can be at increased risk of developing pulmonary edema.

Pulmonary edema is usually associated with heart problem and involves accumulation of fluid and swelling in your lungs.

Human lungs contain large number of tiny elastic air sacs, which normally exchange gases involved in respiration without any problem. But, sometimes, as the pressure in your blood vessels is increased, your lungs are forced to pump certain kind of fluid into these air sacs and prevent them from exchanging oxygen, which results in pulmonary edema.

Most of the cases involving heart disease are mainly due to pulmonary edema. But, the accumulation of fluid can be due to many other reasons such as pneumonia, exposure of your blood vessels to certain toxins and medications and also due to excessive exercising or living at extreme elevations.

Depending up on the reason to develop pulmonary edema, the signs and symptoms to identify the problem usually appear suddenly or it can also be developed gradually over weeks or months.

You can experience these manifestations if the attack is sudden:

• One can experience difficulty in breathing or extreme shortness of breath.

Have you ever heard about “water in the lungs”, also called pleural effusion?

In general, very few amounts of pleural fluid are present in the pleural spaces of your lungs. This fluid is not detectable by your regular health check up or by any routine methods.

When this accumulation of fluid is high in between pleural spaces, then it can lead to several heart or lung disorders such as pleural effusion.

Pleura are the thin membranes that are normally lined to your lungs and also inside your chest cavity. These membranes contain fluids that act as lubrication and also help in the respiration process.

When the accumulation of pleural fluid is more inside these spaces, then it can interfere in the normal functioning of your chest and lungs and results in pleural effusion.

Pleural effusions are very common and according to the estimation given by national cancer institute of United States, approximately 100, 000 are diagnosed with this disorder every year.

Depending on the reason for the accumulation of the fluid, the excess fluid in your pleural spaces is distinguished as either protein poor called transudative or protein rich also known as exudative. These two categories of fluid are very helpful for the physicians to determine the main causes for pleural effusion.

Have you ever experienced choking? It is mostly caused when any object or food particle gets lodged into your windpipe, blocking the flow of air.

In adults, often any piece of food is suspected to be a main culprit, while most of the young children swallow certain tiny objects unknowingly, which can lead to choking.

If a person is not able to show any sign of choking attack, then you can look for these simple indications:

• Coughing forcefully
• Experiencing difficulty in respiration and even unable to talk
• Change in the color of skin, nails and lips into blue or dusky
• Loss of consciousness

Necessary steps to follow for choking:

As the choking interrupts the supply of oxygen to your brain, administering first aid as soon as possible can be helpful for you.

Knowledge of certain tips regarding the first aid, which you can do in case any of your neighbors or friends experience choking, can be a good quality for you. Some of the most important tips involved in the first aid process of choking mainly include:

A cough that usually carries up yellowish-gray or green mucus and persists for three or more months, then it is a dangerous sign of chronic bronchitis. Release or production of mucus is quite normal.

The airways involved in your respiratory system normally produce certain amounts of mucus every day and these secretions are not accumulated. Rather, they continuously clear into your throat and swallowed with saliva.

If there is an inflammation in your main air passages of your lungs, they often produce huge amounts of discolored mucus that comes up with your cough.

Discolored mucus associated with the cough often refers to a secondary infection in your respiratory organs, which can lead to a life threatening problem for you.

Chronic bronchitis must be necessarily treated if air passage restriction is present within your lungs. The only way for you to get rid of this lung inflammation is stop smoking.

It can be the best treatment for this kind of lung disorder. If the inflammation is in advanced stage, then you will be treated with oxygen therapy.

Some of the other treatments involved in chronic bronchitis are outlined here:

The main symptom of lung disease is lungs do not work properly.

There are different types of lung diseases such as obstructive, restrictive and difficulty in moving oxygen from lung’s air sac into your blood.

Lymphangioleiomyomatosis – A most common lung disease in pregnant women

Lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM) is a progressively deadly lung disease that mostly affects women in their child bearing stage.

Diagnosing this disease is very difficult because most of the early symptoms of LAM are similar to other lung diseases like asthma, bronchitis or emphysema.

LAM is characterized by an unusual type of smooth muscle cell that invades tissues of the lungs. As the time goes on, the LAM cells create holes in the lungs thus restricting the lungs from transforming oxygen to other parts of the body and making your breathing a daily battle.

VEGF-D Serum Test:
VEFG is vascular endothelial growth factor and is a main angiogenic growth factor which is produced by malignant cells. VEGF-D Serum Test is clinically helpful diagnostic test for LAM.

Smoking women can be at an increased risk of lung disease:

Smoking offers a greater risk, especially women suffering from COPD. This is the fourth leading cause of death in US.