Healthy Aging Lungs During Healthy Lung Month

October is known as Healthy Lung month, and with it comes a great opportunity for you to assess the way you have been maintaining your lung health. If you are someone approaching or in your senior years this is even more necessary. Your lungs provide your body with oxygen which allows your body to perform many basic functions in your day to day life.

Signs of Lung Distress or Disease

One of the things you can do right now to think about your lung health includes thinking about some common symptoms that can indicate lung disease. These include:

Chronic Cough

Wheezing

Excess Mucous

If you find that you have these sorts of symptoms for weeks on end you shouldn’t consider it normal. Be sure to reach out to your doctor and talk about what it could mean.

The Things That Benefit Your Lung Health

Exercise has many benefits to many different part of your life. Whether it be stress, or trouble sleeping. But, more importantly exercise makes it so that your lungs are working harder to provide oxygen to other parts of your body.

According to the American Lung Association, “Both aerobic activities and muscle-strengthening activities can benefit your lungs. Aerobic activities like walking, running or jumping rope give your heart and lungs the kind of workout they need to function efficiently.”

Talk with your doctor about the appropriate exercise regimen as they will know your health and potential restrictions. While there are certain guidelines and recommendations for the amount of exercise each day, not everyone fits the same routine because of outside factors including their age and potential other ailments.

The Things That Can Irritate Affect Your Lung Health

There are many things around us that can be distressing to our lungs. They can affect different people to varying degrees. Things like air fresheners, pet dander, mold, and even air pollutants can cause some lung problems.

Common Lung Ailments

There are many different ailments that can affect your lungs. From lung cancer to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, even pneumonitis. Certain ailments, like asthma, can’t be avoided. Though some people have symptoms that are brought on by certain triggers like those mentioned above including pet dander and mold. In those cases people are instructed to avoid the triggering substance.

Other ailments, like lung cancer, for example, have risk factors that can make it more likely that you will get the disease. And one of the biggest risk factors for lung cancer is smoking. If you can out smoking, you will do yourself a great favor. On the other hand, make sure that you are not around anyone that is smoking either. Second hand smoke, which includes the fumes you breathe in when someone is smoking around or near you, can be as damaging or more damaging than smoking itself.

Conclusion

Your lung health is crucial to your overall well being. And certain lung damage is permanent. So don’t think that you can be lenient with the way you take care of your lungs now hoping that you can build it back later. Irreversible damage due to habits including smoking and knowingly exposing yourself to other triggers that you know will affect your lung health is not in your best interest.

If you haven’t already, take a “Respiratory Care Week” and learn and research about all the different ways you can help your lung health. You can even take that time to schedule an appointment with your doctor about your best course of action. One week of focusing on your lung health could mean a great addition to your overall health. And there’s no better time than a time known as lung health month.

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