Florida Lung, Asthma and Sleep Specialists present more information about COPD and the lung-brain connection, as supported by an article published in the journal CHEST.
Research scientists discovered “a link between an exacerbation of COPD in patients and depression.”
Let’s take a quick look at a fictional case, just to gain a little insight.
Quick Mini-Case Study
George was a sad man. Even as a child, joyous occasions such as his own Birthday saddened him. His outlook on life was bleak and his few friends called him a pessimist. His wife just pronounced him as the moody type.
If he could not find a logical reason to feel his unending sensation of doom, he found plenty of justification by watching the evening news.
When he was diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive pulmonary disease, COPD, he saddened himself by anticipating his breathlessness before an exacerbation even occurred.
As his disease worsened, he became less able to the engage in exercise, and this fact in itself led to deeper depression. His doctor told him to read, the book, “When Breath Becomes Air,” by Paul Kalanithi. Dr. Kalanithi faced many of the same issues and he refused to let depression destroy the life he had left.
Although he was himself a doctor, he suffered and died very young of Stage 4 Lung Cancer. Dr. Kalanithi said, “When there’s no place for the scalpel, words are the surgeon’s only tool.”
At FLASS, we never hesitate to communicate with patients. Many of us speak to our patients like they are members of our own family. In fact, we are family.
If George focused on his depression, his COPD symptoms became worse. Likewise, if he fixated on his COPD, his depression increased. He had to quit his job because he could no longer breathe well enough to run his hardware store business.
He told his doctor that he felt like he was on a spiraling trajectory down a great gaping black drain.
George was a textbook case of a vicious cycle, a sort of a boomerang effect shared by his brain and his lungs. There was no doubt he needed more specialized care that the patients who were dealing with COPD, but not depression. At FLASS, doctors and staff believe in treating the whole person, mental and physical. And we understand the darkness George faces every single day.
At Florida Lung, Asthma and Sleep Studies, we bring hope and new treatments to patients like George through hopeful Research such as the study study recently
revealed in Chest, May 2016 DOI:10.1016/j.chest.2015 .
In this research, scientists studied 1,589 patients for a term of three years. The study consisted of “Patients who had pre-existing depression or developed depression after COPD diagnosis…” versus a group of patients who suffered COPD, but not depression.
Meet the Newest COPD Study
Amazingly, the findings revealed that half of the entire group had never experienced clinical depression. This number changed significantly by the end of the three years.
- 25% of the patients were initially diagnosed as permanent depression cases, before the onset of COPD.
- 14% of the COPD patients “developed a ‘case’ for depression during the three-year follow-up.”
- To test their mindset, the COPD patients took a six-minute walking test and a test for quality of life. This was necessary so that scientists could evaluate their state of mind as well as body.
- Those with depression performed worse on their exercise ability. Likewise, they exhibited poorer scores on their quality of life tests.
- Compared to the patients who did not initially have depression, “the researchers proved that the COPD patients with depression were more likely to experience heightened COPD symptoms, such as increased breathlessness, reduced exercise tolerance and hopelessness.” Poor George expressed it well. He said, “I don’t know if my body is making my mind sick or if my mind is making my body sick. Either way, it’s like hitting myself in the head with a boomerang.”
Explaining the Breathless Boomerang
As the study progressed, it became quite obvious that the boomerang effect between the mental disease and the physical disease had serious consequences. It caused “COPD patients with depression to score lower than COPD patients without depression.”
Researchers hoped that information on this boomerang relationship between depression and COPD could be used to reduce a patient’s number of COPD-related hospital re-admissions.
Two Major Discoveries Revealed: 
Dr. Yohannes, stated, “Essentially, we can treat the brain to treat the lungs and this is something health practitioners should be aware of when working with COPD patients.”
He also declared, “Managing mental health problems associated with COPD should be an important part of the management plan for the short term as well as the discharge planning with longer-term follow-up.”
Ultimately, the researchers concluded that “depression in COPD is chronic and inadequately treated.”
At FLASS, Florida Lung, Asthma and Sleep Specialists, we take great pride in our holistic approach which includes treating the mind and the body simultaneously in every case.
To ignore the mind and treat only the body would be fool-hardy, now that we know how intricately bound they are when subjected to the rigors of Depression and COPD—like the two ends of a boomerang.
