Labor Day 2019 is just around the corner. We hope you have been following our special Summer 2019 COPD Guide. If so, you know we are on Part 6 of the special series on COPD.
We have roughly followed the stages of COPD 1-4. However, throughout the last 5 blogs, you can find tips to cope with any stage of COPD. Likewise, this blog includes nutrition and lifestyle tips that relate to every stage of chronic disease. We’re also including a little bit of information about that upcoming Labor Day Holiday.
Special Editor’s Note:
With every stage of COPD, there are lessons to learn.
In researching natural ways to deal with COPD, we discovered so many connections between what you eat and how you feel with COPD that this topic will have 2 blogs. This is chapter 1 and we’ll publish Chapter 2 in within the parameters of our Summer 2019 COPD Guide, summer turns into fall, in the first week of September.
Both blogs will have a lots of helpful information about the relationship between COPD, and nutrition. FLASS knows you’ll feel better if you eat better, even if you are fighting COPD.
FLASS Invites You to Celebrate Labor Day with our New Natural Tips for COPD
Since about 1882 Labor Day has been an annual, federal holiday. With this last holiday of the summer, 2019, we celebrate the economic and social contributions of American Workers.
In between the picnics, and parades and family get-togethers, we celebrate the American work ethic.
Likewise, we mark the end of the summer season and the start of the school year.
Put simply, we are looking forward to the fun national holiday, Labor Day, between Independence Day and Thanksgiving. Your FLASS Family will be celebrating this Labor Day holiday 2019 with special honors for our COPD patients.
Holistic Tips for COPD Patients: Nutrition and Natural Life-Style Tips
Thus, our blog brings you the special, natural advice for COPD patients in this special Labor Day edition. The lifestyle tips below are not exotic, highly technical, extremely medical or surgical.
However, these tips treat the whole patient, the body and spirit, not just the symptoms. The more we can utilize them, the better we can make the quality of the COPD patient’s life. Likewise, none of the nutritional tips below can be harmful to a healthy body, so we invite you to enjoy them.
Naturally Celebrating Labor Day
People with COPD sometimes have a difficult time even on holidays. It’s hard for them to get back into their favorite activities. This is especially true after a hospital stay necessitated by an exacerbation. When COPD becomes advanced, sometimes it becomes challenging to:
- stay active,
- get the right amount of exercise
- watch your nutrition
- and just feel like oneself again.
According to Medical News Today, making just a few minor adjustments with COPD can get a patient back into some of their same activities. “Anxiety and depression may increase the risk of flare-ups. Additionally, engaging in stress management strategies will improve general health.”
Facing Labor Day, or any holiday, we hope every COPD patient is surrounded by family members in a happy mood. This can encourage a patient to improve. Family involvement and encouragement might even help patients try to do things they’ve not done before.
Getting Vitamins Naturally
Nutrition Crossroads: A Proper Diet Can Improve the Way You Feel.
There are natural things that can be done to help with the challenges of COPD progression. Getting proper vitamins is important to everyone but especially for people with COPD. Experts state that Vitamins C, D, A, E and especially K are most essential for people with COPD. Check out a 2018 scholarly article on the “importance of K” at this reliable resource.
Many COPD patients have a vitamin D deficiency. And that deficiency plays a role in worsening and permitting more frequent onset of symptoms. Milk, fatty fish, supplemental vitamin D tablets and about 15 minutes of sunshine daily help fight that deficiency.
Of course, vitamins are best coming from foods. However, in many cases, we might need to reinforce the proper amount of these vitamins with supplements beyond those in daily food intake. After all, level 3 or 4 COPD patient might not eat enough to achieve the right amount of these precious nutrients.
Natural Foods Treat COPD
Foods that have a lot of antioxidants should be in a COPD diet because antioxidants help to protect the body’s cells from toxins. Even in healthy people, toxins cause reactions. Likewise, they cause damage to at the cellular level. Thus, nutritionists recommend foods like blueberries, fish, apples, kidney beans or pinto beans, cherries, plums, olive oil, artichokes, carrots, pecans, and green tea.
Time to Labor to Lose—or gain-Weight
To better understand the relationship between COPD, your body and food, let’s look at some of the advice from the Cleveland Clinic. First, they state, “Food provides your body with nutrients (carbohydrates, fat, and protein) that affect how much energy you will have and how much carbon dioxide is produced.” Secondly, they make three important points about breath and the COPD patient:
1. We must understand that “Carbon dioxide is a waste product that leaves your body when you breathe out (exhale). If there is too much carbon dioxide in your body, you might feel weak.”
2. Note that the act of breathing requires more energy for people with COPD.
3. In fact, the muscles used in breathing might require 10 times more calories than those of a person without COPD.
Thus, we must monitor weight when a loved one has been diagnosed with COPD.
Labor for the Body: Naturally Fighting Infections
It’s no secret that “Good nutrition helps the body fight infections.” We have noted that chest infections can be lethal for COPD patients. Thus, we reduce the risk of hospitalizations when the patient maintains a healthy diet.
On the one hand, when a COPD patient is overweight, the heart and lungs have to work harder. Obviously, this makes breathing more difficult.
On the other hand, “being underweight might make you feel weak and tired. And it might make you more likely to get an infection.” If you have COPD, it is very important to consume enough calories to produce energy. We want to prevent “wasting or weakening of the diaphragm and other pulmonary muscles.”
Monitoring the COPD Patient’s Weight
Keep Hoping and Coping: COPD Research Continues
With COPD patients, maintaining a healthy weight is always considered beneficial. Having an exercise routine helps both to achieve weight loss and improve breathing. Exercise doesn’t have to be strenuous but regular exercise is imperative. Even without COPD, overweight people have more problems breathing.
So, that means the lungs work extra hard in more advanced stages of COPD. Maintaining a healthy weight is critical. Only then can we hope to fight constant breathlessness in chronic COPD.
Thank you for reading our FLASS Blog. As we near the close of summer 2019, we are beginning to anticipate the holidays of fall and winter. Then, we will trade our outdoor grills for indoor fireplaces.
Meanwhile, please join us at the FLASS Blog for the Upcoming Chapter 2, August 31st, full of more ways COPD patients can breathe better with the proper nutrition and exercise. Some of our Labor Day Nutrition Hints won’t be any labor at all!