Respiratory Resource Center

They're in the air, in our homes, and in a wide variety of products we use every day—volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are everywhere. Unfortunately, exposure to too many VOCs can be bad for your health and particularly dangerous for your lungs.

VOCs are a major source of air pollution, and they can cause a variety of respiratory problems including lung irritation, lung tissue damage, and serious lung diseases. Certain VOCs can also worsen existing breathing disorders like asthma and COPD.

Fortunately, you can limit your exposure to harmful VOCs if you learn how to recognize and avoid them. That's why, in this post, we're going to tell you everything you need to know about volatile organic compounds and your lungs, including how to protect yourself from hazardous VOCs.

COPD is a complex disease, and to manage it effectively you need more than just your primary care doctor. In most cases, it takes a team of several medical specialists to provide high-quality care for people with COPD.

While this might seem like a lot at first, each doctor you work with is an important part of a comprehensive COPD treatment strategy. Working closely with all of them is the best way to preserve your health and maintain a good quality of life with your disease.

Your COPD treatment team is there to you manage your disease in a variety of ways; they can help you breathe better, live healthier, and treat any other symptoms and complications you may face. However, this team works best if you take an active role in your treatment and understand what they do.

If you or someone you love suffers from a chronic respiratory disease, you might be curious about supplemental oxygen therapy. Whether you are already using supplemental oxygen or you think that you might need it, it's helpful to learn more about the therapy and the benefits it could have for you.

Oxygen is an effective medication for a variety of chronic respiratory conditions, including COPD and cystic fibrosis. It improves your ability to breathe and can also prevent a variety of serious health conditions, including respiratory failure, heart attacks, dementia, and even death.

Unfortunately, many patients struggle to comply with oxygen therapy and don't use their supplemental oxygen as often as they should. This is partially due to the fact that oxygen therapy can be very uncomfortable to use, especially if you have to use it continuously every day.

So, you recently found out you have COPD and you're not sure what to do. You might be feeling scared, lost, overwhelmed, or anxious about what will come next.

First of all, take a deep breath and remind yourself that you will be okay. COPD is a serious disease, but it doesn't mean your life as you know it is over. Many people go on to live many long, happy years after getting diagnosed with COPD.

Even though the news can come as a shock, it's important not to not panic or get too discouraged about your diagnosis. COPD is treatable, even if it's not curable, and the next steps you take can have a major impact on your disease and how quickly your symptoms get worse.

Did you know that living with COPD can make it more difficult to think, make decisions, and remember things? It's true; studies show that COPD can cause mild cognitive impairment, a condition that affects your memory and other mental functions.

Unfortunately, many people are unaware of, or underestimate, the effect that COPD can have on your brain. Because of this, many COPD patients experience mental decline without ever realizing that their disease could be the cause.

This is a shame, especially because COPD-related mild cognitive impairment is both treatable and preventable. But in order to avoid it or minimize its symptoms, you have to understand what it is and what is has to do with COPD.

Getting diagnosed with COPD can seem overwhelming, especially when it catches you by surprise. It's often even more overwhelming to get used to all the new treatments, medications and lifestyle changes required to keep your lungs healthy, especially while you're still trying to come to terms with your diagnosis.

As a chronic disease, COPD requires constant work and careful decision-making to keep the symptoms under control. Because of this, it's no surprise that new COPD patients make a variety of mistakes that can affect their health and well-being.

Between making changes to your diet, exercise routine, medications, and many other activities of daily life, there are a lot of opportunities for error. As you adjust to life with COPD, it's important to avoid making mistakes that could serious consequences for your health, or at least catch and correct them early on.

COPD affects more than 11 million people in the US, both men and women alike. However, there are some noticeable differences between how men and women are affected by the disease.

For example, in recent years, significantly more women than men have been diagnosed with COPD. Men and women can also have different COPD symptoms, and gender can even affect how quickly the disease progresses and gets worse.

Other differences show up in the doctor's office, when doctors give different care to men and women with early symptoms of the disease. This results in many women having to wait longer to get tested and diagnosed for COPD.

Pulmonary nodules—or spots on the lung—are the source of a great deal of worry and stress for the thousands of people who are diagnosed with them every year. Despite the fact that pulmonary nodules are relatively common, the majority of people don't really understand what they are or how they work.

Many people's first thought is that pulmonary nodules are cancer—but this is not always true. In reality, most pulmonary nodules are harmless, and only a very small percentage of them turn out to be cancerous.

If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with lung spots, then you might be worried and you might have a lot of questions. In this guide, we hope to answer these questions and give you all the information you need to better understand pulmonary nodules and the level of risk they pose.

Influenza—also known as the flu—is one of the most common and deadly viruses that spreads throughout the US every year. With the peak of the flu season beginning in January and continuing through March, now is the time to get your flu vaccine if you haven't done so already.

Experts recommend that every person over 6 months old get the flu shot every year, but it is especially important for older adults and people with serious health conditions. This applies particularly to people with chronic respiratory diseases like COPD, who have a much higher risk of experiencing life-threatening complications if they get exposed to the flu.

Personal hygiene is one of those things that everyone knows is important, but few actually take seriously enough. For most people, hygiene is simply a routine part of life, not something they go out of their way to think about pay attention to.

But if you suffer from COPD, it's important to make good personal hygiene a top priority in your daily routine. Proper hygiene is your very first line of defense against illnesses and dangerous COPD exacerbations that can make your disease even worse.

However, practicing good personal hygiene takes more effort than most people think. Doing it right takes extra time out of the busy day, and it's very tempting to cut corners to save time.