what is bronchitis

Long is Bronchitis Contageous - Conventional Medical Treatment for Bronchitis

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Description        Bronchitis occurs when the mucous membranes that line the lung's air passages (bronchi) become inflamed. The condition is actually a common one, affecting most people at least once, if not several times, during their life. However, it's when bronchitis becomes a reoccurring illness that one has to worry.

Sore Throat

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Fever (in few cases)        Conventional Medical Treatment        If you are diagnosed with bronchitis, your physician will encourage you to rest as much as possible, increase your fluid intake, and use a vaporizer to keep phlegm loose enough to be easily coughed up. A physician may even advise aspirin or a non-prescription cough medicine.

Signs and Symptoms        A hacking cough that produces mucus        Wheezing        Shortness of breath        Burning, soreness, and/or feelings of constriction in the chest

Some people are more susceptible to bronchitis than others: the elderly, infants, smokers, asthmatics, alcoholics, individuals with compromised immune systems, people with lung or heart problems, individuals in poor general health, and people who live in moist, polluted environments.

Conventional Medicine

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In healthy people who have normal lungs and no chronic health problems, antibiotics are not necessary, even when the infection is bacterial. The productive (phlegm-producing) coughing that comes with acute bronchitis is to be expected and, in most cases, encouraged; coughing is your body's way of getting rid of excess mucus. However, if your cough is truly disruptive -- that is, it keeps you from sleeping or is so violent it becomes painful -- or nonproductive (dry and raspy sounding), your doctor may prescribe a cough suppressant. In most cases, you should simply do all the things you usually would do for a cold: Take or acetaminophen for discomfort and drink lots of liquids.

Drinking fluids is very important because fever causes the body to lose fluid faster. Lung secretions will be thinner and thus easier to clear when you are well hydrated. Nothing abusive about Bronchitis have been intentionally added here. Whatever it is that we have added, is all informative and productive to you.

Your breathing becomes especially labored, a bronchodialator drug may be prescribed to open narrowed bronchi passages. And if your phlegm becomes gray or green, your physician may put you on an antibiotic. If treated properly, what's good for bronchitis? typically clears up within 1 1/2 weeks with no lasting effects. We found it rather unbelievable to find out that there is so much to learn on Bronchitis! Wonder if you could believe it after going through it!

• The same viral infection that causes the common cold is the one most often responsible for causing acute bronchitis.
• The infection spreads from the head into the bronchi and lungs, changing from a cold to bronchitis.
• Influenza and strep throat can also cause the bronchi to become inflamed, resulting in bronchitis.
• If bronchitis does not clear up, it can become pneumonia.
• After many hopeless endeavors to produce something worthwhile on Acute Bronchitis, this is what we have come up with.
• We are very hopeful about this!

What Does COPD Mean?

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COPD stands for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.  It encompasses two types of disease processes namely chronic bronchitis and emphysema.  Quite often, people who suffer from COPD show a combination of features of both disease processes.  In lay person's term, COPD means persistent lung disease with features of airway narrowing.  To be more specific, bronchitis means inflammation of the bronchi or the larger airways of the lungs whereas emphysema means destruction to the smaller airways and alveoli or airsacs of the lungs.  Thus COPD is commonly used to describe chronic bronchitis, emphysema, or both.
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What are the Causes of COPD?

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Smoking.  Smoking is the number 1 cause of COPD.  More than 90 percent of COPDs are caused by smoking, cigarette or otherwise.  About 30 percent of long term smokers will eventually show symptoms of COPD of varying degrees.  Other causes include air pollution and inherited enzyme deficiency namely alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency.

COPD sounds like asthma, are they any different?  Yes.  Both COPD and asthma cause similar symptoms, however, they are different in certain ways. COPD causes permanent damage to the airways.  The obstruction is 'fixed', hence it is irreversible in general terms.  However, airway narrowing in asthma is intermittent and reverses quite easily with medication.  Having said that, both COPD and asthma is common, people who suffer COPD can have an asthmatic component and vice versa. We are proud to say we have dominance in the say of Bronchitis Emphysema. This is because we have read vastly and extensively on Bronchitis Emphysema. .

What are the symptoms of COPD?  The two main symptoms are cough and breathlessness.  COPD sufferers commonly complain about breathlessness and cough that develop gradually over a long period of time.  The cough that COPD sufferer gets are usually productive which means they commonly cough up phlegm.  The cough usually comes and goes initially but tends to become persistent as time passes.  Breathlessness is usually intermittent and only occurs with exertion in the beginning, however if you continue to smoke, the breathlessness persists even when you are at rest, this can be quite distressing!  Other symptoms are chronic sputum production, where you constantly cough up phlegm all day and recurrent chest infection.  People with COPD are more prone to chest infection for obvious reasons, as the lining in the lung looses its normal defense mechanism against intruding bugs.

How Does Smoking Cause COPD?

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Smoking inadvertently damages the lining of the airways.  As with any other part of the body in response to injury, inflammation occurs.  Inflammation stimulates the damaged lining to secrete mucus in an abnormal amount and also causes the airway to constrict (narrow).

What are the treatments of COPD?  First of all.  Stop smoking.  This cannot be stressed enough.  Smoking cessation is the first thing you have to do if you want to get better.  As the underlying mechanism of COPD is irreversible, medications are used with an aim to slow down it's progress.  Drugs that are commonly used to treat COPD include short-acting bronchodilator inhalers (i.e.  salbutamol), long-acting bronchodilator inhalers (i.e.  tiotropium), steroid inhalers and tablets are all available drugs for treatment of COPD.  Again, no treatment is more important that stop smoking.  Lung transplant is the last option and should be reserved for people with severe COPD.

COPD a Common Condition?

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It is one of the commonest conditions that require hospital admission during period of flare-ups.  According to one epidemiology study in the US, approximately eight million people have chronic bronchitis whereas 2 million people have emphysema.  As we can see, chronic bronchitis is more common than emphysema. It may take some time to comprehend the matter on Chronic Bronchitis that we have listed here. However, it is only through it's complete comprehension would you get the right picture of What is bronchitis. .