
What Is Proactive COPD Management?
Living with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) comes with a unique set of challenges. It’s a long-term condition that can affect the way you go about your daily activities. But there are ways to establish a sense of control over your health and well-being. And one of the main ones is to take a proactive approach toward managing your COPD.
Taking charge of your condition means:
- Following the treatment plan your doctor recommends
- Seeing your doctor regularly
- Avoiding things that trigger your COPD flare-ups.
- Making healthy lifestyle changes like exercising and stopping smoking
You and your doctor can work together to come up with a personalized action plan that includes daily treatment instructions as well as steps to take when you’re feeling unwell.
As you establish a system to spot, understand, and address the main effects of COPD on your life, you'll build confidence in your ability to live with the condition day to day. And that can set you up for long-term success.
Why Is Self-Management of COPD Important?
The goal of COPD management is to lessen symptoms and slow the disease’s progression while keeping flare-ups at bay. Self-care is considered an essential way to stabilize COPD, giving you control as you navigate this chronic condition. Research shows that not only does it help you manage the disease, it can improve your emotional and social well‐being and your quality of life.
There's no one-size-fits all strategy for self-management. It's an ongoing process that involves working with your health care team to better understand your condition so you feel empowered to make the right decisions.
The Benefits of Proactive COPD Self-Management
Taking charge of managing your COPD has both short-term and long-term benefits. Proactive self-care can help:
- Ease the overall burden of symptoms, both physical and mental
- Strengthen your lungs
- Make breathing easier
- Lessen fatigue
- Make exercise more manageable
- Keep your COPD from getting worse
- Lower health care costs
- Lessen hospitalizations
What Does a Proactive Approach Look Like?
It starts with identifying your biggest needs and initiating care before your COPD symptoms worsen. Successful COPD management can look different for different people and will likely involve a mix of strategies, including medical treatments and lifestyle changes.
Keep up with medications, vaccinations, and appointments
Even when you feel good, keep taking your long-term control medication or using your oxygen as prescribed.
If you're having trouble with your inhaler, you're not alone. This is a common challenge, but one that's important to get help with. Talk to your doctor about proper technique if you're struggling.
Since infections can trigger flare-ups, make sure you get common vaccines like COVID-19, flu, and pneumonia shots. Others you should stay up-to-date on include:
- RSV, if you're over 60 or pregnant
- TDAP
- Shingles
- Pneumococcal vaccine
See your doctor regularly for follow-ups, too. This keeps your health care team updated on how you're feeling, which helps them decide whether your treatment plan needs to change.
Know your biggest challenges
Once you have a good understanding of your condition, one of the best next steps is to keep track of your symptoms.
Tracking with an app or on paper can help you tell if your symptoms are getting worse or if any new ones have appeared. You’ll also gain insight into what conditions or activities might trigger flare-ups for you.
Keeping track of which daily activities you most struggle with can help you have a conversation with your doctor about getting support. These might include activities of daily living (ADLs), which are basic self-care tasks like bathing or dressing; or instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs), tasks you need to plan ahead for and which demand more energy, such as shopping or cooking.
Your doctor can refer you to a pulmonary rehabilitation program — which teaches you about your lungs, COPD, and how to exercise with less shortness of breath — or an occupational therapist.
Identify lifestyle changes you need to make
Changing some daily habits — from what you eat to how you plan your day — can help you better handle your COPD.
Meals. Planning several small meals a day that include specific types of food can help stabilize your breathing and boost your energy. Eating fewer carbohydrates and more fat, for instance, may help you breathe easier. The kinds of carbs, fats, and protein sources you eat matter, though. Work with your doctor or a registered dietitian nutritionist (RDN) to learn which foods best support your breathing – and which don’t.
Exercise. While it might seem daunting when you have COPD, exercise can help stabilize your condition. Aerobic exercise like walking and biking helps you use oxygen more efficiently. Resistance training can strengthen your breathing muscles, taking stress off your lungs. You’ll need to start slowly and be careful not to overdo it to avoid shortness of breath. Also be mindful of the weather, since both high and low temperatures can worsen symptoms. Work with your doctor to set up a regimen that's safe and appropriate for you.
Activities. Doing everyday tasks may look and feel different with COPD, and that's OK. Remind yourself that you don't have to do everything at the same pace as before. Allow yourself to rest between activities to feel better. To save energy throughout the day, many people use the 5 Ps:
- Pace yourself.
- Plan ahead so you don’t cram too many activities into one day.
- Position yourself upright when you sit or stand.
- Prioritize your activities to get the most important things done first.
- Pursed-lip breathing to slow down your breath.
Smoking. If you smoke, talk to your doctor about ways to quit, such as stop-smoking programs and nicotine-replacement therapy. This is the single most important way to slow your COPD’s progression. You'll want to avoid secondhand smoke, too. Overall air quality is also important. Air pollution can irritate your lungs, so check the air quality before you go out to avoid triggering symptoms.
Sleep habits. Good rest allows your body to recover and reenergize. This, in turn, helps you better manage your daily tasks and COPD challenges. Try to sleep and get up on a regular schedule, and make sure your sleep environment supports quality rest.
Show Sources
Photo Credit: iStock/Getty Images
SOURCES:
American Lung Association: “Prevent and Recover from a COPD Exacerbation or Flare Up,” “Conserving Energy and Managing Your Daily Activities,” “Physical Activity and COPD,” “COPD Action Plan & Management Tools,” “Pulmonary Rehabilitation,” “Nutrition and COPD.”
American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine: “Is Disease Stability an Attainable Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Treatment Goal?”
The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews: “Self-management interventions for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.”
Asthma and Lunk UK: “Your COPD self-management plan.”
International Journal of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: “The Importance of Self-Management in the Context of Personalized Care in COPD.”
Heart & Lung: “Self-care styles of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: A mixed methods case study.”
Advances in Therapy: “Striving for Stability in Patients with COPD: A New Way Forward?”
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute: “Living With.”
Mayo Clinic Health System: “6 tips for living with COPD.”
Sherman Medical Center: “Breathe Easy: Life Hacks To Help You Manage COPD Like A Pro.”
MedlinePlus: “COPD flare-ups.”