Pneumonia is a somewhat common and potentially serious type of lung infection that, on average, causes more than a quarter of a million hospitalizations and about 50,000 deaths in the US every year. Anyone can get pneumonia, but it's significantly more dangerous for older adults and people with chronic lung diseases like COPD.

Pneumonia has long been a major health concern for people in these vulnerable groups, and especially for people with COPD, who are both more prone to getting pneumonia and more prone to suffering severe complications from the disease. However, most people know very little about how pneumonia infections work and how they're caused.

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Many people don't realize that there are dozens of different types of viruses, bacteria, and fungi that can cause pneumonia; in fact, there are more than thirty different types of pneumonia-causing bacteria alone. Some are more dangerous and more difficult to treat than others, and they also vary in how often and how severely—they affect people with COPD.

In this guide, we're going to take a closer look at the eight main types of pneumonia and what their different characteristics mean for people with COPD. We'll discuss which types of pneumonia people with COPD are most likely to get, which ones are most likely to cause COPD complications, and what people with COPD can do to protect themselves from different kinds of pneumonia.

We'll also answer some important questions about pneumonia and COPD, including:

• How is pneumonia treated in COPD patients, and how long does it take to recover?
• Why does pneumonia often occur during COPD exacerbations?
• What can I do to avoid getting a secondary pneumonia infection?

Our goal is to give people with COPD all the knowledge they need to understand, recognize, and protect themselves from pneumonia in all of its different forms. However, if you're only interested in learning about the different types of pneumonia infections and would like to skip ahead, you can jump straight to that section by clicking here.

How Pneumonia Works: Causes, Symptoms, Complications & Recovery

We'll start by reviewing some of the basic characteristics of pneumonia and why it poses such a serious threat to people with COPD. Next, we'll examine each of the eight major types of pneumonia one by one to see how their causes, symptoms, treatments, and general threat levels differ, as well as what kind of risk they tend to pose to people with chronic lung diseases.

At the end of this guide, we've included a few helpful tips for preventing pneumonia infections and keeping your lungs as germ- and disease-free as possible. You'll find additional tips for managing respiratory infections sprinkled throughout this guide, as well as links to expert online resources where you can learn more.

What is Pneumonia?

In the simplest terms, pneumonia is a type of lung infection that causes inflammation in the tiny air sacs, called alveoli, inside one or both of the lungs. This inflammation causes fluid (specifically pus) to build up inside the alveoli, which impairs their ability to function and reduces how much oxygen the lungs can absorb.

Pneumonia can arise from a variety of different illnesses, including the common cold, the flu, and many different types of bacteria. The term pneumonia refers specifically to the inflammation that causes the air sacs to fill up with fluid, and not necessarily to the illness that caused the inflammation in the first place.

For example, most people who get the flu don't get pneumonia, but some people get so sick with the flu that it causes a pneumonia infection. In this way, pneumonia is less like a single disease in the way we often think of them, and more like a specific type of inflammatory response that causes a specific set of respiratory symptoms.

How do You Get Pneumonia?

There are three main types of pathogens that can cause pneumonia infections: viruses, bacteria, and fungi. Your lungs are constantly bombarded with these pathogens when you breathe and sometimes when you aspirate food or fluid into your lungs.

Every person also has a certain amount of bacteria (often including pneumonia bacteria) living in their lungs all the time. While this might sound dangerous, these bacteria don't cause problems most of the time because the lungs are pretty good at fighting off infection and keeping resident bacteria under control.

However, sometimes pneumonia-causing bacteria are able to break through the lungs defenses and cause infection. This is most likely to happen when the lungs are already weakened by another illness, which is why bacterial pneumonia often strikes people who are already sick.

When this happens, pneumonia is known as a “secondary infection” because it's a secondary consequence of a different infection that came before. In these cases, the bacteria likely would not have been able to cause a pneumonia infection if the lungs hadn't already been compromised by another illness first.

Viral pneumonia, on the other hand, is not caused by bacteria, but rather by respiratory viruses like the flu, the common cold, or even COVID-19. These viruses inflame the lungs and can sometimes result in pneumonia if the infection becomes severe enough to cause fluid build-up in the lungs.

However, as we already mentioned, respiratory viruses can also create conditions that allow bacteria to multiply in the lungs. Thus, viral illnesses can cause pneumonia in two different ways: by directly inflaming the air sacs in the lungs (viral pneumonia), or by causing a secondary bacterial infection in the lungs (bacterial pneumonia).

Pneumonia infections can also happen on their own to anyone, even without any prior illness or health condition to pave the way. You can get bacterial pneumonia spontaneously, from your own lungs, or get viral pneumonia from other people in your home, your community, or in the hospital.

Why Do People With COPD Have a Higher-than-Average Risk for Lung Infections?

Healthy lungs are equipped with a variety of defenses that, in healthy lungs, are good at destroying and removing invading pathogens to prevent infection. Unfortunately, inflammation, lung damage, and airway damage caused by COPD severely impairs these germ-fighting defenses over time.

This causes people with COPD to be more prone to getting pneumonia, and more prone to severe pneumonia infections than those without COPD. Many COPD patients also use inhaled or oral steroid medications to manage their symptoms, which also increases the risk for pneumonia.

What is The Risk for Pneumonia Among People with COPD?

Research shows that having COPD significantly elevates your risk of getting pneumonia. Though it's hard to get an exact number, research suggests that older adults with COPD are at least four to six times as likely to get pneumonia compared to adults without COPD.

One study found that COPD patients were sixteen times more likely than non-COPD patients to get pneumonia in the first year after COPD diagnosis. Other factors, when combined with COPD, increase your risk for pneumonia even more, such as:

• Smoking (especially heavy smoking)
• Heavy drinking
• Older age (especially being over the age of 65)
• Very young age (especially being under the age of 2)
• Low BMI
• Having a chronic illness, including diabetes and heart disease
• Having a lung disease, including asthma, COPD, cystic fibrosis, or lung cancer
• Having a weakened or compromised immune system

What are the Symptoms of Pneumonia?

The hallmark symptoms of pneumonia are respiratory symptoms like coughing, difficulty breathing, and shortness of breath. They can vary from very mild (e.g. feeling winded more easily) to very serious (e.g. struggling to breathe while resting).

In serious cases, people with pneumonia can have such severe breathing problems that they are unable to get enough oxygen on their own. Because of this, severe pneumonia infections often require hospitalization and breathing assistance via supplemental oxygen or mechanical ventilation.

On the other hand, mild cases of pneumonia usually only cause slight breathing problems if they cause any noticeable breathing symptoms at all. Instead, minor pneumonia infections tend to cause the kinds of symptoms that most people associate with the flu: fever, chills, coughing, and a general feeling of malaise.

How severe a pneumonia infection gets depends on several factors, including:

• What caused the infection
• The age of the person infected
• Whether or not the patient has existing health problems

For example, you're more likely to get severe pneumonia if you are an older adult and if you have an existing respiratory condition like asthma or COPD. The type of pneumonia also matters; in general, viral pneumonia tends to cause milder symptoms than bacterial pneumonia, and it's often easier to treat.

Mild pneumonia infections often go away on their own or can be cured with a simple course of antibiotics. However, people who have health problems (like COPD) that make them vulnerable to infection should always seek treatment for suspected pneumonia symptoms no matter how mild they are.

Here is a list of some of the most common pneumonia symptoms:

• Fever
• Chills
• Coughing (especially coughing up phlegm)
• Feeling tired, weak, or fatigued
• Shortness of breath
• Fast, shallow breathing
• Chest pain (especially when breathing or coughing)
• Low body temperature (most common in older adults and people with compromised immune systems)
• Confusion (usually in older adults)
• Diarrhea
• Nausea
• Vomiting

Possible Health Complications from Pneumonia

In addition to the symptoms we discussed in the previous section, pneumonia can serious health and breathing complications like respiratory failure and septic shock. People with severe pneumonia infections have a higher risk for these complications, as do older adults and people with weakened immune systems or chronic lung diseases (including asthma and COPD).

Here is a list of some of the major health complications that you can get from pneumonia:

• Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS): This is a severe breathing disorder caused by poor gas exchange in the lungs. Symptoms include low blood pressure, rapid, labored breathing and severe shortness of breath (it can also lead to respiratory failure)
• Acute Respiratory Failure (ARF): This condition is a medical emergency that occurs when your lung function becomes so poor that your body can no longer breathe adequately on its own. The symptoms of ARF are similar to acute respiratory distress, but may be more severe and include signs of low blood oxygen levels (e.g. a bluish tint to the skin, especially fingertips, toes, and lips).
• Pleural Disorders: Pleural disorders are caused by inflammation in the lungs' outer tissue, known as the pleura. Some pleural disorders are relatively harmless and only cause a sharp pain when breathing, while others, like a collapsed lung, are more serious. More serious pleural disorders can cause gas, fluid, or blood to build up in the space around the lungs.
• Kidney, liver, and ear damage: This can happen if the body is starved of oxygen long enough to cause organ damage. It can also happen from if bacteria causing a pneumonia infection spreads to another organ.
• Necrotizing Pneumonia: This happens when infected lung tissue dies and causes an abscess. This is a life-threatening condition that often requires surgery to remove the dead tissue.
• Sepsis: This is a life-threatening blood infection that can occur if bacterial pneumonia spreads from the lungs into the bloodstream. Sepsis is a medical emergency that requires immediate, intensive treatment.
• Death: often the result of respiratory failure or another severe pneumonia complications.

Signs of Pneumonia with COPD

Many pneumonia symptoms overlap or are similar to symptoms of COPD, which can make it difficult for COPD patients to recognize when they have a pneumonia infection. In many cases, the first sign of pneumonia is a flare-up in existing COPD symptoms, sometimes accompanied by a fever and changes in the color, amount, or consistency of the mucus you cough up.

Some studies have found that certain symptoms in COPD patients are more likely to indicate pneumonia than others, including:

• Body chills
• Sputum purulence: this refers to any significant changes in your mucus that could indicate infection, such as producing more mucus than usual, having thicker mucus than usual, or having mucus that is yellow or green in color.
• Pleural pain (pleurisy): this refers to a specific type of sharp pain that gets worse when you breathe; it's caused by inflammation in the tissue (pleura) that surrounds the lungs.

Without medical imaging, however, it can be difficult or impossible to tell whether these symptoms are caused by pneumonia or another type of COPD exacerbation.

Strangely enough, the initial symptoms of pneumonia tend to be milder in people who are more vulnerable to pneumonia because of their age or existing health problems like COPD. People in these at-risk groups tend to have weakened immune systems that don't respond quite as violently to the infection as stronger immune systems do.

As a result, people in high-risk groups don't get high fevers as often—and sometimes even experience a drop in body temperature—when they get pneumonia. However, none of this means that pneumonia is any less dangerous for these groups.

In fact, a weakened immune response makes it even more difficult for your body to fight pneumonia, which can make the infection last longer and become more severe. This can result in longer hospital recovery times and an increased risk for pneumonia complications and and increased risk of dying from the disease.

People with COPD can develop very severe breathing symptoms as the infection goes on, and many require intensive treatment. That's why, if you have COPD, you should always be on the lookout for new or worsened breathing symptoms that could signal a pneumonia infection or a COPD exacerbation.

If you do notice pneumonia symptoms or experience a symptom flare-up that doesn't quickly go away on its own, you should seek treatment right away. The longer you go without treatment, the more severe your pneumonia can become, and the more likely you are to get severely ill.

Extra Pneumonia Risks Associated with COPD

Studies show that people with existing lung problems like COPD tend to have more severe breathing problems and more pneumonia complications than healthy adults. That's because the detrimental effects that pneumonia has on the lungs stack onto the existing lung problems that people with COPD and other lung diseases already have.

For example, lungs affected by COPD have damaged air sacs that are unable to absorb oxygen as efficiently as they should. Pneumonia infections cause these already-impaired air sacs to fill up with fluid, which makes it even harder for them to function and absorb adequate amounts of oxygen.

When the lungs are already weakened by COPD, that could be all the pressure it takes to push the lungs below the threshold where they can no longer function well enough to keep up with the body's oxygen needs. When this happens, blood oxygen levels drop, and COPD patients who already struggle with low oxygen levels may be more likely to experience serious complications as a result.

These complications include unhealthily-low blood oxygen levels (hypoxemia) and severe breathing symptoms (like shortness of breath) that result from that hypoxemia. It can also cause a more serious condition known as hypoxia, a life-threatening condition that happens when the body's vital organs are starved of oxygen, which can lead to organ failure and death without proper treatment.

People with COPD are also more prone to respiratory failure when they have pneumonia. Respiratory failure happens when your lung function becomes so poor that the whole process of gas exchange in the lungs breaks down, causing a severe imbalance of oxygen and/or carbon dioxide in the blood that can quickly be fatal and requires emergency medical care.

All of these problems are reflected in research that shows COPD patients tend to get more severe pneumonia infections and are more likely to need intensive hospital care. Other studies show that COPD patients with also have higher rates of hospitalization, mechanical ventilation, and death associated with pneumonia compared to patients without chronic lung disease.

People with COPD are also more likely to experience long-term or permanent lung function loss from pneumonia because their lungs are especially prone to scarring and other damage from infection. As a result, some COPD patients have worse COPD symptoms and lower baseline lung function after recovering from pneumonia compared to before they got sick.

In severe cases, pneumonia can cause life-threatening symptoms that require emergency medical care. If you experience any of the symptoms in the following list, you should call 911 immediately or get to the closest emergency room right away.

Symptoms of a Medical Emergency:

• Shortness of breath during rest, or shortness of breath that doesn't improve with rest
• Rapid breathing that doesn't improve with rest
• Severe dizziness
• Confusion
• Coughing up blood
• Persistent, high fever
• Persistent vomiting
• A bluish tint to your fingernails, toes, or lips
• Severe headache
• Chest pain that's new, severe, or doesn't have a known, non-emergency cause

Certain COPD Medications Increase Your Risk for Pneumonia

Both inhaled corticosteroids (for daily COPD maintenance) and oral corticosteroid pills (to aid recovery from COPD exacerbations) are common in COPD treatment. Unfortunately, research shows that some people with COPD may also have an increased risk for pneumonia infections specifically because they use corticosteroid medications.

Pneumonia and COPD Exacerbations

COPD exacerbations are temporary (days or weeks-long) episodes in which a person's COPD symptoms get noticeably worse. Many exacerbations require additional treatment or even hospitalization, and severe exacerbations can cause irreparable lung damage that permanently worsens COPD symptoms.

Most COPD exacerbations occur when a person with COPD gets sic

Fall injuries aren't something that most people think much about on a day-to-day basis, let alone take specific measures to avoid. But as people who have experienced a serious fall injury can attest to, falling is a very serious threat that many adults just can't afford to ignore.

Your risk of falling inevitably increases as you age, but your risk may be even higher if you have COPD. That's because, while COPD doesn't cause falls directly, it does cause a variety of physical effects that can significantly increase your risk of having a fall.

Studies show that people with COPD are both more likely to experience accidental falls and more likely to get severely injured from falling compared to similarly-aged adults without COPD. And this is no minor risk; according to the CDC, falls are the leading cause of injury-related and accidental death in adults over the age of 65.

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Fortunately, many—if not most—falls are avoidable, and there are plenty of ways to reduce your risk of falling if you have COPD. And since the place that you're most likely to experience a fall is at home, thoroughly fall-proofing your house is one of the best things you can do to prevent accidental falls.

That's why we created this guide to explain everything you need to know to get started fall-proofing your home for COPD. In it, you'll learn how to identify common fall hazards and make a variety of practical safety improvements to fall-prone areas in your home.

We'll also take a closer look at the link between COPD and falling to help you better understand the magnitude of the risk. You'll learn about how COPD exacerbates fall risk factors, how it affects recovery from fall injuries, and how people with COPD can benefit from fall-proofing in a variety of different ways.

Our goal is to show you that fall-proofing is worth the effort and provide you with practical fall-proofing knowledge that you can put to use in your home right away. We hope that the strategies, tips, and resources in this guide will inspire you and empower you to make your home a safer environment for living with COPD.

COPD & Falling: What's the Risk?

Every year, more than one quarter of adults over the age of 65 have a fall. Among people with COPD, the rate is significantly higher: studies show that COPD patients are 55% more likely than non-COPD patients to have a history of falling, and that they have about 85% more falls, on average, compared to people without COPD.

While the association between COPD and falling might seem strange at first, it makes sense if you consider the multitude of ways that COPD can affect your balance and mobility. For example, COPD symptoms (like shortness of breath) can make you feel lightheaded and unsteady, while COPD-related health complications (like osteoporosis) can increase your risk of breaking a bone if you fall.

COPD is also associated with numerous well-known fall risk factors (PDF link), including muscle weakness, dizziness, lightheadedness, and fatigue. It's also associated with an increased risk of getting injured from falling, and a more difficult time recovering from injuries caused by falls

In the following sections, we're going to take a closer look at these and other COPD-related fall risk factors to better understand the relationship between falling and COPD. We'll also discuss how COPD impacts recovery, and why fall injuries tend to be more serious in people with COPD.

How does COPD make you more susceptible to falling?

It might seem surprising that COPD, as a respiratory condition, could affect your risk of falling. However, COPD is a complex disease that has a wide variety of effects on the body, many of which can affect your balance and susceptibility to falls.

If you or someone you love has COPD, understanding these effects can give you a better idea of what kinds of fall hazards you need to look out for. It can also help you focus your fall-prevention strategy on the things that are most likely to pose a danger to people with COPD.

COPD Symptoms

COPD symptoms can make you feel dizzy, lightheaded, or even drowsy at times, which can easily throw off your balance and make you more likely to fall. This could happen during a bout of coughing or breathlessness for example, or when you're feeling fatigued.

COPD Medications

Certain COPD medications can also make you dizzy or drowsy, which increases your risk of accidents, including falls. The risk might be even higher if you take other medications (e.g blood pressure medications) or take multiple medications (including over-the-counter medications) that interact with one another or have compounding side-effects.

Other Health Complications Caused by COPD

COPD can cause a variety of other health problems that can increase your risk of falling, usually because they affect your ability to balance or reduce your physical strength. For example, chronic hypoxemia (low blood oxygen levels) is a common COPD complication that can cause you to frequently feel lightheaded and unsteady on your feet.

COPD also increases your risk for a variety of cardiovascular problems (such as high blood pressure and right-sided heart failure) that can lower your blood oxygen levels and make you feel dizzy as well. The worst thing about dizziness from low oxygen levels is that it tends to strike during physical activities (e.g. walking, standing up, and climbing stairs), which is when you need your balance the most.

Having COPD can also interfere with your ability to do activities that help you maintain muscle strength and balance, including exercise, eating, and getting enough sleep. Many people with COPD also suffer from Vitamin D deficiency, which is another known risk factor for falls.

What's more, some research suggests that having COPD can reduce balance and stability irrespective of the factors mentioned above. While researchers are still unsure why that is, some believe it could be related to a kind of nerve damage (peripheral neuropathy) that is relatively common in people with COPD.

How Does COPD Increase Your Risk of Injury (from Falling)?

In addition to increasing your chances of falling, COPD also increases your chances of getting seriously injured when you fall. The main reasons for this are muscle weakness and osteoporosis, both of which are quite common in people with COPD.

Muscle Weakness

COPD makes it difficult to exercise and stay active, which (in addition to other factors, like inflammation and malnutrition) often leads to physical decline. One of the biggest contributors to this decline is the loss of muscle mass and resulting muscle weakness, which is a major risk factor for falls.

Muscle strength is not only important for maintaining balance, but also for being able to “catch yourself” and avoid getting hurt when you fall. This can cause you to fall harder or land in a way that causes you to get injured; e.g. on top of a hard object or on a fragile bone or limb.

Osteoporosis

People with COPD also tend to have risk factors that make them more prone to osteoporosis; these risk factors include things like older age, poor nutrition, lack of exercise, and chronic inflammation (a common symptom of COPD). Some medications used to treat COPD symptoms—particularly steroid medications, including steroid inhalers—can also increase the risk of bone density loss and osteoporosis over time.

Osteoporosis weakens your bones and makes them more brittle, which can cause them to break from even little accidents like minor bumps and falls. One study found that COPD patients were 50% more likely to have osteoporosis than people without COPD and were 1.6 times as likely to have suffered a major osteoporosis-related bone fracture.

Unfortunately, people with very severe COPD symptoms often have trouble eating and exercising enough to keep their bones and bodies strong. Because of this, those with advanced COPD tend to have a higher risk for osteoporosis, muscle weakness, and getting severely injured from a fall compared to those with milder COPD symptoms.

To learn more about COPD and osteoporosis, check out our guide on that topic here.

How COPD Can Make Recovery Harder After a Fall

Having a chronic health condition like COPD can make recovering from injuries harder, even injuries that are completely unrelated to COPD. The opposite is true as well: unrelated injuries can make your COPD worse by making it harder to to take care of yourself and manage your COPD.

A fall injury that makes it difficult to walk or requires hospitalization, for example, could prevent you from exercising for weeks or even months at a time. In the time it takes to recover, you could lose much of your strength and endurance as well as the many other health benefits you get from regular exercise.

This alone can have far-reaching health consequences, including worsened COPD symptoms and an increased risk of developing other health problems like heart disease. Long periods of inactivity can also increase your risk of falling in the future due to decreased muscle strength, balance, and increased COPD symptoms like breathlessness and fatigue.

What's more, if you have a fall that requires you to be hospitalized, having COPD could complicate your treatment. It could make certain procedures like surgery more risky, for example, or limit the number of medications that doctors can safely prescribe you in addition to the medications you're already taking for COPD.

Being hospitalized can also be dangerous in and of itself because it can increase your risk of getting sick from certain types of infections (e.g. hospital-acquired pneumonia) that can be especially deadly for people with COPD. Unfortunately, because COPD weakens the lung's defenses against infection, COPD patients are particularly vulnerable to respiratory infections both in general and during prolonged hospital stays.

As you can see, falls can result in more than just a single injury; they can set off a chain of consequences that can affect your strength, your mobility, and your ability to manage your COPD long term. That's why avoiding accidental falls is vital for maintaining your physical independence and maintaining a good quality of life as you age.

The Benefits of Fall-Proofing: Why It's Worth the Hassle

Fall-proofing can do more than just prevent falls and fall injuries; it can make your home a more comfortable—and more accessible—place to live with COPD. It can help you conserve energy, stay independent, and even build up the confidence to do a wider range of activities around your home.

Now that you better understand how COPD can make you vulnerable to falling, you can hopefully see why fall prevention for COPD patients is such a serious concern. Now, let's take a look at what you can gain from fall-proofing, and why it's more than worth the time and effort it takes to fall-proof your home.

Reduced Risk of Injury and Hospitalization from Falls

It goes without saying that the main point of fall-proofing is to reduce the risk that you (or someone else in your household) will fall and get injured in your home. However, we do want to emphasize why preventing falls is so important by showing you how bad even a “minor” fall can be.

First, it's important to know that serious fall injuries among older adults are very common. CDC research shows that one-fifth of falls cause serious injury, and that 3 million older adults are admitted to the emergency room for fall injuries every year.

Second, you should know that even ground-level falls (falls from standing height or lower) can result in a wide range of serious injuries, including broken bones and head injuries. These injuries can require long recovery periods, long hospital stays, and sometimes even serious medical procedures like surgery before they can fully heal.

Unfortunately, recovering from fall injuries is often especially difficult—and particularly lengthy—for older adults and people with chronic diseases like COPD. Injuries in older adults are also more likely to result in permanent health problems, including muscle weakness, loss of physical mobility, and chronic pain.

The lasting effects from fall injuries can lead to further physical decline can make it difficult—or impossible—to return to the life you had before. In this way, fall injuries can have huge, long-term effects on your quality of life even long after they heal.

It's also important to acknowledge that some people never make it out of the hospital or home recovery because they die of their injuries or complications during recovery. In fact, studies show that deaths from falls in adults over the age of 65 have steadily increased in recent years.

Increased Confidence At Home

One of the more difficult parts of living with COPD is the gradual decline in physical ability, which can have a huge effect on just about every part of your life. Along with that often comes a sense of fear and vulnerability that can further restrict what kinds of activities you do.

Studies show that a large number of senior adults restrict their activities for fear of falling, and that this can have a significant negative effect on their quality of life. It's often not even a conscious decision; you just slowly start to limit yourself to the areas and activities that feel safest, not realizing what you've given up along the way.

You might be surprised at how much fall-proofing can improve your sense of safety and security at home. It can even boost your sense of confidence in your own abilities and help you feel less limited by COPD.

Increased Comfort & Convenience at Home

Making the effort to fall-proof your home will not only make it safer, but also much more functional and comfortable to use. That's because getting rid of fall hazards makes your home easier to navigate in general, which is a particularly important benefit for people with COPD.

This can make a huge difference during COPD exacerbations or anytime your feeling breathless and fatigued. It can also help reduce the stresses of daily life just a little by making it easier to get around when you're in a hurry or have your hands full.

More Energy and Independence

Fall-proofing can help you adapt your home environment to one that's much better suited to your mobility needs. In this way, fall-proofing can allow you to do more activities independently and generally expand the range of activities that you can do safely in your home.

For example, fall-proofing often involves adding practical tools (like shower chairs and handlebars by the toilet) that make it easier to do regular household tasks. This can allow you to live more independently and do more everyday things around the house on your own.

By making your home more accessible, fall-proofing can also help you conserve energy, which is often in short supply for people with COPD. Then, you can use that saved energy on other things, allowing you to do more and accomplish more throughout the day.

How to Fall-Proof Your Home For COPD

Now that we've covered the basics of why fall-proofing is important, it's time to learn exactly how to fall-proof your home for COPD. In the following sections, we'll go through all the major steps of fall-proofing, showing you plenty of practical strategies you can use to address a wide range of fall hazards in your own home.

But that's not all; toward the end of this guide, you'll find a curated list of expert resources and thorough fall-proofing checklists you can use. And in the very last section, we'll discuss a variety of other things (besides fall-proofing) that you can do to improve your balance and reduce your risk of falling if you have COPD.

How to Make Your Floors Fall-Proof: It's All About Where You Step

The surfaces you walk on have a major impact on your balance and fall risk, which is why the majority of fall-prevention strategies focus on floors. That includes the floors themselves as well as the obstacles that end up on them, such as furniture, doorway thresholds, power cords, and rugs.

Unfortunately, no matter what kinds of floors you have or how clean you keep them, walking on them will always carry some risk. However, you can reduce those risks substantially by eliminating trip hazards and making simple—yet effective—safety improvements to your floors.

Beware of Rugs

When you think about floor fall hazards, rugs probably aren't the first things that come to mind. But even though they might seem harmless, rugs are the most common—and possibly most dangerous—trip hazards in the home.

Studies show that rugs cause a significant number of fall injuries. In the US alone, nearly 17,400 adults over the age of 65 have to be treated for fall injuries associated with rugs every year.

However, not all rugs are created equal; some rugs are much more likely to cause falls than others, and—in some situations—certain types of rugs can actually help prevent falls. The difference comes down to a few different factors: what kind of rug you're using, where you place it, and what you're using it for.

Throw rugs, for example, are particularly easy to trip on, especially when their edges get curled up, folded, or frayed. Additionally, most throw rugs are not (or cannot be) secured in place properly, meaning they can easily shift, slip, and bunch up under your feet.

On the other hand, non-slip rugs can be safe to use on hard flooring, as long as they're properly designed and they firmly stay in place. In fact, non-slip rugs can actually help you avoid slipping on slick patches on floors that tend to get wet, like your entryway, bathroom, or in front of the kitchen sink.

Unfortunately, even non-slip rugs can be a trip hazard, especially if they're bulky, damaged, or poorly placed. That's why it's important to only use rugs where they're really needed, and to carefully consider whether a particular rug's potential safety benefits are worth its potential risks.

One thing that all fall-prevention experts agree on, however, is that getting rid of loose, decorative throw rugs should be a first priority when fall-proofing any home. When it comes to non-slip rugs, however, evidence is mixed, though many experts agree that non-slip rugs can be beneficial when used cautiously and sparingly on potentially-slippery floors.

Here are some basic rules and criteria for using non-slip rugs safely in your home:

• Only use non-slip rugs with rubber backing that firmly grips the floor.
• Choose thinner rugs over bulky ones; it's more of a trip hazard the farther it sticks up from the floor.
• Ideally, you should use non-slip rugs with tapered edges that sit flush (or as flush as possible) with the floor.
• Only use non-slip rugs on hard floor surfaces where they can get an adequate grip and stay in place (e.g. tile, hardwood, acrylic, smooth concrete, etc.)
• Consider placing non-slip rugs on hard-floored areas near places that get wet, which can include your entryway, bathrooms, any anywhere else that's near a water source like a shower, washer, or sink.
• Make sure the floor is completely dry before placing a rug; any moisture trapped underneath the rug (e.g. from water splashes or mopping) could cause the rug to slip.

Keep Up With Floor Maintenance & Repairs

Keeping your carpet and other flooring in good repair should always be a top home maintenance priority, especially for people with mobility-limiting conditions like COPD. Unfortunately, damaged flooring is one of those inconvenient problems that far too often get ignored.

People often put off floor repairs due to the expense and/or effort it takes to complete them, not realizing how big of a risk they are taking. In reality, floor damage

If you or someone you love has COPD, then you might have heard about a treatment known as pulmonary rehabilitation. This treatment is essentially a breathing and exercise training program specifically designed for people with COPD and other respiratory problems that make it difficult to breathe.

Traditional pulmonary rehabilitation programs come in a lot of different forms, including group classes and one-on-one instruction. You can also do pulmonary rehabilitation by yourself at home, an option that many patients choose instead of—or in addition to—taking a traditional class.

This is a great option for anyone who needs the flexibility, convenience, and easy accessibility that you get from practicing pulmonary rehabilitation at home. If you live in a rural area or lack the physical ability to take classes outside the home, home pulmonary rehab might be the only option that is realistic for you.

That's why we created this practical guide for practicing pulmonary rehabilitation at home. Whether you are simply interested in learning about the treatment or you're ready to try it out yourself, this guide will give you just about everything you need to get started, including direct links to all kinds of useful expert resources.

We'll start by explaining how both traditional and home pulmonary rehabilitation works, and why it's such an important therapy for people with COPD. Then, we'll explain all the elements you need to set up your own home-based pulmonary rehab program, including how to find the materials and resources you need.

What Pulmonary Rehabilitation Can Do for You

Pulmonary rehabilitation is a versatile, multi-faceted program that teaches practical strategies for managing everyday life with COPD and other serious respiratory conditions. It teaches you how to manage your breathing better, exercise more effectively, and stay active in spite of reduced lung function and uncomfortable respiratory symptoms.

As the Merck Manual puts it: “Pulmonary rehabilitation is the use of exercise, education, and behavioral intervention to improve how well people with chronic lung disease can function in daily life and to enhance their quality of life.”

Research shows that pulmonary rehab is a very effective treatment for COPD, offering a wide range of physical, mental, and educational benefits. Doctors often recommend pulmonary rehabilitation as a way to build physical endurance and learn how to manage the disease more effectively.

Pulmonary rehabilitation is particularly helpful for those who suffer from severe shortness of breath or have trouble keeping their symptoms under control. However, even people with well-controlled COPD symptoms can benefit from learning how to live a healthier life with their disease.

Here are some of the major health benefits of pulmonary rehabilitation for people with COPD:

• Reduced shortness of breath
• Improved exercise tolerance and endurance
• Improved physical strength
• Fewer COPD exacerbations
• Fewer hospitalizations
• Improved mental health
• Improved sense of well-being
• Greater knowledge and ability to manage COPD symptoms
• Greater knowledge and ability to make healthy diet and lifestyle choices

The main feature of pulmonary rehabilitation is a series of exercise training sessions designed to build physical strength and endurance. These sessions teach you exercises for improving respiratory health along with helpful breathing techniques to help you manage shortness of breath.

Pulmonary rehabilitation classes are a great way to begin exercising if you're used to being inactive or you struggle to exercise because of your symptoms. They help you learn to cope with physical exertion, gradually work up to more exercise, and teach you strategies to help you better manage everyday life activities.

This makes pulmonary rehabilitation particularly helpful for those with reduced physical mobility and endurance who want to learn how to exercise more effectively within the constraints of their disease. However, pulmonary rehabilitation offers more than just physical benefits; it also includes education on a variety of topics related to managing COPD.

A huge part of pulmonary rehabilitation is education and training on diet, lifestyle, COPD treatment, and general respiratory health. They include lessons about diet and nutrition, medications, and how to deal with the emotional hardships of living with COPD.

After completing pulmonary rehab, you'll have more of the skills that you need to get around better, do more, and live the best life you can in spite of your disease. These factors alone can do wonders for your mental health and your ability to live a good quality of life.

Whether you have mild COPD or a later stage of the disease, taking a pulmonary rehabilitation class can make a significant difference in your health and everyday life. Even after the course is over, doing pulmonary rehab at home can help you stay active, informed, and motivated about your health.

Pulmonary rehabilitation is helpful for everyone with COPD, but this treatment can be particularly helpful in certain circumstances. You might want to give it extra serious consideration if:

• You have severe COPD symptoms
• You are having trouble adjusting to life with COPD
• You are recovering from a COPD exacerbation or hospitalization
• You live an inactive or sedentary lifestyle
• You are too weak or breathless to exercise on your own
• You struggle with light physical activities like walking and going up stairs
• You want to work toward a specific physical goal (e.g. being able to walk around the grocery store or make it up a full flight of stairs on your own)

However, people with COPD are not the only ones who can benefit from pulmonary rehabilitation. It can treat a variety of different health conditions that affect your ability to breathe, including asthma, pulmonary fibrosis, severe pneumonia, and serious cardiovascular diseases like heart failure (especially coexisting COPD and heart failure).

What is Home Pulmonary Rehabilitation?

Most traditional pulmonary rehabilitation classes are group classes held in hospitals, medical clinics, and pulmonary rehabilitation centers. The class is run by a team of instructors—which often includes specialists like physical trainers and respiratory therapists—who conduct educational lectures, exercise classes, and hands-on skill workshops.

Home pulmonary rehabilitation, on the other hand, packages many of the same types of lessons and training that you'd get from a traditional pulmonary rehabilitation class into a format you can do at home. It's almost like taking an online or self-driven course; you gather the information and materials you need for each main topic, and complete the lessons on your own time.

Unfortunately, you may not be able to get the same kind of expert instruction and interaction that many group classes offer if you practice pulmonary rehabilitation at home. However, you can still get many of the same physical and mental benefits through self-driven lessons and activities.

This requires some planning and self-discipline, but it certainly doesn't mean that you will be completely on your own. You will be able to access to a wide variety of helpful resources and expert advice as you prepare for and work through the program at home.

You can work with your doctor to put together a personalized plan, or you can simply learn from existing guides. Either way, you will likely draw from a variety of different educational tools and materials as you go through your home pulmonary rehab program.

In the following sections, we'll introduce you to many resources you can use, including instructional videos, educational guides, and tele-health support. First, though, let's take a look at some of the benefits of doing pulmonary rehab at home, as well as some of the major reasons why you might choose to do a home-based program instead of—or in addition to—a traditional pulmonary rehab class.

Why Do Pulmonary Rehabilitation at Home?

Traditional in-person classes are the most studied form of pulmonary rehabilitation, but research suggests that home pulmonary rehabilitation programs may be just as effective, even if you only have minimal resources. Most experts also agree that home-based pulmonary rehabilitation offers many of the same benefits as in-person classes.

But even if traditional classes were the best option, there are many reasons why someone with COPD might choose to do pulmonary rehabilitation at home.

First of all, many people do pulmonary rehabilitation at home after completing a group class; it's a great way to continue practicing important skills and techniques. Second, many people simply don't have access to a traditional in-person class.

Pulmonary rehabilitation classes aren't offered everywhere, and they tend to be particularly sparse in rural areas. Because of this, many patients don't have any nearby pulmonary rehab options, or would have to drive hours to make it to the nearest class.

In areas where you can find a local pulmonary rehab program, there is often a very high demand for only a small number of classes. In fact, one 2019 study found that there were only 831 pulmonary rehabilitation centers in the US, which is far too few to serve the more than 16 million people in the US who have COPD.

The result is that many pulmonary rehabilitation centers have long waiting lists to get into classes. This forces some patients to wait weeks or months before they can begin getting the treatment they need.

Because of this, some people with COPD are better off starting with a home pulmonary rehabilitation program. It allows you to skip the wait and begin treatment right away, and it's certainly better than doing nothing at all.

Additionally, traditional in-person classes simply aren't the best option for every patient. Some people, for example, are too sick to leave their home for multiple weekly classes, while others find it impossible to fit it into their lives or budget.

You also need a doctor's recommendation to attend most traditional pulmonary rehabilitation classes, and sometimes these classes are reserved for highest-priority patients. In those cases, you might not even be eligible for a class unless you have very advanced COPD or serious complications.

For all of these reasons and more, researchers are increasingly recommending home-based pulmonary rehab, especially for patients who have trouble accessing traditional classes.

You might want to consider doing pulmonary rehabilitation at home if:

• You are not eligible to attend a traditional class
• You cannot find a class in your local area
• You are on a waiting list or all local classes are full
• You are unable to afford the cost of attending a traditional pulmonary rehabilitation class
• You are unable to get transportation to and from a local class
• Your physical condition prevents you from attending an in-person class (because of severe COPD symptoms or another health problem)
• You are unable to attend a class because of travel distance, time commitment, or another scheduling issue
• You will be attending an in-person class soon, and want to prepare by practicing ahead of time
• You are anxious about attending a group class and would like to try it out on your own first
• You have already taken a pulmonary rehabilitation class and want to continue building on the skills and benefits by practicing at home

How to Create Your Own Home Pulmonary Rehabilitation Program

In these next sections, we're going explain all the different components that a pulmonary rehabilitation class is made up of and how you can recreate each of these lessons at home. We'll start with a brief overview of the major topics and activities, and then we'll show you how to get the equipment, educational materials, and all the other information you need to begin your own home-based program.

The Basic Components of Pulmonary Rehabilitation

All pulmonary rehabilitation classes are different, but they all have the same basic makeup. Specific lessons and activities vary, but all pulmonary rehab programs aim to teach a similar set of practical, evidence-based skills for managing respiratory diseases.

These are the major components of a pulmonary rehabilitation class:

• Exercise training
• Breathing muscles training
• Nutritional counseling
• Education on proper medication use
• Psychological counseling and support

Your home pulmonary rehab program should address each of these topics, but how you approach them may depend on what kinds of resources you have. Because you may lack the specialized equipment and access to experts that traditional programs have, your home pulmonary rehabilitation programs may benefit from a couple of extra components:

• Working closely with your primary care doctor
• Tele-health support

Now, lets take a closer look at each of these components and how you can re-create them for your pulmonary rehabilitation program at home. For each of these topics, we've included links to a variety of helpful, high-quality resources you can use to get started right away.

Working With Your Doctor

Traditional in-person pulmonary rehabilitation classes are usually staffed with doctors, trainers, and specialists that facilitate each class. Since you won't have access to these experts at home, it is vital to work with your doctor—and any other members of your COPD treatment team—as you plan your home pulmonary rehabilitation program.

Your doctor can help you determine your primary health and lifestyle goals, and help you make a plan to get you there. It's also important to tell your doctor before you make any major changes to your lifestyle or exercise routine; this is not only for safety, but also so you can ask your doctor for advice—for example, on what kinds of exercises are appropriate for your physical condition.

Working with your doctor is also a great way to learn about lesser-known resources that you might not otherwise find. Your doctor might be able to give you helpful guides or pulmonary rehabilitation tools, or even refer you to a telehealth program.

Telehealth Support

It's certainly possible to do pulmonary rehabilitation successfully on your own with the guidance of your primary care doctor. However, it's always good to have some extra guidance and support along the way.

Luckily, modern technology makes it possible to work with doctors and other medical experts remotely without ever leaving your home. These are known as telehealth services, and they allow you to communicate with specialists and trainers from home using phone calls, text messages, and/or online platforms.

Research shows that home pulmonary rehabilitation supported by telehealth can be very effective at reducing hospital re-admissions and may work just as well as in-person, institution-based pulmonary rehabilitation programs. Unfortunately, it can be somewhat tricky to find a telehealth service that is both available in your area and suited to your needs.

The best place to start looking is local hospitals and pulmonary rehab centers, which sometimes offer their own telehealth programs and services. You can also ask your doctor to help you locate any other telehealth resources in your area.

Exercise Training

Exercise training is one of the largest and most important components of an effective pulmonary rehabilitation program. It helps you build strength and endurance by teaching you movements and techniques that are specifically tailored for people with respiratory diseases.

To get the best results, your home exercise training program should be as comprehensive as possible, including both cardiovascular and strength training components. You should do exercises that target all the major muscle groups in your body, including your arms, shoulders, back, legs, abdomen, and chest.

Arm exercises, leg exercises, and walking are cornerstones of most COPD exercise programs, because they work the muscles you need the most to function in everyday life. Start small and work your way up gradually, slowly adding more steps and repetitions to your routine as you go.

Even though you won't have an in-person trainer while exercising at home, you can get a similar experience from following exercise videos and DVDs. You can choose from a variety of high-quality instructional videos for exercising with COPD, some of which are specifically tailored for pulmonary rehabilitation.

In general, it is safe to exercise with COPD as long as your doctor says it is okay. However, you should still take care not to overexert yourself and to take breaks to catch your breath when needed.

If you experience any of the following symptoms when exercising, you should stop and rest:

• Severe shortness of breath that is worse than usual
• Excessive fatigue
• Dizziness or lightheadedness
• Nausea
• Pain in the chest, neck, or arm
• Irregular heartbeat or palpitations

Here are some tips for including exercise training in your home pulmonary rehab program:

• Find instructional videos (and other materials) for exercise techniques suited to your skill level, including videos made for pulmonary rehabilitation.
• Practice doing the exercises yourself step by step, modifying them to your ability if needed (e.g. try a lower-impact version of an exercise, or find exercises you can do while seated in a chair).
• Take regular walks to improve your endurance, trying to make it a little bit farther every day.
• Practice aerobic and strength training exercises in 15-30 minute long sessions; ideally, you should exercise 4-5 days per week
• Do not exercise if you are sick or experiencing a COPD symptom flare-up (ask your doctor if you are not sure)

Resources and Guides for Exercising with COPD

Exercise Training Videos for Pulmonary Rehabilitation

• Exercise and COPD Guide (PDF Download Link) from the Lung Association (Canada): This 16-page manual includes instructions for performing specific exercises and guides you through the process of starting a COPD exercise program.
• The Toronto Western Hospital Pulmonary Rehabilitation Home Exercise DVD (You can watch this instructional video on YouTube)
• Pulmonary Rehab Exercise Video from NHS Forth Valley
• Upper Body Exercises for COPD Treatment and Rehab from Burke Rehabilitation
• Arm Exercises for Pulmonary Rehab from Burke Rehabilitation

Text Resources for Exercising with COPD:

• Tips for Exercising at Home (for Pulmonary Rehabilitation) from Wexner Medical Center
• COPD Exercise and Activity Guide from the Cleveland Clinic
• Integrating an Exercise Program Into Your Life (PDF Link) from Living Well with COPD

Exercise Guides from Our Respiratory Resource Center:

• How to Exercise at Home with COPD
• Tips and Tricks for Exercising on Oxygen Therapy
• What Exercise Tests Can Tell You About Your COPD

Breathing Muscles Training

Another major component of pulmonary rehabilitation is strengthening and training the muscles in your chest that help you breathe. This is known as inspiratory muscle training, and research shows that it can both reduce shortness of breath and improve exercise endurance by reducing the amount of effort it takes to breathe.

In pulmonary rehabilitation, inspiratory muscle training is done through a combination of exercises and breathing techniques that target certain muscles in your chest. In order for these exercises to be effective, you'll need to practice them regularly and use proper technique.

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Just like with exercise training, video lessons can be an effective substitute for in-person ins

If you are like most people with COPD, you've probably experienced at least some degree of pain in your chest and ribs. This kind of pain can come in a variety of forms, including muscle aches, rib soreness, chest tightness, and general feelings of discomfort.

Unfortunately, these types of aches pains often don't get the attention they deserve, since discussions about COPD tend to focus on respiratory symptoms. However, research suggests that chest pain is exceedingly common, affecting more than half of people with COPD.

That's why we've created this guide all about chest pain, rib pain, and COPD. It contains all the basics you need to know about COPD-related chest pain, including why it happens, where it comes from, and what you can do to relieve it.

In the following sections, we'll explain the various types of chest pain that COPD can cause, and how to differentiate COPD-related chest pain from from other, more serious causes. Then, we'll show you how to manage and minimize that pain by walking you through nearly a dozen of helpful strategies that you can put to use right away.

What is COPD Chest Pain?

A large percentage of people with COPD experience some type of chest pain, whether it's frequent, chronic, or only just occasional. It can sometimes be difficult to pinpoint the exact source or reason for this chest pain because there are so many potential COPD-related causes.

Some of the most common types of COPD-related chest pain include:

• A general feeling of pressure, squeezing, or tightness in the chest
• Feeling of weight or pressure on the chest
• Chest muscle tightness and soreness
• Pain and soreness in and around the rib cage
• Aching and stiffness in the chest
• Soreness in the chest and/or ribs when breathing
• Feeling of fullness or discomfort in the chest when eating
• Tightness or heaviness in the chest when lying down

Some chest pains are triggered by COPD symptoms like shortness of breath or coughing, while others are related to physical changes (such as lung hyperinflation) caused by the disease. Some types of COPD chest pain tend to get worse in certain situations, such as when you eat, lie down, or experience a COPD exacerbation.

Most sources of COPD-related chest pain are harmless, but some types of chest pain are caused by health problems other than COPD. Certain types of chest pain can even signal a medical emergency like a heart attack.

In the next sections, we'll take a closer look at some of the major causes of COPD-related chest pain, and how to recognize other types of chest pain that might have a more serious cause. Then, in the following sections, we'll introduce you a to variety of practical strategies you can start using today to minimize your COPD chest pain.

What Causes COPD Chest Pain?

Muscle Fatigue

Normally when healthy people breathe, the diaphragm does most of the work required to move air in and out of the lungs. When your breathing is strained by COPD, however, you tend to rely more on the muscles in your chest to breathe.

Because of this, living with COPD tends to wear out your chest muscles, making them feel tired and sore. This soreness can be triggered by coughing fits, bouts of breathlessness, or even normal daily symptoms.

This type of chest soreness tends to get worse along with increasing shortness breath. This can happen during COPD symptom flare-ups and exacerbations, and during activities—like exercise—that are particularly demanding on your lungs.

This type of pain can range anywhere from mild to severe. For some people with COPD chest pain is simply a nuisance; for others, it is a significant source of pain that makes it even more difficult to breathe.

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Lung Hyperinflation

Lung hyperinflation describes lungs that are enlarged and take up more space in your chest than they should. It is a common COPD complication that tends to get worse as the disease progresses, and it's a major cause of chest and rib pain in people with the COPD.

Lung hyperinflation has a couple of major causes: The first cause is lung tissue damage, which happens gradually over time in lungs affected by COPD. This damage causes normally-stretchy lungs to lose the flexibility and elasticity that allows them to expand and collapse as you breathe.

Eventually, the lungs lose so much of this elasticity that they can't “bounce back” completely from their fully inflated state. This causes your lungs to remain slightly inflated even after you exhale, and it's known as static hyperinflation.

The second major cause of lung hyperinflation is trapped air in the lungs. This happens when airway constriction (often combined with weak and shallow breathing) makes it difficult to empty all the air out of your lungs, causing some of the air you breathe to stay trapped inside.

This leftover air takes up space and leaves less room for fresh, oxygenated air to come into your lungs; this makes your lungs less efficient and worsens shortness of breath. The trapped air also prevents your lungs from collapsing all the way, forcing them to stay partially inflated even after you exhale.

As a result, hyperinflated lungs are bigger, stiffer, and take up more space in your chest compared to healthy lungs. This causes them to press against your chest cavity, putting extra pressure on your ribs, the surrounding muscles, and the ligaments that support all the muscles and bones in your chest.

Because of this, hyperinflated lungs tend to cause a lot of pain and discomfort. This pain can range from sore ribs or aching muscles to a general uncomfortable feeling of pressure or fullness in the chest.

Unfortunately, hyperinflation tends to get worse over time, as the stiffened, expanded lung tissue becomes even more prone to trapping air. Fortunately, it is possible to reduce the symptoms of hyperinflation, even though the actual damage of lung enlargement often can't be reversed without surgery.

With proper treatment and management techniques, you can reduce chest pain caused by hyperinflation and potentially even slow down how quickly the condition gets worse. Treatments include brochodilators, breathing exercises, and other strategies which we will discuss more in the sections below.

Strain on Connective Tissues

The same COPD symptoms that wear out your chest muscles (e.g. coughing and shortness of breath) can also put stress on the ligaments and connective tissues in your chest. These tissues are responsible for connecting and holding everything in your chest in place, including your bones, muscles, lungs, and other organs.

In people with COPD, these connective tissues tend to get stretched and strained by frequent coughing and labored breathing. These tissues are also affected by hyperinflated lungs, which press on your ribs and chest wall, straining all the structures that connect and support them.

This stress on connective tissues can cause a great deal of soreness and pain in the chest and ribs, especially when paired with other symptoms like coughing. COPD can also cause permanent changes to the structure of your chest that could contribute to this pain.

Over time, inflammation caused by the disease can weaken and stiffen the connective tissues surrounding your lungs, making them less elastic and more prone to causing pain. While this phenomenon is not yet fully understood, researchers believe it could be a major contributor to chest pain in people with COPD.

Psychological Illnesses

If you suffer from a psychological illness like anxiety or depression, it can actually make any chest pain you experience significantly worse. However, that doesn't mean the pain isn't real or that it's “all in your head.”

The brain and body are intimately connected, and psychological illnesses can have biological effects that cause real, physical pain, or that amplify pains you already have. This phenomenon is widely recognized by researchers and mental health experts, which is why psychological therapy is a common treatment for chronic pain.

Unfortunately, a very large percentage of people with COPD suffer from depression or anxiety, especially among those with more severe disease. Research shows that these mental disorders can not only worsen COPD-related pains—such as chest pain—but also worsens quality of life and increases patients' risks for disability, hospitalization, and death.

GERD

GERD, which stands for gastroesophageal reflux disease, is condition that causes stomach acid to leak into your esophagus (a phenomenon known as acid reflux). For reasons that are not yet fully understood, GERD is extremely common in people with COPD.

Some researchers believe that the high risk of GERD may be caused by hyper-inflated lungs putting pressure on the abdomen and chest. Others believe that certain COPD medications may contribute to the risk by weakening the barrier that usually stops acid from leaking out of the stomach.

Unfortunately, GERD often causes symptoms that overlap with COPD symptoms, including coughing, shortness of breath, and chest pain. What's worse, GERD can cause stomach acid to leak into your lungs, which can exacerbate existing COPD symptoms and even trigger COPD flare-ups.

Because of this, GERD can be a significant contributing factor in COPD-related chest pain and discomfort. If you think you might have GERD, it's important to talk to your doctor so you can get treatment right away.

Some of the most common symptoms of GERD include heartburn, coughing, lung irritation, throat irritation, and disrupted sleep. Another sign of GERD is burning chest pain that tends to gets worse after eating and after you lie down.

When Chest Pain is an Emergency

Many types of chest pain are generally harmless, including most types of rib and chest muscle soreness caused by COPD. In some cases, however, chest pain can be a sign of a life-threatening emergency like a heart attack, heart failure, or another serious cardiac event.

Unfortunately, the symptoms of major cardiac events vary significantly from person to person and can sometimes be very mild, which makes them difficult to detect. They can also be disguised by other health conditions, like COPD, which has symptoms that mimic and overlap with the same symptoms caused by heart problems.

That's why it's important to be familiar with your COPD symptoms and what kinds of pains and sensations are typical for you. The better you know your disease, the better you will able to detect if something is abnormal or wrong.

You should also know how to recognize the symptoms of a heart attack so you can better differentiate it from other symptoms that are caused by COPD.

Here are the major signs and symptoms of a major cardiac event:

• Chest pain that doesn't go away with rest
• Chest pain that is different or more severe than chest pain you've had in the past
• Pain that spreads from the chest to the left arm, back, or jaw
• Sudden feeling of pressure, tightness, crushing, or squeezing in your chest
• Sudden shortness of breath, especially if it doesn't go away with rest
• Sudden drop in blood pressure
• Extremely slow or rapid heartbeat
• Extremely rapid breathing
• Dizziness or lightheadedness
• Nausea or vomiting
• Sweating
• Weakness or losing the ability to stand or walk
• A sense of impending doom
• Confusion or disorientation
• A family history of heart disease

If you experience these symptoms and have any doubt about whether they are caused by a heart problem or COPD, you should seek medical attention immediately.

There are also some signs you can look for that indicate your chest pain is not related to your heart. However, it's important to realize that having one or more of these signs does not rule out a heart attack completely.

Here are some signs that your chest pain might not be caused by a cardiac event:

• You can pinpoint the specific location of the pain.
• The pain gets worse when you take in a deep breath, and subsides when you hold your breath for a few seconds.
• The pain gets worse when you move in a specific way or press in a specific spot on your chest, neck, or shoulder.
• The pain gets better with medication, such as antacids.
• The pain doesn't last very long and goes away quickly.
• The pain feels identical to pain you've felt before, at a time when you knew for a fact that it was not caused by a heart problem (e.g. chest pain that you had diagnosed as being caused by COPD).

How to Reduce Chest & Rib Pain Caused by COPD

Now that you have a better understanding of how COPD causes chest pain, let's look at what you can do about it. In the following sections, we'll introduce you to a plethora of effective tips and techniques you can use to reduce various types of chest and rib pain related to COPD.

Adjust Your Posture

There's a reason that good posture is considered to be so important in activities that rely on your breath, such as singing, public speaking, and playing wind instruments. The reason is that your posture can have a significant effect on your lung capacity and your overall ability to breathe.

When you sit or stand in a slouched posture, it scrunches up your chest and restricts how much your lungs can expand. This increases the effort it takes to breathe and puts extra pressure on your chest and ribs, which can cause them to become sore.

Good, straight posture, on the other hand, opens up your chest cavity and gives your lungs, diaphragm, and chest muscles much more room to move when you breathe. This relieves some of the strain on your ribs and breathing muscles, reducing chest soreness and other posture-related pain (e.g. back pain, neck pain, and shoulder pain).

The most important aspect of good posture is holding your back up straight, which means avoiding bent positions like hunching and slouching. You should also keep your chin up and your shoulders back while keeping your shoulder muscles relaxed.

You should also practice proper sleeping posture, which can reduce chest pressure and make it easier to breathe when you sleep. Avoid sleeping sitting up, as some people with COPD do, and try to find a comfortable position on your side or back instead.

You should also make sure your back is properly supported both when you sit and when you lie down. Any chairs you sit in often should have lower back support and your mattress should be firm enough to keep your back straight while you sleep.

For more information and advice about posture and COPD, visit our guide on the topic here. You can also check out this guide to learn more about good sleep posture and how to get the best quality of sleep possible with COPD.

Practice Breathing Techniques

As we mentioned earlier, shortness of breath on its own can cause certain types of chest pain, especially muscle soreness. This is partially caused by the natural instinct to take much quicker and shallower breaths when you are struggling to breathe.

This essentially forces your breathing muscles to work overtime, wearing them out more quickly and causing muscle pain. Your muscles also have to work harder to push air through constricted airways, which tend to get even narrower during bouts of shortness of breath.

Fortunately, there is a special breathing exercise you can use when you feel breathless that reduces strain on your chest muscles. This technique, known as pursed lips breathing, works by physically opening up your airways to make it easier to breathe.

The basics of pursed lips breathing are simple: you breathe in through your nose for about two seconds, and then you purse your lips before breathing out. If you're pursing your lips correctly, they should make a small “o” when you exhale, as if you were whistling or blowing a kiss.

Finally, exhale for another four seconds or so, until there's no more air to push out. Make sure you empty your lungs as completely as possible before you take your next breath.

Breathing out in this way creates extra pressure in your airways, which holds your airways open and prevents them from collapsing. This reduces shortness of breath and can also reduce lung hyperinflation by helping you empty all the air out of your lungs.

Pursed lips breathing also helps you learn how to control your breaths, which allows you to slow and steady your breathing rate. This technique is particularly useful for bringing rapid and shallow breathing patterns back under your control whenever you start to feel short of breath.

To learn more about pursed lips breathing and get step-by-step instructions for how to do it, check out our guide on breathing exercises for COPD.

Practice Controlled Coughing

Many people with COPD have lots of extra mucus clogging up their airways, which can cause a chronic cough and painful coughing fits. This kind of uncontrolled coughing can be extremely hard on your chest, causing violent spasms that strain your rib cage and wrack the walls of your chest.

This can lead to muscle soreness, aching, and sharp pain in the ribs that gets worse when you move your chest. It can also make it extremely painful to cough, take breaths in, or make certain motions, and may even interfere with your sleep.

However, you can reduce the pain of uncontrolled coughing by practicing controlled coughing, which is gentler and puts less strain on your chest. It also does a better job than uncontrolled coughing at loosening up mucus and moving it out of your lungs.

Here are the basics of how to do it:

• First, sit down in a comfortable chair, placing your feet flat on the ground.
• Relax your body, fold your arms across your lower abdomen, and lean forward slightly in your seat.
• Inhale slowly through your nose.
• Then, cough by following these steps in order:
• Press your arms against your abdomen
• Lean forward
• Open your mouth and make 2-3 short, sharp coughs
• Make sure you use your diaphragm, not your chest muscles, to force the cough out (your belly should move when you inhale and exhale, while your chest muscles should stay still)
• Immediately take another slow breath in through your nose.
• Take a moment to rest, then repeat.

If you practicing controlled coughing regularly, it can help you breathe easier by clearing out excess mucus that's blocking up your airways. Less mucus also means you'll have less need to cough and likely have fewer coughing fits.

For more information about controlled coughing and how to do it correctly, check out this guide from the Cleveland Clinic. You can also find more ways to reduce coughing and get rid of excess mucus in our guide on mucus clearance techniques.

Improve Your Fitness

Getting regular exercise is absolutely essential for staying healthy with COPD. It helps you stay mobile, independent, and can even improve your COPD symptoms and make it easier to breathe.

Exercise can also improve how efficiently your respiratory system works. It does this primarily by strengthening your heart, strengthening your breathing muscles, and reducing how much oxygen your body needs to do physical activities.

This improves your exercise endurance, allowing you to stay active for longer without feeling too short of breath. It also helps your breathing muscles work better, improving how long and hard they can work before they get tired out.

In this way, exercise can improve COPD-related chest pain by reducing how sore and fatigued your chest muscles get from breathing. It can also reduce strain on those muscles by reducing how often you become breathless and reducing the overall effort required to breathe.

But in order to get these benefits, you need to make a commitment to living an active life. That means exercisin

It's easy to want to quit smoking, but taking action on that desire is much more difficult to do. Luckily, experts have come up with a wealth of tips, guidelines, and step-by-step instructions you can follow when you're ready to take those first steps.

In this final installment of our three-part quit-smoking guide, we're going to show you how to put all the different pieces—quit-smoking tools, medications, coping strategies, etc.—together into a successful quit-smoking strategy.

Then, we'll show you how to turn that plan into action and finally quit smoking for good. Well also introduce you to a variety of helpful techniques you can use in your day-to-day life to keep yourself focused and committed to staying smoke free.

We'll cover everything from how to plan your quit day and how to make it through quit day without smoking, to how simple strategies like knowing your triggers and practicing self-care can help you stay on track.

By the end, you should have all the information and resources you need to take your goal to stop smoking—and stay quit—from theory to reality.

Strategies for Staying Smoke Free

We talked a lot in parts 1 and 2 of this guide about resources and tools to help you quit, but we haven't talked much about strategies you can use when you're on your own. After all, even if you have outside assistance, it still takes a lot of personal effort and willpower to stop smoking.

In order to succeed, you'll need some solid strategies for managing temptations and keeping yourself on track. Luckily, there are are many proven methods and simple techniques you can use to resist cravings and adjust to living smoke free.

These strategies are recommended by experts and ex-smokers who have used them before to successfully stop smoking. If you learn those same techniques and how to apply them to your life, you'll be more resilient to relapse and better equipped to handle life in general after you quit.

Get Rid Of Smoking Reminders

If you're a regular smoker, there's a good chance you have smoking-related paraphernalia in various places around your home, car, workplace, and other places you frequent. These simple items, which include things like cigarettes, cigarette boxes, matches, lighters, ashtrays, and any other items that remind you of smoking, can trigger strong temptations if you see them after you quit.

That's why you should take the time to get rid of all these things before the day you decide to stop smoking. It will not only help you with cravings, but it will be more difficult to slip up or relapse if you don't have easy access to cigarettes, lighters, and other smoking tools.

You should throw away your cigarettes, get rid of all your ashtrays and lighters, and re-arrange any indoor and outdoor spaces that are arranged to facilitate smoking. You'll be more likely to succeed in quitting if you can go about your day without seeing constant reminders of when you used to smoke.

Take it One Day at a Time

If you think about whether or not you can quit smoking forever, it may feel like an impossible task. But if you think about whether or not you can abstain from smoking today, then that probably feels more achievable.

That's why it's best to focus on one day at a time when you make a major lifestyle change like quitting smoking. Otherwise, you can get overwhelmed and discouraged by the enormity of the task.

It's no secret that quitting smoking is a long, hard journey, but it's made up of small, simple steps, and you only have to take one step at a time. Just like any other big, long-term project, it's much more manageable if you break it down into smaller chunks.

In this case, instead of thinking about the entirety of what “quitting smoking” entails, it's better to think about the individual steps you can take each day to abstain from smoking. Instead of trying to take in the whole picture, focus your efforts on individual tools and techniques you can use to make it through this moment or this day.

Doing that allows you to focus on the small things you can do, instead of worrying about the larger things you think you can't do. If you ground yourself in the here and now, you can put all your energy into building the skills you need to handle the challenges that come in the future.

That's why it's so important to have a quit-smoking plan in place before the day that you quit, one that includes plenty of simple, practical strategies you can use to manage cravings and keep yourself on track. Then, when your quit day comes, following through can be as simple as following the steps already laid out in your plan.

Let the present “you” deal with present day problems and cravings, and leave future worries and cravings for future “you” to deal with. You can't predict or control what will happen in a week or a month or a year from now, but you can take actions each and every day that put you on a path to success.

Whenever you get the desire to smoke a cigarette, remind yourself that all you have to do is make it through one craving at a time. If you feel discouraged or overwhelmed, just focus on not smoking today; you can deal with tomorrow when it comes.

Celebrate the Small Victories

In the same vein as taking it one day at a time, it's important to take the time to acknowledge each bit of progress you make. Every day you don't smoke is a success worth celebrating, and recognizing this can help you stay motivated to abstain another day.

Quitting smoking isn't just a one-and-done thing; it's a journey that requires you to wake up every morning and re-commit to not smoking. There will never be a definite endpoint to celebrate once and for all, which is why you should celebrate each and every day that you manage to stay smoke free.

Whenever you successfully use a strategy to defeat a cigarette craving, take a moment to acknowledge the victory. When you make it through a whole day without smoking, pause to reflect on how far you've come before moving on to face the challenges of another day.

When you acknowledge and track your achievements, even the little ones, it helps you build confidence and fight off discouraging feelings. It will help you trust that the skills and confidence you build through small, incremental steps will carry you on to the next success and your next smoke-free day.

You should even plan out some rewards you can give yourself once you reach certain milestones and goals, such as one day, one week, or two weeks smoke-free. Those rewards can be as simple as watching a favorite movie or getting a favorite meal, or treating yourself to a luxury like a fun purchase or massage.

For example, you could put all or some of the money that you save from not buying tobacco products in a special reward fund for yourself. At the end of the week (or after you reach one of your milestones) you can then use that money to splurge on something for yourself, such as going out to do something fun or buying something new.

Here are some ideas for fun things you can do to reward yourself for staying smoke free:

• Buy some new supplies for a hobby you enjoy (e.g. a new video game, sporting equipment, cookware, or crafting supplies)
• Pamper yourself by getting a massage, going to a nail parlor, or going to the salon
• Plan a fun night out with your family or friends
• Plan a cookout, movie night, or other celebration with family or friends
• Go shopping for a new outfit or something else you look forward to buying
• Go on a day trip to a place you enjoy

Practice Self-Care

When you rely on cigarettes to feel good every day, quitting can make you feel like you've lost something important. It can be difficult to cope with everyday stressors when you don't have your usual smoking habits to fall back on as a coping mechanism.

After all, many people smoke as a source of comfort and as a way to relieve stress. Because of this, when you quit, you will need to find new, healthier ways to find comfort in your daily life.

One way to do this is by practicing self-care, which essentially just means taking the time to look after your personal needs. However, it's more than an abstract concept; self-care is all about taking specific and deliberate actions for your mental, emotional, and physical well-being.

For example, one way you can practice self-care is by scheduling more “you time” every week. It could also mean taking action in an area of life you want to improve, such as learning to cook, joining a gym, or spending more time with family and friends.

Practicing self-care actions is a wonderful habit to start as soon as you quit, especially since you can use it to fill up the extra time that you used to spend smoking. It's also a great way to reduce anxiety, boost your mood, and distract yourself from the desire to smoke.

In some cases, self-care means saying no, or not doing certain things that affect your mental or physical health in a negative way. For example, you could take steps to eliminate unnecessary stressors from your life, or make the decision to cut specific items from your busy schedule in order to make room for other needs.

As you can see, self-care is a personal thing that requires concentrated effort, careful planning, and honest introspection. However, the reward for all that work is feeling better and living healthier every day.

Your self-care activities should be tailored to you, your lifestyle, and your unique personal needs. In order for them to be effective, you'll need to spend some time thinking about yourself and your routine before you choose for what kinds of self-care activities are right for you.

Think about the things that cause you stress and hinder you the most in everyday life. Then, think of some thinks in your life that you'd like to improve, and come up with some ideas for how to make some positive changes.

Then, take the time to write down some concrete physical, mental, and emotional self-care goals; for example, you could strive to de-clutter your living space, spend more time on hobbies, or think more positive and uplifting thoughts throughout the day. Along with each goal, include a list of at least a couple specific actions you can take toward achieving it.

Here are some general self-care ideas to help you get started.

Self-care for Physical Needs:

• Take a quick walk around the block to stretch your legs and breathe some fresh air.
• Make time in your schedule to prepare healthy, nutritious meals and snacks.
• Stand up and stretch your body throughout the day.
• Spend a few minutes in the sun to relax and soak up some Vitamin D.
• Reduce stress by changing into some soft, comfy clothes that make you feel good.
• Give yourself some extra time to sleep by taking a nap, going to bed early, or scheduling some time to sleep in.
• Take a relaxing shower or bath and lounge around after.
• Free up some time by choosing one task or commitment on your schedule that you can remove, delay, or delegate to someone else.
• Take just one small step toward completing a project, goal, or errand you've been putting off (e.g. cleaning out your fridge or making a healthy lifestyle choice)

Self-care for Mental and Emotional Needs:

• Take some time to journal about your thoughts, worries, or things you are grateful for.
• Spend time outdoors in a green space like a park or hiking trail.
• Make a playlist of some of your favorite songs to relax and enjoy when you need a mood lift.
• Have a “date night” with yourself to do anything you'd like to do, e.g. watch TV, rent a movie, order takeout, read a book, play video games, work on a hobby, etc.
• Allow yourself to feel whatever it is you feel (happy, sad, anxious, angry) without any judgment or reservations.
• Schedule some quiet down time during the day to read, meditate, or just sit around and do nothing.
• Take care of one thing in your home or your life that is bugging you (e.g. a cluttered closet, a disorganized cabinet, or a lightbulb that needs to be replaced).
• Spend some time with friends or family that care about you.
• Place several notes of affirmation and encouragement around your house, car, and workspace.
• Ask someone you trust for some help or support, whether you need some advice, encouragement, or just need someone to listen.
• Make a list of all your worries, fears, and other things that are bothering you to get them out of your head.
• Make a list of some of your good qualities and things that you like about yourself to remind yourself whenever you feel insecure or discouraged.

Try a New Hobby

When you're trying to get rid of a bad habit like smoking, it often helps to replace it with something new. That's why you should consider starting a new hobby or activity on or before your quit day.

Working on a new hobby can help you cope in a variety of ways; it serves as a distraction from nicotine cravings, can act as a form of self-care, and it gives you something to do with your extra time. If you can find a hobby you really enjoy, it can also give you something (in place of smoking) to think about and look forward to every day.

Learning a new skill or activity can also help you feel good about yourself and build confidence in your own abilities. This self-esteem boost can transfer to other areas in your life, making it easier to tackle challenges and cope with discouragement.

Here are some hobby ideas to get you thinking:

• Learn how to knit, crochet, or sew
• Learn how to play a new instrument
• Start a photo scrapbook
• Start writing a journal
• Try an outdoor hobby like gardening or bird-watching
• Start a new exercise hobby like biking or hiking
• Take a class at your local gym or community center (e.g. dancing, cooking scrapbooking, etc.)
• Start reading books or listening to podcasts
• Join a local club (e.g. a sports club or a choir)
• Start cultivating an indoor jungle made up of houseplants
• Find a fun puzzle game you enjoy like picross or sudoku
• There are a million other more obscure hobbies to chose from: e.g. candle-making, origami, terrarium-building, bonsai tree growing, miniature figure painting, and just about anything else you can think of!

Know Your Habits and Triggers

When you smoke every day, the habit tends to get woven into many different areas of your life. You might smoke as part of your morning routine, take smoke breaks during the work day, smoke in your car and during your free time, etc.

Because of this, your brain starts to associate all sorts of actions and habits with smoking. Then, when you stop smoking, those same actions and habits are likely to trigger cigarette cravings.

This is one of the things that makes quitting so difficult to do; no matter what you do or where you go, little things can remind you of past smoking habits and give you the urge to repeat them again. The association can become so strong after smoking for months or years that you can't imagine doing certain things without a smoke.

Certain moods and psychological states can also trigger tobacco cravings and the habitual impulse to smoke. For example, many smokers experience extra strong cigarette cravings when they're angry, anxious, or stressed.

There are three main types of smoking triggers to watch out for:

• Emotional triggers: e.g. anxiety, stress, anger, boredom, loneliness, frustrating situations, etc.
• Habitual triggers: e.g. driving, drinking alcohol, after eating, during breaks at work, etc.
• Social triggers: e.g. social events with friends, being around others who smoke, vacations, going out to a bar, etc.

For your quit smoking plan to be successful, you'll need a way to handle and ride out these triggers without giving in to the cravings. There are two main ways to do this: by replacing habitual smoking sessions with an entirely new habit, and by changing your routine to avoid the triggers altogether.

Replacement Habits

Before you quit, take note of all your smoking habits and all the situations and circumstances you know of that make you want to smoke. Then, think of a simple, easy action you can take whenever you find yourself in one of these triggering situations.

The idea is to replace the habit of smoking with a healthier habit in order to weaken the association you have between the trigger and the desire to smoke. Over time, situations that used to trigger you to smoke should instead trigger the impulse to do the new, healthier action instead.

This is where your list of distracting activities, self-care ideas, and new hobbies can come in handy. In each situation where you used to take the time to smoke, pick out an appropriate activity from one of these these lists that you can do instead.

For example, you could replace the smoke breaks you used to take at work with short breaks to take a walk around the block. Or you could take a few minutes to enjoy watching a short video or enjoy a hot cup of coffee instead.

If you find a good alternative and stick to it long enough, chances are that you'll start to really enjoy the new habit even more than you enjoyed smoking. Instead of simply being a replacement for smoking, it can become a pleasant part of your routine that you look forward to every day.

Changing Your Routine

Sometimes the association between smoking and a certain situation or circumstance is so strong that it's impossible or impractical to try to replace it with something new. In these cases, it's often easier to simply avoid the trigger if you can.

For example, if spending time with other smokers makes you want to smoke, sometimes the easiest solution is just to avoid being around smokers. If a certain activity triggers craving, such as going to the bar with friends, try avoiding that activity and replacing it with a different one that you don't associate with smoking—like going out to a different restaurant or to the movies instead.

Taking yourself out of triggering situations can make it much easier to abstain from smoking, especially in those difficult first weeks and months after you quit. However, that doesn't mean you have to avoid those things forever; after you've had the chance to form some new habits and your cravings have reduced, you might find that you can cope with those triggers much better than you could before.

Stay Focused on the Benefits

If you focus too much on the difficulties of quitting smoking, it might seem like too much effort with too little payoff. However, if you take a closer look at all the good things that can happen when you stop smoking, you'll see that the benefits far outweigh the short-term discomfort of quitting.

That's why it's important to learn about the many different ways that quitting smoking can improve your health. Doing so can help you keep your eye on the prize and remember why you're quitting in the first place.

Any time the going gets tough or you start to feel discouraged, it can help you stay on track to focus on what you have to gain if you persevere. You might even want to keep this list, or another list of quit-smoking benefits, on-hand in case you need a quick reminder of why it's worth it to quit.

Physical Health Benefits

Most people know that quitting smoking is good for your heart and your lungs. However, many smokers don't realize just how huge the health benefits of quitting can be.

When you stop smoking, it not only reduces your risk for lung diseases like cancer and COPD, but also protects you from heart disease, stroke, and other serious health conditions. It allows many parts of your body to heal and improve in a variety of different ways.

Here's a more extensive list of the many health benefits you can get once you quit smoking:

• Reduced cholesterol levels
• Lower blood pressure
• Better blood circulation
• Reduced risk of heart disease
• Reduced risk of stroke
• Reduced risk for COPD
• Reduced risk of lung cancer
• Reduced risk for a variety of other cancers (e.g. cancers of the mouth, esophagus, kidneys, and pancreas)
• Reduced risk of lung infections
• Increased energy levels
• Increased fertility
• Reduced risk of problems during pregnancy
• Reduced risk of blood clots
• Improved ability to control symptoms of lung conditions like asthma and COPD

Mental Health Benefits

Studies show that quitting smoking can improve your mood and mental health in a variety of different ways. Most of these benefits are a direct result of no longer having the drug in your system and no longer experiencing the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal.

First of all, it just feels good to no longer be dependent on smoking to get you through the day. Once the nicotine withdrawal wears off, you will also no longer have to deal with the physical and psychological symptoms that smokers must constantly fend off between smokes.

In fact, many studies have found that quitting smoking can impact just about every measure of psychological health in a positive way. This might seem too good to be true, but it's a pattern found over and over, even though the reasons are not completely clear.

This might be surprising, since many smokers mistakenly believe that smoking helps them cope with negative emotions like anxiety and stress. However, the truth is that smoking actually does the opposite, and it only seems to help because it relieves the psychological symptoms of nicotine withdrawal.

Here are some of the mental health benefits you might receive after you stop smoking:

• Improved overall mood
• Reduced anxiety
• Reduced stress
• Reduced depression
• Increased positivity
• Increased psychological quality of life

Long-term Health Benefits

You can gain some of the positive effects of quitting almost immediately after you stop smoking; for example, it only takes 24 hours to significantly improve the health of your heart and circulatory system.

Other benefits, however, come later, within weeks, months, or years after you quit. These long-term benefits won't be apparent at first, but in time they can make a huge difference in your health and quality of life.

In the following lists, we've organized some of the immediate and long-term benefits according to when they tend to appear. This timeline will give you a better ide

Flexible spending accounts (or FSA's) are a great tool to save money on healthcare, especially if you or someone in your family suffers from a chronic medical condition. If you use oxygen therapy, a flexible spending account can be a smart way to cover special equipment and out-of-pocket costs.

Unfortunately, many people who use oxygen don't take full advantage of their FSA. You can use your FSA to buy all kinds of oxygen therapy supplies, but many people don't realize this or don't think beyond the basics.

The truth is, you can use your FSA to cover just about any oxygen supplies and equipment that your insurance won't cover. That includes small things—like softer tubing or your preferred brand of nasal cannula—and large things—like a brand new portable oxygen concentrator.

But if you have an FSA, you've probably experienced the end-of-year anxiety that comes before your plan expires. This time of year often signals a mad rush to use up FSA money before the funds are lost forever.

When this time comes, too many people spend their extra funds on the first, most convenient things that come to mind. While this isn't always a bad thing, many people are simply not aware of all their options and how they can put that money to best use.

Fortunately, there is a huge number of things you can purchase with your FSA, and it's easy to use up extra funds if you know what your options are. In fact, extra FSA money at the end of the year provides the perfect opportunity to invest in a portable oxygen concentrator or other oxygen supplies you've been wanting to buy.

In this post, we're going to explain how your FSA works and how you can make the most out of your funds before they expire. We'll explain what kinds of purchases are eligible, help you understand FSA restrictions, and give you some practical ideas of what to spend your extra FSA funds on.

Using oxygen isn't always easy, and it's important to utilize all of the options you have to improve the comfort and convenience of oxygen therapy. To learn more, continue reading this article to find out how you can use your FSA to fund a new oxygen concentrator for yourself or a loved one this year.

Here's a quick overview of the information we'll cover in this guide:

• What an FSA is and how it works
• How to understand FSA plan years and when funds expire
• Limitations on how you can spend your FSA
• How to use up your FSA funds before they expire
• What kinds of oxygen supplies are eligible for FSA funds
• How to buy a portable oxygen concentrator with FSA funds
• What kinds of mobility aids qualify for FSA funds
• How and when you can use your FSA funds on someone in your family

How Does an FSA Work?

If you're already very familiar with what an FSA is and what it does, then feel free to skip ahead to the next section. This section is for those of you who aren't quite sure how an FSA works.

This section may also be helpful if you're a bit fuzzy on the details or need a quick refresher on what kinds of expenses you can pay for with your FSA.

What is an FSA?

An FSA, or Flexible Spending Account, is a type of spending account specifically for health and medical expenses. You can only get an FSA through an employer, and you put money in the account by taking it directly out of your earnings.

However, there are limits on what you can use your FSA funds for; in general, you can only use them to pay for out-of-pocket healthcare costs for yourself, your spouse, and your dependents. You also have to use up the money in your FSA by the end of every year, otherwise you lose the unspent amount.

The only way to put money into your FSA account is to get it deducted automatically from your paychecks. In general, you have to decide on an amount to contribute for the whole year and you can't change it until the new plan year starts.

The greatest benefit of having an FSA is that whatever money you put into it is income tax exempt. That means that you get to keep the full amount, before taxes, of any earnings you put in your FSA account.

For example, let's assume your income tax rate is about 30%, and you decide to contribute $300 from your paycheck to your FSA. Normally, you would have to pay $90 in taxes on that $300; however, since you decided to contribute that money to your FSA, you don't pay any income taxes and get to keep the full $300.

Because of this, there is always a limit to how much money you can contribute to your FSA account every year. The law limits each person to a maximum of 2,650 yearly, but your employer might limit your contribution to a different amount.

Many people try to max out their FSA every year to take full advantage of its tax saving benefits. Since you can use your FSA to cover such a wide range of healthcare expenses, it's generally not very difficult to find a way to use up extra funds.

An FSA is a great way to set money aside for future medical expenses like medications, operations, and medical equipment that your insurance doesn't cover. This can be especially useful for seniors, families with children, people with chronic diseases, and anyone who faces large or unpredictable healthcare costs.

When you need to spend the money in your FSA account on a medical expense, there are two main ways you can do that. First, you can pay the amount yourself and then submit a claim to get reimbursed from your FSA, or you can use a FlexCard to pay expenses directly from your account.

Here is a quick overview of some of the key features and benefits of using an FSA:

• You can contribute whatever amount you'd like every month, up to a maximum of $2,650 per year.
• The amount you contribute to your FSA gets taken directly from your paycheck.
• Any income you contribute to your FSA is income tax exempt.
• Your employer may choose to match the amount you contribute to your FSA up to a certain amount.

Now that we've covered what an FSA is, let's take a closer look at how it works. In order to use your FSA legally and get the most out of your account, it's vital to understand how FSA funds expire and what kinds of expenses you are allowed to pay for with your FSA.

The Funds in Your FSA Expire Every Year

FSA accounts work on a year-long cycle. At the beginning of every plan year, your accounts starts at $0, and any money you put in the account throughout the year has to be spent before the plan year ends.

At the beginning of the next year, your account gets reset to zero again, and any funds leftover from the previous year get forfeited. That's why it's very important to use all of the money in your account before it expires.

While the start and end of most FSA plan years usually align with the calendar year, this is not always the case. To avoid losing your hard-earned funds, make sure you know the exact date that your FSA plan ends and don't lose track of it throughout the year.

If You Don't Use It, You Will Probably Lose It

Even if you have money left over in your FSA account, you will lose it forever after the start of the new plan year. Because of this, many people spend December looking for useful ways to spend away the rest of the money in their accounts.

There are some exceptions, however; some FSA plans give you a month or two grace period to use unspent funds after the end of your plan year. Alternatively, the Affordable Care Act allows employers who don't offer a grace period to allow employees to roll over up to $500 in unspent funds from the previous year.

How your FSA works depends on the particular plan offered by your employer. Regardless, under most plans you stand to lose a significant amount of your balance if you don't use it up by the end of your plan year.

Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to use up all your hard-earned FSA funds before they expire. Even if the deadline is close, there's nothing to stop you from going on a last-minute healthcare shopping spree.

There are Strict Limitations on How You Can Spend Your FSA

FSA funds can only be used to pay for qualified medical expenses, which the IRS defines as “costs of the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease, and the costs for treatments affecting any part or function of the body.” However, when it comes to the specifics of what you can and cannot pay for using FSA funds, the rules can be somewhat vague.

The IRS also specifies that the healthcare expense must also be used “primarily to alleviate or prevent a physical disability or illness.” However, expenses related to general health, such as vitamins and health foods, are not considered qualified medical expenses.

We'll go into greater detail on what kinds of supplies and equipment do and don't count as qualified FSA expenses in this next section. In the following sections, we'll lay out exactly what kinds of oxygen supplies, oxygen equipment, and other helpful supplies you can purchase with your FSA.

What You CAN Purchase with FSA Funds

Here is a list of some general healthcare expenses that are qualified for FSA funds:

• Medical care that you receive from any legal medical practitioner, including physicians, surgeons, dentists, and other specialists.
• Medical equipment, medical supplies, and diagnostic devices needed for medical purposes (e.g. first aid supplies, oxygen therapy supplies, and blood sugar test kits)
• Prescription medications
• The cost of your health insurance premium (but not dental insurance)
• Transportation costs you incur traveling to and from medical care
• Long-term care services (and, in some cases, some of the costs of long-term care insurance)
• Over-the-counter medications, but only if you have a doctor's prescription (excluding insulin)

Here is a list of some common products that qualify as medical equipment and supplies:

• Thermometers
• Antiseptic
• Bandages
• First aid kits
• Blood pressure monitors
• Defibrillators
• Sunscreen
• Condoms
• Prenatal vitamins
• Adaptive mobility aids (e.g. shower chairs)
• Oxygen equipment and maintenance products

What You May NOT Purchase with FSA Funds

Here is a list of some general healthcare expenses that are NOT qualified for FSA funds:

• Any “general health” items that are not needed to treat or prevent a specific illness, disease, or medical condition
• Toothbrushes and over-the-counter dental products
• Over-the-counter medications without a prescription
• Fitness trackers and pedometers
• Gym memberships and exercise equipment
• CBD products and medical marijuana
• Cosmetic procedures
• Dental insurance premiums
• Feminine hygiene products
• Diapers
• Hair loss products
• Medicare alternative insurance premiums
• Medicare part B insurance

Here are a couple more great resources for figuring out what specific things you can and cannot buy with FSA funds:

• The FSA Store
• General list of eligible and non-eligible items from Wageworks

You CAN Buy Oxygen Equipment and Supplies with FSA Funds

Fortunately for people who use oxygen, you can use FSA funds to pay for medical equipment and supplies that are necessary for oxygen therapy. That includes the cost of oxygen and oxygen equipment used to “relieve breathing problems caused by a medical condition.”

In the following sections, we'll go into more detail about exactly what kinds of oxygen supplies and equipment count as qualified health expenses. We'll also show you how you can use your FSA to pay for pricier equipment that may be difficult to fund otherwise, such as a portable oxygen concentrator.

How to Use Up Your FSA Funds Before They Expire

You can get the most out of your FSA by thinking outside the box and considering all your different spending options. That's why it's important to understand your FSA's full potential, and that it can be used to cover much more than basic costs like co-pays and prescriptions.

If you use supplemental oxygen, you can use your FSA pay for all kinds of practical supplies to make your daily life easier. For example, you can use FSA funds to purchase a shower chair for your home or get that high-flow nasal cannula you've always wanted to try.

There is a wide variety of FSA-qualified oxygen therapy equipment, adaptive mobility aids, and other supplies you can choose from. You can use your FSA to pay for small equipment expenses and for more expensive devices like portable oxygen concentrators.

In the following sections, we're going to give you some ideas for how to use FSA funds on oxygen and mobility supplies that will actually make a difference in your life. From portable oxygen concentrators to mobility aids to luxury oxygen equipment, we'll show you a variety of practical items that can improve your quality of life.

Since the money in your FSA account disappears at the end of the year, you should think about how to use up the entire balance before that date comes. Luckily, there is a plethora of worthwhile things you can purchase with your FSA, many of which you might not have thought about before on your own.

You Can Buy a Portable Oxygen Concentrator

If you've ever considered buying a new or used portable oxygen concentrator but worried about the price, you can always fund the purchase through your FSA. It's a great way to use up extra FSA funds, and it's one of the most worthwhile investments that someone who uses supplemental oxygen can make.

A portable oxygen concentrator allows you to take oxygen with you anywhere you go, without having to handle any bulky equipment. They are some of the lightest, safest, and most hassle-free oxygen sources available, and having one can be life-changing in the best possible way.

A portable oxygen concentrator allows you to move freely without being tethered to a stationary oxygen concentrator or heavy oxygen tank. This allows you to take back some of the freedom you lose when you have to use supplemental oxygen.

Buying a portable oxygen concentrator is a long-term investment that is also immediately practical; it is something you can utilize both inside and outside your home every day. Portable concentrators are also durable, high-quality pieces of equipment that you can benefit from for many years to come.

There are many different types of oxygen concentrators available in a variety of sizes and with a range of useful features. To learn more about the best portable oxygen concentrators on the market, check out the following links:

• The best portable oxygen concentrators of 2018
• Top 4 continuous flow portable oxygen concentrators
• Top 4 pulse flow portable oxygen concentrators

How to Pay for a Portable Oxygen Concentrator with FSA Funds

Even if you don't have enough money in your FSA to pay the entire price of a portable oxygen concentrator, you can still use it to cover part of the cost. Whether you have $200 or $2,000 in your account, you can put as much of it as you like toward the balance and use another payment method for the rest.

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Here at Life Point Medical, we offer great financing options that can make it even easier to pay for a new or used portable oxygen concentrator with your FSA. You can cover the initial cost with the money in your account right now, and then pay for the rest over time with low monthly payments.

You Can Buy a Variety of Oxygen Equipment and Supplies

If you use oxygen for any reason, you can get the most out of your extra FSA funds by spending them on new oxygen supplies. There is a wide variety of FSA-qualified oxygen equipment and maintenance items that can make oxygen therapy more comfortable.

In general, you can use your FSA to pay for the following oxygen supplies:

• Oxygen concentrators and accessories, including:
• Battery packs and power cords
• Compressors
• Filters
• Oxygen equipment maintenance items, including:
• Cleansing wipes
• Disinfecting and deodorant sprays
• Oxygen delivery supplies, including:
• Nasal cannulae & oxygen masks
• Extension tubing
• Humidifier bottles
• Nebulizer equipment
• Hyperbaric oxygen therapy
• CPAP/BiPAP machines and accessories, including:
• CPAP machines
• CPAP headgear
• CPAP equipment cleaning supplies

Your FSA is also a great way to fund specialty oxygen equipment, which is often pricier than the standard equipment most oxygen suppliers offer. For example, you could use your FSA funds to buy more comfortable nasal cannulae or higher quality tubing supplies.

In general, you can use your FDA to pay for any oxygen therapy supplies that your insurance won't cover. To learn more about the many different types of nasal cannulae, oxygen masks, tubing, and more that you have to choose from, take a look at our guide on making oxygen therapy more comfortable.

There are many different kinds of specialty oxygen supplies you can buy that are designed to make oxygen therapy more comfortable and convenient. For now, here are a few ideas to get you started.

Examples of oxygen supplies that are eligible for FSA funds:

• High-flow nasal cannulae
• Nasal cannulae with soft tubing and comfort features
• A finger pulse oximeter to monitor your blood oxygen saturation
• Comfortable oxygen masks
• Replacement extension tubing
• Humidifier bottles that attach to your oxygen delivery equipment
• Sanitizing sprays and solutions for cleaning your oxygen equipment
• An extra battery for your portable oxygen concentrator
• Replacement filters for your portable or stationary oxygen concentrator
• CPAP/BiPAP masks

You can also purchase a variety of FSA-eligible oxygen and CPAP supplies from our online store. We offer a variety of different CPAP machines and accessories, portable oxygen concentrators, and other oxygen supplies.

You Can Buy a Variety of Qualified Mobility Aids

Living with a chronic condition that requires supplemental oxygen can be difficult. Many people who use oxygen suffer from breathlessness and other physical ailments that limit their mobility and interfere with daily activities.

The good news is that you can use your FSA to pay for many different types of adaptive equipment to make daily living easier. In general, adaptive mobility aids for bathing, dressing, and feeding all qualify for FSA funds.

In some cases, you might need to provide proof that your adaptive equipment is necessary. If proof is required, you will need to have your doctor write a letter of medical necessity (LMN) explaining why you need the equipment for your health and how it will improve your standard of living.

Here is a list of some common mobility aids and equipment you can purchase through your FSA:

• Shower chairs
• Shower grab bars
• Tub seats
• Bath transfers
• Dressing sticks and sock dressing aids
• Long-handled dressing tools (e.g. shoe horn, zipper pull, button hook)
• Grabbers
• Toilet modifications
• Adapted dishware and utensils for eating
• Mobility scooters (with a LMN)