People with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) sometimes claim to experience immediate subjective benefit when they purse their lips while exhaling. It’s called pursed lips breathing and results in a positive expiratory pressure (PEP).
Are they wasting their breath? Continue reading The value of PEP in obstructive lung disease
Dr. Perry Fine — an anesthesiologist from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City — has published an excellent review of this topic. It is essential reading for healthcare professionals as well as family and patient caregivers.
Among other issues, it provides good perspective on the role of CAM approaches to pain management in palliative care, which I have summarized here.
Continue reading Integrating CAM into pain management at the end of life
Researchers from West Park Healthcare Centre Toronto in Ontario ask, is there any benefit from one-legged exercise, at half the load of two-legged exercise in people with chronic obstructive lung disease (COPD)? Continue reading One-legged exercise for COPD
The American Thoracic Society has published recommendations for combining palliative with standard care in patients with chronic and advanced respiratory tract illnesses or critical disease.
These recommendations expand palliative care to include all patients with respiratory disease. The complementary recommendations are highlighted below. Continue reading Palliative care for all patients with lung disease
Papworth method is a sequence of breathing and relaxation exercises developed at Papworth Hospital in Cambridgeshire in the 1960s.
It hadn’t been studied ’til now. Continue reading Testing the Papworth breathing technique in asthma sufferers
Breathing control (aka relaxed basal breathing, diaphragmatic and abdominal breathing) is a technique used in physiotherapy to manage breathlessness.
Researchers from the University of South Australia in Adelaide reviewed 57 studies to determine the state of the art. Continue reading Limits of breathing control to manage breathlessness
Dr. Dan Rudin from Statin Island University Hospital in New York looked at past studies and concluded it’s a “safe and cost-effective measure not to be overlooked.” Continue reading Music therapy in gastrointestinal endoscopic procedures
High concentrations of fine particulate pollution — the type associated with secondhand smoke and, in developing countries, indoor cooking and heating fires — are linked to poorer health, according to researchers in Scotland. Continue reading Measuring the effect of poor indoor air quality on COPD
In most patients with significant chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), weak muscles control their breathing. It’s possible to train these muscles. But which ones to train and are the benefits worth the effort?
Here’s what we know.
Continue reading Training people with chronic obstructive lung disease to breath better
A study in northern India shows that milk fortified with specific micronutrients lowers the risk of diarrhea and acute lower respiratory illness in children.
Here’s a list of what was added to the milk.
Continue reading Adding micronutrients to milk reduces diarrhea and respiratory illness in children
Yoga practice is associated with positive effects on cholesterol levels in the blood.
For example,
But how does this compare to the LDL cholesterol lowering effects of statins, the most widely used drugs to treat hypercholesterolemia?
Continue reading Comparing yoga to statins for cholesterol lowering