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Breathing is an unconscious act of those who go unnoticed while life depends on it. But for 251 million people worldwide, including 2.9 million in Spain, this vital process represents a daily challenge due to inflammation and airway obstruction caused by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
This disease is already the third leading cause of death in the world – Behind ischemic heart disease and heart attacks – and the fourth in Spain – before lung cancer -, according to data from an article published in The lancet and those of the World Health Organization (WHO). To get an idea of the seriousness, remember the figures of the Spanish Society of Pneumology and Thoracic Surgery (SEPAR) in Spain, killing one person every 20 minutes.
Although the data may seem daunting, it's not all that bad: COPD is the leading cause of preventable death in our country and some of the measures to avoid it are in our hands.
Smoking is the habit that produces the most COPD in Spain
In contrast to other countries, where a large proportion of cases result from the inhalation of smoke generated by poorly ventilated charcoal and wood stoves, the most common origin in Spain is smoking. "If people do not smoke, they would eliminate between 70% and 80% of cases," says the scientist from the Institute of Health Research of the hospital of Princess Joan Soriano, who participated in the classification task of the world's deadliest diseases. planet
There is no doubt that quitting is worth it and, as World COPD Day, celebrated last Wednesday to spread the word, "It's never too early or too late ".
Scientists know that cutting with this bad habit stops the progress of pathology and even reverses the effects if it occurs when the first symptoms are manifested: daily coughing, sputum and fatigue that occur when performing activities we are used to. One of the problems is that 81.7% of people with this disease are undiagnosed, according to the preliminary results of the EPI-SCAN II SEPAR study. So, if these signs appear, experts recommend consulting a doctor, especially if we are 40 or older and have already smoked at some point in our lives.
Under-diagnosis of the disease is more important in women
This research also reveals that men are more aware of the problem than women, a social group in which COPD cases have increased by 70% over the last decade.. At least, this suggests the fact that "the under-diagnosis is higher among them than among them", according to Soriano. The epidemiologist, a member of the scientific committee of the EPI-SCAN II study, designed to monitor the health of 10,200 people in the 17 autonomous communities, said that 88.2% of women over 40 years COPD patients did not know that the disease, while the figure in the male population is 76%.
To improve this data, the expert made it clear that "it's never too late to take a spirometry test, nor too early to quit." The test referred to is measuring the lungs' ability to take and expel from the air and is painless. "Health centers should practice them almost systematically, thus detecting the disease at an early stageThat's what counts, said the head of the pneumology department at San Juan Hospital in Alicante and co-director of the SeparPacientes program, Eusebi Chiner. "COPD can not only be prevented, but it must be prevented." have good habits
Walking an hour a day helps with rehabilitation
In addition to tobacco, contamination is another factor that increases the risk of COPD. The negative effects of greenhouse gases on our health are also not new. Pollution, as we say in BuenaVida, is the main environmental cause of diseases and premature death worldwide: "It has been shown that the prevalence of respiratory diseases, as well as their symptoms, increase if you live near a highway or an area where vehicle traffic is important, "Chiner said.
Isolating from this problem by living in cities does not seem easy, but the experts also made recommendations in this regard, for example "Do not exercise outdoors when there are notifications of high levels of contamination", says Chiner, which does not mean that you must stop doing physical activity.
"To say that exercise prevents COPD would be a little daring, even if it is true that we saw that it is good to walk every day at least an hour from home and the results are almost equivalent to some respiratory rehabilitation programs, "says Chiner. The pulmonologist also points out that some groups manage to overcome their state of health in a surprising way, such as sports enthusiasts like rowing. The scientific community is clear about this: the benefits of sport far outweigh the damage caused by air pollution in cities.
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