What causes COPD or Chronic Pulmonary Obstructive Disease? The primary cause is smoking and while there may be a few stray cases where other pollutants can be the cause, the main reason for people getting this disease is because of cigarettes. Since tobacco is the basic reason for this disease, let’s take a look at the causes that accelerate this condition and make it worse.
There are three diseases or conditions that could come under the COPD umbrella and they are emphysema, chronic bronchitis and chronic asthmatic bronchitis. In emphysema, the delicate walls of the air sacs in the lungs get inflamed and this destroys the elasticity of the walls. So the air finds it difficult to go in and out of the air sacs to purify the blood unlike as easily as it used to. In chronic bronchitis, the bronchial tubes that take air into the lungs get inflamed and this causes them to narrow. There is mucus that is formed and this blocks the narrowed airways even more. In chronic asthmatic bronchitis, the lining of the lungs goes through bronchospasms and this also narrows the airways.
How do these diseases develop and what causes them to get worse? Cigarette smoke irritates and lungs over time and the lungs get affected. The continuous presence of smoke in the lungs destroys its elastic and stretchy nature and this is what sets the stage for COPD. When you develop any of these COPD diseases, they are then there in the lungs to stay because they can’t be cured. You can even get COPD through passive smoking, especially of you live in a closed-in home with a heavy smoker. Smoking after you develop the disease just accelerates the symptoms and can prove fatal unless you do an about turn and change everything about your lifestyle. What could affect you is how long you smoked and how many cigarettes a day you smoked. Quitting does not mean that you will not develop COPD but it will ensure that the disease does not progress as aggressively as if you did.
Acid reflux also tends to aggravate the symptoms of Chronic Pulmonary Obstructive Disease. The acid that comes up the food pipe irritates the linings and the symptoms get worse. Some say that in extreme cases it can even cause the disease.
COPD rarely affects you when you are young even if you are a heavy smoker. As you age, the years of smoking take their toll and it usually begins to show its symptoms only after forty, in most cases around sixty. Then, it is usually downhill though you can manage to slow it down with medication and lifestyle changes. The fact still remains that you cannot cure it and it is something that you have to live with once it’s taken hold of your lungs.
Let’s look at the small number of people who develop COPD because of other causes. As we told you earlier, GERD or acid reflux could cause it if it is chronic. The acid coming up into the food pipe can cause damage in the bronchial tubes as well. Another very rare cause is the alpha-1-antitrypsin factor where this protein level drops very low because of an inherited disorder. This can result in COPD. This is really a very rare genetic disorder but it is one of the causes. Till now, there was no suspicion that genetics played a part in this disease but now, medical researchers agree that there is a possibility that COPD could be inherited. However, smoking is the primary cause and if COPD is more likely to affect certain smokers than others because of genetic factors, that may be probable even though there is no real evidence to date.
The other factors that cause COPD – though not in such large numbers as smoking – are chemical fumes, pollutants in the air, dust and other irritants. In some cases, the environment at the work place was what really caused the disease. It might take many years for the symptoms to show and by the time they do, it is too late because it can’t be cured. You could also be susceptible to the disease if you suffered from many lung infections when you were a child.
Again, we come back to the main cause – smoking. Passive smoking is bad too and must be avoided. The statistics are scary – 25% of all 40-cigarettes-a-day smokers will get this disease for sure. That’s a large number. The risks decline as the number of cigarettes and the number of years of smoking do – but it still puts you at great risk. Is it worth it? Considering that most begin smoking as a fad and then get hooked, the dangers of being cool and stylish is a high price to pay when the result could be COPD.