How are people with mild COPD feeling.

[Wiggins]

I have what my Dr termed very mild COPD (C.Bronchitis) and Asthma. I'm intrigued to know how people with mild C.Bronchitis feel. I do know illnesses effect different people in different ways. I have said before that I expected that having it so mildly would mean that at the moment I wouldn't have that many symptoms if any at all. I do get out of breath if I walk too fast sometimes and if I walk up a hill or a slope too fast and I know it isn't normal breathlessness. I feel tightness as though my lungs are in a box restricting my lung expansion. I have a cough which won't go away and I bring mainly white sputum up daily, occasionally as yesterday I brought some dark green up in two instances. Do other people with mild or very mild C.Bronchitis have similar symptoms or is this mainly my Asthma?

[Hidden]

Your breathlessness is perfectly normal. You need to learn to breathe in through your nose a blow the air back out through your mouth. This technique will help you to regain normal breathing more quickly. The dark green sputum is infected. You should visit your GP as you probably need some antibiotics.

[Wiggins in reply to Hidden]

Thanks for that Alan. I have started trying to breathe like that, I find it awkward but only because I'm not used to it. People have said before that dark green sputum usually denotes an infection but as I've only brought it up rarely since my last chest infection back in early April and I was given the all clear on that I haven't bothered going to the doc. First thing on a morning I usually bring a couple of small globs of light green and then the rest of the time it's white. The dark green the other day I just thought was a build up that must have finally wanted to come out.

[derrylynne]

You are describing the symptoms I had very many years ago when I had mild copd. You should not be stopped from doing anything at the stage you are, although you may notice, as you have that you get a bit more breathless. You say you have a cough that will not go away. Yes I had the same, but that cough mostly went when I quit smoking. I suspect you may smoke. Tell me if I am wrong. If you do, please save yourself a lot of grief in the long term by quitting now. I was stupid and never quit until it became severe. I am now very severe and that will not be reversed.

The white sputum is normal with copd, the band of tight feeling is something I often had too. Oddly since I hit severe I stopped getting that band feeling. I am now about 25 years down the road from having very mild. so you have a long time for it to get worse. But even then you can do a lot to help yourself and halt the decline as I say. Be as active as you can to help fitness levels, no smoking, sleep well, eat well, and at least from September till April a vitamin D supplement should help you.

[Wiggins in reply to derrylynne]

Hello Derrylynne pleased to make your acquaintance. I've never had above 20 cigarettes in my life and haven't had one at all since the late 1980's. I used to be a miner, I've worked on building sites and I worked for a year in what was virtually a sawmill, in none of these occupations did we have any protection against dust, then of course there's other toxic stuff like bonfire smoke, aerosols etc that I've breathed in over the years and lots of passive smoking in pubs and from freinds.

I've started excercising every day and as I don't drive I've always walked everywhere, I've just walked down and around town and back for two hours and I'm planning on going for a walk when it gets a bit cooler. I've even taken to jogging on the spot at home though I only manage 3 mins and then need to regain my breath.

The Dr said my cough may go in Summer but it hasn't, though it is much less frequent than in Winter and so is the sputum.