“COPD by itself can cause a lot of fatigue,” says Amy Attaway, MD, a pulmonologist at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. “It really comes down to the fact that your body has to work harder than for a person who doesn't have the condition,” she says.
It makes breathing difficult, which affects a person's energy levels and can cause fatigue. Symptoms of COPD often vary in severity. In the early stages of COPD, symptoms can be mild and may not interfere with people's day-to-day life. As the disease progresses, symptoms often become worse.
Prognosis. There is no cure for emphysema. But the condition can be controlled. People with mild emphysema who quit smoking have a normal life expectancy.
Many people don't notice emphysema symptoms until the disease has destroyed 50% or more of their lung tissue. Until then, the first signs include gradual shortness of breath and tiredness (fatigue). Other emphysema symptoms include: Long-term coughing (smoker's cough).
How Serious Is Your Emphysema? Stage 1 is also called mild emphysema. But that doesn't mean your disease is mild. You could have significant lung damage before you even notice the breathing problems of stage 1, especially if you're relatively young and otherwise healthy.
To answer your question, yes COPD progresses, whether it's mild, moderate, severe or very severe.
"It's not a death sentence by any means. Many people will live into their 70s, 80s, or 90s with COPD.” But that's more likely, he says, if your case is mild and you don't have other health problems like heart disease or diabetes.
Especially if your COPD is diagnosed early, if you have mild stage COPD, and your disease is well managed and controlled, you may be able to live for 10 or even 20 years after diagnosis.
The goal of therapy for emphysema is to provide relief of symptoms, prevent complications and slow the progression of the disease. Quitting smoking is also essential for patients with emphysema, since continuing to use tobacco will only further damage the lungs.
Patients with emphysema often complain of difficulty with initiating and maintaining sleep (3), and objective measurements have demonstrated increased sleep latency, decreased total sleep time, and an increased number of nocturnal arousals (1–4).
Aerobic exercises include: walking, jogging, jumping rope, bicycling (stationary or outdoor), cross-country skiing, skating, rowing, and low-impact aerobics or water aerobics.
Further, by stretching muscles that are not regularly used, including the breathing muscles, everyday activities such as walking will become easier and lung function will improve. While exercise may seem overwhelming at first, even walking at a very slow pace will benefit your overall quality of life.
When a person has stage 1 COPD, their symptoms may be so mild that they do not even realize that they have it. Over time, symptoms can include shortness of breath, chronic cough, and frequent respiratory infections. These will generally become more severe as the condition progresses.
Emphysema usually progresses slowly and the majority of patients do not notice the changes in their breathing. Some patients do experience a faster onset of symptoms, though that is less common.
There is currently no cure for emphysema. Quitting smoking is an effective way to slow down the progression of the condition.
How Serious Is Your Emphysema? Stage 2 is also called moderate emphysema. But that doesn't always mean that your disease is moderate. If you're young and otherwise healthy, you could have severe lung damage and still be at stage 2.
Studies suggest that those with stage one or two (mild and moderate) COPD who smoke lose a few years of life expectancy at the age of 65. For those with stages three or four (severe and very severe) COPD, they lose from six to nine years of life expectancy due to smoking.
While lung tissue cells do regenerate, there's no way a smoker can return to having the lungs of a non-smoker. At best, they will carry a few scars from their time smoking, and at worst, they're stuck with certain breathing difficulties for the rest of their lives.
Emphysema gets worse over time. You cannot undo the damage to your lungs. Over time, you may find that: You get short of breath even when you do things like get dressed or fix a meal.
Approximately 80 percent of the patients with mild emphysema lived more than four years after the diagnosis.