Pursed Lip Breathing: Pucker Up and Breathe Easier

You would think that breathing would be as easy as inhaling and exhaling, requiring no thought at all. But for people with COPD, breathing can sometimes be very difficult - sometimes seeming almost impossible. Today we're going to begin to talk about proper breathing techniques with COPD. Some of these techniques can be used with other pulmonary disorders as well, but as always, check with your doctor or respiratory health care professional before starting to use any new technique or exercise.

We talk a lot here about knowing what's going on in your lungs, and when it comes to breathing techniques, this is no exception. Remember, we're here to help take away some of the mystery - and the confusion - about why in the heck it can be so hard to breathe!

Here are some key terms and abbreviations:

COPD - Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

SOB - Shortness of Breath (also called dyspnea - disp´-nee-uh)

PLB - Pursed Lips Breathing

DB - Diaphragmatic Breathing

CO2 - Carbon Dioxide (the waste product of breathing - the air you have to get rid of)

O2 - Oxygen

Let's start with a little review. COPD is a combination of emphysema, chronic bronchitis and asthma. When you have COPD, especially with a significant component of emphysema, your lungs are hyper-inflated, or stretched out. Remember in my first blog (Asking Questions, Getting Answers and Moving Forward) we talked about the balloon that wasn't as elastic as it used to be. If your lungs have been damaged by cigarette smoking or some other hazard in the air, that's how they can get, making them inefficient at moving the air. So, your lungs are actually too big, they're crowded inside your chest and they don't have a lot of room for movement. In short, over-inflated lungs can cause you a whole lot of work with not a whole lot of results. So, that's why breathing can be so hard.

Also in COPD, the inside walls of your airways, the tubes inside your lungs that the air travels through, can become weak and collapse. I don't have to tell you that if your airways collapse, that's a problem and can make breathing even harder.

There are two main breathing techniques: Pursed Lips Breathing (PLB) and Diaphragmatic Breathing (DB), (also called abdominal or belly breathing. Today we're going to talk about PLB (pursed lips breathing). Look this information over and check with your doc about working on it over the next two weeks. Then in my next blog we'll tackle Diaphragmatic Breathing, which is also very important, but somewhat more difficult.

Some of the following information was graciously shared by Phil Cable, a pulmonary patient who had extremely low lung function (about 10%!). He lived for a long time with COPD and did a lot to help others learn how they could breathe better. He's since passed on, but I'm sure he'd be happy to know that in a way he's still out there helping.