Improving Your Quality of Life with Respiratory Illness
Struggling with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) or other respiratory illnesses can be scary, but these illnesses can be managed.
By changing your lifestyle, avoiding environmental irritants, and practicing self-care, you can achieve and maintain quality of life with a respiratory illness.
If you have COPD or another respiratory illness, don’t lose hope. You can improve and manage your symptoms, so you can still do the things you love!
Here are a few things you can do immediately that will help you to manage your symptoms:
- If you smoke, quit smoking.
- Eat a healthy diet, made up of whole foods
- Exercise regularly
- Take care to avoid catching respiratory infections like colds, the flu or covid.
- Whenever possible, avoid exposure to environmental irritants like dust, pollen, dander and pollutants.
- Learn breathing techniques
- Learn relaxation techniques
If you smoke, quitting smoking is your number one priority when it comes to managing your symptoms! By quitting, you can slow the progression of COPD and other respiratory illnesses.
Quitting can also reduce the chance of COPD being fatal. No other treatment can improve your symptoms and increase your quality of life as much as quitting smoking can!
However, other lifestyle changes are important, too.
Incorporating regular exercise can improve your health in general, but is especially beneficial if you have a respiratory illness.
Regular exercise can:
- Improve your circulation, helping your body to use oxygen better
- Increase your endurance
- Help to reduce stress, anxiety, and depression
- Help to manage respiratory symptoms
By doing your best to avoid illnesses, irritants and stress, and by keeping up with a healthy lifestyle, you can manage your respiratory symptoms.
A treatment called Salt Therapy can also help.
Salt Therapy Treatments Clear Out Mucus
Our sinuses and nasal passages always have mucus in them, which is completely natural and actually beneficial. This mucus lubricates and protects our respiratory systems from dust, pollutants, and other irritants.
But when there’s too much of this mucus, it causes nasal congestion, a runny nose, sinus pressure and other symptoms.
These symptoms are uncomfortable for anybody, but can cause more serious issues for those suffering from respiratory illness.
Salt Therapy can clear excess mucus from sinuses and nasal passages, allowing you to breathe better.
Reducing excess mucus has other benefits, too. Mucus buildup can allow bacteria to thrive and multiply, causing infections in the lungs in people susceptible to them.
Salt is Antibacterial
Luckily, salt naturally fights bacteria. The bacteria found in our mucus is mostly harmless and even helpful, but when they multiply and get out of control, they can cause lung infections.
These lung infections can be mild, but in individuals with respiratory disease, they can be more serious.
People with respiratory illnesses are more susceptible to these infections, so they get them more often and suffer from exhaustion as a result.
That’s because recurring infections wear down the body.
When your body is constantly trying to fight off an infection, it’s consuming more and more energy. In the case of those with respiratory illness, diminished airflow can result in low oxygen, also contributing to low energy.
The antibacterial properties of the dry salt particles used in Salt Therapy can, with regular sessions, help to decrease bacteria in the mucus, and keep lungs healthy.
Salt is Anti-Inflammatory
We’re exposed to bacteria, allergens, pollutants and other irritants every day. Salt therapy can help to cleanse and detox our lungs and respiratory systems from these everyday irritants.
Regular treatments can improve lung function and capacity and decrease the difficulty of breathing.
The dry salt dispersed into the Salt Room during a session is extremely absorbent. It acts like a sponge, soaking up harmful irritants that can cause infection and inflammation in the respiratory system.
Salt Therapy Can Help with Asthma, Allergies, and Cold and Flu Symptoms
If you suffer from COPD or another respiratory illness, you know that problems like frequent colds, asthma brought on by overexertion, and severe allergies are common.
But what if you could reduce the symptoms of these issues and vastly improve your quality of life?
Regular Salt Therapy sessions can actually boost your immune system and help to manage the symptoms of these common issues and get you back to feeling like yourself!
Salt Therapy Can Help to Manage Stress
COPD flare-ups have been linked to stress. We all experience stress, but there’s a difference between our everyday stress and chronic stress.
It’s this chronic (long-term) stress that can worsen the symptoms of COPD and other respiratory illnesses. Chronic stress can weaken the immune system, making those with respiratory illness more susceptible to infection and sickness.
That’s why it’s important to learn to manage this stress!
Stress can be managed many different ways–with breathing exercises, meditation, massage, treatment of mental health issues, and with Salt Therapy.
A Salt Therapy session at Sage Blossom is designed to make your stress melt away!
When you enter the Salt Room, you’ll hear meditative music playing, see a relaxing low light coming from our Himalayan salt wall, and sit, fully dressed, in a comfortable zero-gravity chair.
The superfine salt particles in the room also produce negative ions, which help your body to produce serotonin and elevate mood.
But breathing in these superfine salt particles isn’t the only stress-reducing aspect of Salt Therapy.
The moments of peace and quiet that a session offers can greatly reduce your stress levels and result in better overall physical and mental well being.
If you’ve been concerned about your COPD or other respiratory disease, you’re probably relieved to discover that your symptoms can be easily managed with lifestyle changes and all-natural treatments like Salt Therapy.
By changing your lifestyle, avoiding environmental factors that can make you sick and degrade the quality of your breathing, and taking advantage of the healing power of salt, you can face and conquer your respiratory illness head-on.
If you’re ready to get back to living your life, try Salt Therapy today.
We want to get you back out there!
