Breathing in air pollution, cigarette smoke, and other toxins can damage the lungs and may cause shortness of breath, coughing, wheezing, asthma episodes, and chest pain.
Exposure to air pollution puts you at risk for lung cancer, heart attacks, stroke, and in extreme cases, premature death. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), exposure to air pollution results in 4.2 million deaths worldwide each year. Maintaining the health of the lungs is essential for keeping the rest of the body healthy.
The lungs are Self-cleaning Organs
Lungs are self-cleaning organs that will begin to heal themselves once they are no longer exposed to pollutants. Lung health is vital for a person’s overall health. After the lungs have had exposure to pollution, such as cigarette smoke, a person’s chest may feel full, congested, or inflamed. Mucus gathers in the lungs to catch microbes and pathogens, which contributes to this feeling of heaviness. The best way to ensure your lungs are healthy is by avoiding harmful toxins like cigarette smoke and air pollution, as well as getting regular exercise and eating well.
The human lung with a surface area of 40-120 m2 is constantly exposed to between 10,000 and 20,000 liters of ambient air daily. Within this air intake are a wide range of particles, some biological, such as pollens or mite droppings, and some non-biological such as carbon or metals from diesel exhaust.
Lung cleansing techniques may benefit people who smoke, people who get regular exposure to air pollution, and those with chronic conditions that affect the respiratory system, such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and cystic fibrosis.
Steam Therapy
While steam inhalation won’t cure an infection, like a cold or the flu, it may help make you feel a lot better while your body fights it off. Steam therapy, or steam inhalation, involves inhaling water vapor to open the airways and help the lungs drain mucus. It is one of the most widely used home remedies to soothe and open the nasal passages and get relief from the symptoms of a cold or sinus infection. The warm, moist air is thought to work by loosening the mucus in the nasal passages, throat, and lungs. This may relieve symptoms of inflamed, swollen blood vessels in your nasal passages.
Controlled Coughing
Coughing is the body’s way of naturally expelling toxins that it has trapped in mucus. Controlled coughing loosens excess mucus in the lungs, sending it up through the airways.
A cough is a sudden, usually involuntary, expulsion of air from the lungs with a characteristic and easily recognizable sound. Although it is known as the most common symptom of respiratory disorders, it serves the functions of defending the respiratory tract against noxious substances and maintaining airway patency by removing excessive secretions from the air passages. Expectoration or sputum production is the act of coughing up and spitting out the material produced in the respiratory tract.
Although coughing is most effective when the excessive secretions are accumulated in the large, centrally located airways, it also plays an important role in clearing the peripheral airways in situations in which there is impaired mucociliary clearance, as in chronic bronchitis, cystic fibrosis, or primary ciliary dyskinesia (immotile cilia syndrome).
A "milking" effect of coughing on peripheral airways has been suggested as a mechanism of its action in removing secretions from these sites. This requires coughing at low lung volumes when the secretions are squeezed out of the small airways toward more centrally located bronchi.
In addition to the mucus, the expectorated sputum may contain other endogenous or exogenous materials, including transudate or exudated fluids, various local or migrated cells, microorganisms, necrotic tissues, or cells, aspirated vomitus, or other foreign particles. Characteristics of expectorated sputum often suggest the diagnosis of its cause.
The most common cause of the acute cough of clinical significance is viral tracheobronchitis. The cough in this transient and self-limited condition is, at the beginning, nonproductive and quite annoying; later it becomes productive of mucous or mucopurulent sputum before it begins to subside.
A chronic cough, defined as a cough lasting for a minimum duration of 3 weeks, is usually indicative of structural changes in the respiratory tract or the persistence of other cough-stimulating factors. By far the most common cause of chronic cough in developed nations is tobacco smoking, which is the most important factor in the etiology of chronic bronchitis.
Exercise
Regular exercise can improve people’s physical and mental health, and it decreases the risk of many health conditions, including stroke and heart disease.
Exercise forces the muscles to work harder, which increases the body’s breathing rate, resulting in a greater supply of oxygen to the muscles. It also improves circulation, making the body more efficient in removing the excess carbon dioxide that the body produces when exercising. The body will start to adapt to meet the demands of regular exercise. The muscles will learn to use oxygen more efficiently and produce less carbon dioxide.
Although exercising may be more difficult for people with chronic lung conditions, these inpiduals can also benefit from regular exercise. People who have chest troubles should consult a healthcare professional before starting a new exercise regimen.
Some bronchitis symptoms may be exacerbated by exercise. However, if done carefully, regular physical activity is recommended for those recovering from acute bronchitis. Exercise may also be important in the management of chronic bronchitis.
For those with bronchitis symptoms, environmental factors, such as extreme heat and cold, increase the likelihood of breathing complications. If shortness of breath, wheezing, uncontrolled coughing, or dizziness occurs, exercise should be stopped.
Exercise can help lessen the symptoms of bronchitis and speed up the recovery process, by improving muscle strength and oxygen efficiency. But the oxygen levels demanded by physical exertion can exceed lung capabilities, especially when airways are compromised. Exercise should be immediately stopped if shortness of breath is intense. A good rule to follow is that if a person no longer has enough airflow to talk, they have gone too far.
Hydration
The best way to keep your airways moist is to stay well hydrated. We usually recommend a high fluid intake in patients with chronic bronchitis and asthma. There is a relationship between fluid intake or hydration status and broncho-pulmonary disorders like bronchitis and asthma.
The movement of fluid between the airspaces, interstitium, and vascular compartments in the lungs plays an important physiological role in the maintenance of hydration and protection of the lung epithelium and significantly contributes to proper airway clearance.
Analysis of basic physiological mechanisms in the lungs and airways clearly demonstrates a critical role for water transport and local hydration status.
Water is an essential nutrient; moreover, it is the most abundant compound in the human body. There is increasing evidence that fluid intake and renal and extrarenal fluid losses vary between inpiduals, and that hydration status is not uniform in the population as well. Recent research indicates that dehydration may impair metabolism on a cellular level.
The basic function of the lung is to enable an efficient gas exchange between a complex inner aqueous body system and a dry outside atmosphere. Thus, the hydration status of bronchopulmonary structures and composition of the airway surface liquid may be assumed to contribute to the maintenance of an efficient function. Airway dehydration causes mucus stasis and bacterial overgrowth in cystic fibrosis and chronic bronchitis.
Deep Breathing for Lung Cleansing
Oxygen is, by far, the most vital component humans need to live. We can go weeks without food, days without water, but only a few minutes without air. To get the most out of oxygen, it's imperative our lungs are functioning properly.
Every cell in the human body requires oxygen and, although it seems like an autonomous function, deep breathing exercises can be done to help clear out toxins that may have built up in the lungs which can help improve lung performance and clear airways.
Deep breathing gets more nourishing oxygen into your body. Blood that is rich in oxygen will help you feel better and give you more energy. Deep breathing also reaches the deepest depths of your lungs and helps to expel and break up residue.
Shallow breathing may be caused by poor posture, stiff muscles, or simply inactivity. The majority of the breathing we do is shallow breathing. Shallow breathing lets stagnant air and pollutants accumulate in the depths of the lungs and may lead to fatigue, respiratory sluggishness, and diminished tissue function.
Those who exercise, especially athletes, often have larger than average lung capacities as a result of taking deeper breaths more often. Deep, rhythmic breathing expands the diaphragm muscle and the air pockets within the lungs. This allows for more oxygenation of the cells within the body which improves health, helps all the body's systems perform better, and even can provide you with more energy. Humans need oxygen to complete cell development. It's impossible to be healthy if you're not getting enough oxygen.
Taking deeper breaths that utilize the full capacity of your lungs helps cleanse the lungs and provides your body's cells with more nourishing oxygen. Poor breathing allows toxins to accumulate, robs energy, and negatively affects mental alertness. Daily breathing exercises are a vital way to keep the body clean.
Chest Percussion
Percussion is another effective way to remove excess mucus from the lungs. A healthcare professional or respiratory therapist will use a cupped hand to rhythmically tap the chest wall to dislodge trapped mucus in the lungs. Combining chest percussion and postural drainage can help clear the airways of excess mucus.
The purpose of percussion is to break up thick secretions in the lungs so they can more easily be removed. Percussion is performed on each lung segment for one to two minutes at a time.
Postural drainage uses gravity to help move mucus from the lungs up to the throat. The person lies or sits in various positions so the part of the lung to be drained is as high as possible. That part of the lung is then drained using percussion, vibration, and gravity.
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