Weight loss and breathing - it helps in COPD

Faye Prior | 2014-05-07 05:00:59

Weight loss can be one of the battles faced during the management of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) – long term asthma or emphysema, affecting clinical outcomes and the ability to function independently during daily life.

But reviews published in Respirology and The Cochrane Database have highlighted the importance of not just exercise for regaining muscle, but also nutrition for weight management in COPD. Additional nutritional support through supplementation helped to restore fat mass and fat free mass. However the most significant finding is that it helped to improve respiratory and skeletal muscle function, thereby restoring daily functional capacities. This was particularly evident with a weight gain of just 2 kilograms.

This highlights how important dietary intake is for people with COPD, and its potential for restoring functional capacities alongside other treatments.

Faye Prior (Researcher)

Sources

Collins, P., Elia, M. & Stratton, R. (2013). Nutritional support and functional capacity in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Respirology, 18, 616-29.

Ferreira, I., Brooks, D., White, J. & Goldstein, R. (2012). Nutritional supplementation for stable chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD000998.pub3.

Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/schnaars/3608630869