Today, the age of the arteries, the skin or the brain are concepts understood by all. Lung age is a less developed concept but very modern thanks to the practical approaches it generates in an attempt to change the prognosis of serious diseases that affect four million French people.
Our body cannot live without oxygen… It cannot therefore live without lungs! This is in fact where oxygen passes into the blood, via the alveoli, sort of small bags at the end of our bronchi. To get an idea of this exchange zone between air and our blood, if we spread all our cells on the ground, it would represent for each of us the equivalent of a tennis court! The miracle of part of our life is in this wonderful surface. But imagine the tennis court becoming a ping-pong table – this is what happens with aging – and the game is obviously not the same.
Even if the formula is a little overused because it is valid for other functions of our body, breath is life.
Our “breath capital” is constantly under threat from aggressors, because we cannot say that modern life is kind to our lungs: The air we breathe is no longer really pure and when pollution is not enough, tobacco and infection germs do the rest. Fortunately our lungs benefit from a sophisticated defense system, but the resources of which will dwindle slowly over the years. Like the rest of the body, the lung ages and this is a fairly recent notion.
Measuring breath is easy
We can appreciate the effects of this aging by measuring the breath capital thanks to a very simple examination, accessible to all general practitioners in the same way as taking blood pressure. We use a small device which, on a simple violent exhalation, allows us to classify us into 3 categories: Green, that of the intact capital, Orange that of the alert which can at any moment turn to Red for which recourse to the pulmonologist, is essential. Because we will have to understand where the problem is. In about twenty minutes, the lung specialist will be able, thanks to a few measuring instruments, to know if it is one of the major respiratory diseases: COPD – under this acronym hides bronchitis which kills – and ‘asthma. We are moreover, with these 2 diseases, more than 4 million patients in our country.
One can be reached by one of these affections without knowing it because the shortness of breath, which each one of us knows during an emotion or an effort which lasts, is a symptom too late.
Hence the importance of this little immediate and painless examination because we do not all age in the same way, especially when it comes to the lungs.
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