ANN ARBOR, Mich. – You probably hear a lot about heart health, but what about the health of your lungs?
If you don’t smoke, you may think that that’s about all you can do to protect your lungs, but experts say there are things we should be doing at every age to keep our lungs healthy.
“One of the things that’s really important to me is that as a society, we really start thinking about lung health and promoting lung health, really throughout the entire lifespan,” said University of Michigan Chief of Pulmonary and Critical Care Dr. Meilan Han.
Our lungs have their own key milestones, says Dr. Han
“What I think a lot of people don’t realize is that the lung actually has sort of three phases,” said Dr. Han. “It’s the formation period in the womb, its growth during childhood where we hit our peak lung function at 25 and then, unfortunately, it’s all about decline after that, and trying to prevent further decline.”
For children, we should focus on getting all of our children recommended vaccines that protect against illnesses that can damage the lungs.
We should also talk to tweens and teens about the dangers of vaping and, at home, protect the whole family from chemical exposures.
“Some really simple, simple things like turning on the exhaust when you’re using a gas stove, for instance,” Dr. Han said.
Also, when you’re using strong cleaners or doing a project that generates dust, Dr. Han recommends wearing a mask.
“Put on a mask; we’re all used to masks now; this needs to be kind of something that becomes part of our, you know, day-to-day routine,” Dr. Han said.
Last but certainly not least, we should get moving as exercising is essential for lung health at every age, especially important now as lung problems can increase the risk of severe COVID.
“The tricky part is that lung disease before the pandemic was already significantly under-diagnosed in this country; it’s not something we routinely screened for,” Dr. Han said. “Ultimately, we need to make diagnosing lung disease and understanding lung injury a much bigger national priority.”
The doctor says they continue to see frightening lung damage on C-T scans caused by COVID, even in patients who had only minimal symptoms initially.
In some, those abnormalities persist for months.