Respiratory experts remind: eating and talking can kill people, pneumonia makes people mentally poor, and smoking causes chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

What crises are emerging that are quietly taking your breath away? Today, we walked into the “Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine” in Peking University First Hospital, and listened to the advice of three doctors, Wang Guangfa, Hu Yan, and Liao Jiping?

Eating and talking will kill you

In our life, we are often inadvertently stuck, and if the foreign body is blocked in the airway, it will cause suffocation. If it continues to go deep into the distal bronchi, it is easy to cause infection. If the infection is serious, it will cause respiratory failure, shock, etc., which can be fatal.

How does food block the airway happen?

Under normal circumstances, the human body has a very important structure called “epiglottis”. When we eat, the epiglottis covers the trachea like a well lid, and the food crosses the well lid to the esophagus. We can only breathe when the well lid is open.

When the food reaches the epiglottis, suddenly you speak, the food enters the trachea, and it is easy to block the trachea at this time.

How to first aid when stuck with food?

The Heimlich Maneuver!

The elderly are in poor spirits

Pneumonia is in trouble

Why are the elderly mentally poor

Is it a manifestation of pneumonia?

Pneumonia is an infectious disease. This pathogen will cause some inflammatory reactions in our body, and these inflammatory reactions will make the elderly feel depressed. If it is a relatively serious pneumonia, it can also cause hypoxia to our body, and some mental deterioration will also occur when the brain is hypoxic. Common symptoms of pneumonia in young people, such as fever, cough, and sputum production, are not obvious in older adults. The mental deterioration of the elderly may be the only manifestation of pneumonia.

What manifestations indicate that the elderly have poor spirits?

Losing activities, decreased appetite, and lethargy are all signs of mental deterioration. Since pneumonia continues to have inflammatory stimulation in the patient’s body, this mental disorder cannot be spontaneously relieved by sleeping, and will continue to aggravate. Elderly people who do not like ventilation, do not like to brush their teeth and are bedridden for a long time are most likely to get pneumonia.

Pro tips

The elderly who are bedridden for a long time are recommended to raise the head of the bed by 30-45 degrees, followed by active vaccination. One of the most recommended vaccinations for the elderly is the Streptococcus pneumoniae vaccine and the other is the influenza virus vaccine.

One more cigarette today

Take a breath tomorrow

COPD is one of the most common chronic diseases of the respiratory system caused by smoking. Smokers are 3.5 times more likely to develop COPD than non-smokers. If you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day and smoke for 10 to 20 years, on average, the risk of developing COPD increases to 2.5 times. If you smoke for 20 to 30 years, the risk of COPD is five times as high. If the smoking age exceeds 30 years, the risk of COPD can reach 7.54 times.

(CCTV Health Road)