WHAT DO DIFFERENT TYPES OF COUGH INDICATE !

A cough is often indicative of an underlying problem. For example, a cough can be due to allergies, a common cold, lung disease, or even gastrointestinal issues. The causes may vary, the reason you cough is to help your body eliminate foreign materials or mucus from your lungs and upper respiratory passages. It’s one of your body’s protective mechanisms to keep you breathing easily. A doctor, by listening to a patient's cough, can identify the underlying health problem.
1.Asthma 
 A dry cough along with a rattling or wheezing sound is often indicative of asthma. With this condition, your airways become inflamed, leading to coughing, wheezing, and difficulty in breathing. Coughs caused by asthma are usually worse at night or while exercising. It can also be accompanied by chest tightness, fatigue and shortness of breath.
If you have asthma, it might be a good idea to look into the correct way of breathing, which shows you how to bring your breathing back to normal. When you’re breathing normally, you get much better oxygenation of tissues and organs.
2. Postnasal Drip
Having a cold or allergies can cause mucus to drip down your throat. This postnasal drip can touch nerve endings, leading to either a dry or wet cough. A cough that is being caused by a postnasal drip will usually be worse at night, and might be accompanied by a scratchy feeling in the back of your throat. If it’s allergies that’s causing this postnasal drip, you may also have itchy eyes and sneezing.
If you have postnasal drip accompanied by congestion, cold symptoms, pressure in your face, and thick green or yellow mucus, you might have a sinus infection. If this is the case, irrigating your sinuses might help.
Back in 2007, a study found that saline irrigation was more effective at decreasing nasal congestion than saline sprays. This appears to work by thinning mucus, decreasing the swelling in your nasal passages, and removing any debris, allergens, and bacteria from your nose.
To make your own saline solution, add one teaspoon of sea salt to one pint of distilled water.
3.Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)
If you’re chronically coughing up lots of mucus, this might be due to COPD. Typically, the cough will be worst in the morning and ease throughout the day. You may also experience shortness of breath, fatigue, wheeziness, and chest tightness.
Smoking is a major contributor to COPD, which includes chronic bronchitis and emphysema. With emphysema, the air sacs in your lungs lose their elasticity. Chronic bronchitis occurs when there is swelling in the linings of your lungs and it constrains your breathing.
4.GERD (Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease)
When food passes into your stomach from the esophagus, a muscular valve called the lower esophageal sphincter (LES) closes, preventing food or acid from moving back up. GERD, also commonly known as acid reflux, occurs when the LES relaxes inappropriately, allowing acid from your stomach to flow into your esophagus.
GERD may cause a dry, spasmodic cough, that is likely to worsen when you’re lying down or eating. You may get heartburn as well, but in 75% of cases, a chronic cough is the only symptom.
GERD is thought to be caused by having too much acid in your stomach, which is why acid-blocking drugs are often prescribed or recommended. However, the problem can also be caused by having too little acid in your stomach, which is why drugs such as proton pump inhibitors typically just make the issue worse. Ultimately, the answer to heartburn and acid indigestion is to restore your natural gastric balance and function.
Eating processed and sugary foods worsens GERD, as this will upset the bacterial balance in your stomach and intestines. Instead, you should eat a lot of vegetables and other high-quality unprocessed foods. You should also consider eliminating triggers from your life such as alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine products.
5.Pneumonia
This starts out as a dry cough and progresses into a wet cough with green, yellow, or red mucus. The cough might be accompanied by chills, fever, trouble breathing, or pain when coughing or breathing in deeply. Anytime you cough up excess mucus, spit it into the toilet rather than swallowing it as this can cause stomach irritation.
Most people who have pneumonia can recover at home by drinking lots of fluids and getting adequate rest. However, in severe cases in the elderly or young, pneumonia may require hospitalization to receive breathing treatments, fluids, and oxygen therapy.
6.Whooping Cough (Pertussis)
Whooping cough causes a severe cough that ends with a whooping sound as you breath in. The best way to prevent whooping cough is to get vaccinated, but this deserves a closer look. A data shows that 84% of children under the age of 3 have received at least four shots for whooping cough, and yet, despite this high vaccination rate, whooping cough is still prevalent among both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. Therefore, this would suggest that the vaccine is ineffective.
If you think you might have whooping cough, you should seek medical attention right away. However, there are some things you can do that may keep it away:
• Avoid mucus-forming foods such as milk, flour, eggs, and sugar.
• Keep your home well-ventilated and free of smoke.
• Keep well hydrated.
• Rest and avoid exertion.
• Massage essential oils with a carrier oil (such as coconut oil) into your chest.
• Heat a pan of water to just boiling point, then add a couple of drops of thyme. Breathe in the steam from the pan. 

7. Medication-Related Cough
ACE inhibitors, which are used to treat high blood pressure, can cause dry coughs in about 20% of patients. If you notice you have a dry cough a few weeks after starting this type of medication, it could be to blame.
While you shouldn’t stop taking blood pressure medication without consulting your doctor, it’s important to be aware that high blood pressure can often be remedied with lifestyle changes. Therefore, if you’re diagnosed with high blood pressure, dietary strategies can help control it.
One of the common underlying causes of high blood pressure is related to your body producing too much insulin and leptin in response to a high carbohydrate and processed food diet.
Therefore, if you suffer from high blood pressure, you should do your best to avoid processed foods.

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New study confirms link between sleep apnea and diabetes

A new study of more than 8,500 Canadian patients has demonstrated a link between obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and the development of diabetes.

It confirms earlier evidence of such a relationship from smaller studies with shorter follow-up periods.

"Our study, with a larger sample size and a median follow-up of 67 months was able to address some of the limitations of earlier studies on the connection between OSA and diabetes," lead author Tetyana Kendzerska, said.

"We found that among patients with OSA, the initial severity of the disease predicted the subsequent risk for incident diabetes," Kendzerska said.

The study included 8,678 adults with suspected OSA without diabetes at baseline who underwent a diagnostic sleep study between 1994 and 2010 and were followed through May 2011 using provincial health administrative data to examine the occurrence of diabetes.

Sleep apnea severity was assessed with the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI), which indicates severity based on the number of apneas (complete cessation of airflow) and hypopneas (partial cessation of airflow) per hour of sleep. Patients were classified as not having OSA, or having mild, moderate or severe OSA.

During follow-up, 1,017 (11.7 percent) patients developed diabetes.

In analyses adjusting for known risk factors for diabetes, including age, sex, body mass index, neck circumference, smoking, income status and comorbidities at baseline, patients with an AHI greater than 30 had a 30 percent higher risk of developing diabetes than those with an AHI less than 5.
Patients with mild or moderate OSA had a 23 percent increased risk of developing diabetes.

Other risk factors for diabetes included AHI during rapid eye movement sleep and measures of the physiologic consequences of OSA, including oxygen desaturation, sleep deprivation and activation of the sympathetic nervous system, as indicated by a higher mean heart rate during sleep.

The findings were published online ahead of print publication in the American Thoracic Society's American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

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COPD Tied to Tiny Brain Bleeds

People with the lung condition called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are at increased risk for bleeding in the brain, a new study finds.

Researchers looked at 165 people with COPD and 645 people with normal lung function and found that those with COPD were more likely to have what are called cerebral micro-bleeds.

The more severe a patient's breathing problems, the more likely they were to have micro-bleeds, according to the study.

Cerebral micro-bleeds are an indicator of disease in the brain's small blood vessels (cerebral small vessel disease), which is an important cause of age-related mental decline and disability.

It was known that people with COPD are at increased risk for large vessel disease, but these new findings "indicate that COPD might affect both large and small vessels," study author said.

The results also show that methods of preventing cerebral micro-bleeds in COPD patients need to be developed, he said.

Although the study found a link between having COPD and higher risk of cerebral micro-bleeds, it did not establish a cause-and-effect relationship.

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BONE MARROW TRANSPLANT -what it is, why done, procedure, indications, risks, prognosis

What is bone marrow transplant?

Bone marrow transplant is a procedure in which healthy bone marrow is transplanted into a patient whose bone marrow is not functioning properly. Problems in bone marrow are often caused by chemotherapy or radiation treatment for cancer. This procedure can also be done to correct hereditary blood diseases. The healthy bone marrow may be taken from the patient prior to chemotherapy or radiation treatment (autograft), or it may be taken from a donor (allograft).

What is bone marrow?

Bone marrow is the soft, sponge-like material found inside bones. It contains immature cells called stem cells that produce blood cells. There are three types of blood cells: white blood cells, which fight infection; red blood cells, which carry oxygen to and from organs and tissues; and platelets, which enable the blood to clot.

Why is it done?

If a patient develops a disease of the blood cells, especially cancers such as leukaemia, he may require high doses of chemotherapy to destroy the cancer. However, this also destroys normal blood cells. Alternatively, hereditary or acquired disorders may cause abnormal blood cell production. In these cases, transplantation of healthy bone marrow may save a patient's life. Transplanted bone marrow will restore production of white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets.

What is the procedure?

Bone marrow transplant patients are usually treated in specialised centres and the patient stays in a special nursing unit (a bone marrow transplant unit) to limit exposure to infections. The hospitalisation period is from 4 to 6 weeks, during which time the patient is isolated and under strict monitoring because of the increased risk of infection and/or bleeding. Donated bone marrow must match the patient's tissue type. It can be taken from the patient, a living relative (usually a brother or a sister), or from an unrelated donor. Donors are matched through special blood tests called HLA tissue typing. Bone marrow is taken from the donor in the operating room while one is unconscious and pain-free (under general anaesthesia). Some of the donor's bone marrow is removed from the top of the hip bone. The bone marrow is filtered, treated, and transplanted immediately or frozen and stored for later use. Then, transplant material is transfused into the patient through a vein and is naturally transported back into the bone cavities where it grows to replace the old bone marrow. Alternatively, blood cell precursors, called stem cells, can be induced to move from the bone marrow to the blood stream using special medications. These stem cells can then be taken from the bloodstream through a procedure called leukapheresis. The patient is prepared for transplantation by administering high doses of chemotherapy or radiation (conditioning). This serves two purposes. First, it destroys the patient's abnormal blood cells or cancer. Second, it inhibits the patient's immune response against the donor bone marrow (graft rejection). Following conditioning, the patient is ready for bone marrow infusion. After infusion, it takes 10 to 20 days for the bone marrow to establish itself. During this time, the patient requires support with blood cell transfusions.

What are the indications?

Bone marrow transplant may be recommended for: Bone marrow deficiency disease caused by: abnormal red blood cell production, such as thalassaemia or sickle cell disease  aggressive cancer treatments (chemotherapy, radiation therapy), especially for leukaemia or lymphoma  lack of normal blood cell production (aplastic anaemia) Immune system disorders (immunodeficiency) such as:  congenital neutropenia  severe combined immunodeficiency syndrome Bone marrow transplant is not recommended for: patients with heart, kidney, lungs, or liver disorders  patients with other diseases that may limit survival

What are the risks?

The risks for any anaesthesia are: reactions to medications  problems breathing Chemotherapy given prior to bone marrow transplant (conditioning) can cause significant toxicity, such as mouth sores, diarrhoea, liver damage, or lung damage. While waiting for bone marrow to grow, the patient is at high risk for infection as also bleeding. The major problem with bone marrow transplants (when the marrow comes from a donor, not the patient) is graft-versus-host disease. The transplanted healthy bone marrow cells may attack the patient's cells as though they were foreign organisms. In this case, drugs to suppress the immune system must be taken, but this also decreases the body's ability to fight infections. Other significant problems with a bone marrow transplant are those of all major organ transplants - finding a donor and the cost. The donor is usually a sibling with compatible tissue. The more siblings the patient has, the more chances there are of finding a compatible donor.

What is the prognosis?

Bone marrow transplant prolongs the life of a patient who would otherwise die. Relatively normal activities can be resumed as soon as the patient feels well enough and after consulting with the doctor.

The patient will require attentive follow-up care for 2 to 3 months after discharge from the hospital. It may take 6 months to a year for the immune system to fully recover from this procedure.