Product Description
"Dr. Francois Haas is an unusually gifted scientist and a compassionate human being."-HOWARD A. RUSK, M.D. Founder and Chairman, Rusk Institute

The bestselling guide for chronic bronchitis and emphysema sufferers-newly revised and expanded. For the millions of people diagnosed with chronic bronchitis and/or emphysema, this bestselling guide is now revised and expanded to offer the most up-to-date information available. From helping you understand your disease and its proper care to showing you how to restore vitality and satisfaction to your relationships, Dr. Francois Haas and Dr. Sheila Sperber Haas provide you with the facts and information needed to find the right treatment and take full advantage of it. Written in a clear and helpful style, The Chronic Bronchitis and Emphysema Handbook now includes current information on useful complementary approaches-including herbal therapy-plus effective exercises and the latest medical advances. You'll discover:
* How to find the right doctor for you and discuss your treatment options
* How to deal with HMOs and the companies that provide supplemental oxygen
* Which new surgical techniques are most promising
* How to manage stress and anxiety
* How to slow your disease and substantially improve your quality of life
* A variety of helpful resources accessible by phone or web
* The newsletters written by experts that will keep you up-to-date

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 6 reviews)

The Best Book on COPD for Lay People

Having finally realized early in 2007 that I had COPD after two years of misdiagnoses, I started working my way through both the popularly written and medical literature in an effort to understand what was happening. This is, hands down, the single best book for a newbie to COPD. It lucidly and accurately covers the important medical data on the set of conditions (bronchitis, emphysema, and asthma) that together constitute COPD. There are other books worth having, but this is the one to start with. One does want to get the second edition, since quite a bit was learned about COPD in the decade between the two editions, for example, about the signficance, use, availability of, and third-party payment for, oxygen therapy for COPD patients.

An earlier reviewer has trashed the book as depressing and a downer for people with COPD. His review so attacked the book that it almost discouraged me from buying it. I probably would have skipped it, had I not been dedicated to buying just about everything that seemed as though it might be even remotely useful. I'm glad that I didn't follow his advice, for that's not how I read the book. Instead, I found it empowering. Understanding the disease (or more properly, diseases) and knowing exactly how each works strikes me as the sine qua non for adopting coping strategies. Many of the medical books I've gotten cover the same territory as the Haases in -- as one would expect - a much more thorough and technical manner. But none present the information so readably. In essence the Haases have distilled and abstracted most of the important information to be found in the more recondite medical texts.

One can employ numerous strategies to palliate the symptoms, to retard the disease's degenerative progression, to improve how one fells, most likely to extend one's lifetime, and -- unless one is at the most severe end of the disease -- to achieve a considerably improved quality of life. The (admittedly rather grisly) illustration of a "pink puffer" and a "blue bloater," which so distressed the disgruntled reviewer, let me know that I had the type of COPD in which bronchitis predominated (i.e., I'm a "blue bloater" but without the cyanosis, thank goodness). Useful to know (and subsequently confirmed by my physician), since the long-term course of bronchitis and emphysema are different. Puffers and bloaters also need to adopt different diets: the former (with emphysema dominant) lose weight, while bloaters tend to be overweight. The one needs to eat to gain wait, the other to lose weight. It may depress Disgruntled, but I found this useful to know -- and learned it all from the Haases.

The book has myriad useful tips. Many of these can be found elsewhere, but here they are all together in one handbook. To cite just a few: the importance and utility: of breathing exercises; of (for some patients) pulmonary rehabilitation therapy, which dislodges mucous from the bronchii so that it can be expelled; of diet (emphasize anti-oxidants like fruits & vegetables); of the right meds; of natural pharmacological agents that over a long term tend benignly to influence lung functioning (such as megadoses of Vitamins A, C, and E, a discussion of which probably is not in the first edition, since most of the studies have been done after 1990); of the counterintuitive importance of exercise for patients who sometimes feel so fatigued that they can't get out of bed; of the organizations, newsletters, and support groups for COPD that exist; of the importance for many patients of using oxygen 24/7 (statistically it extends the lifetime of moderately to severely afflicted COPD patients by a year and a half: a good guess, though, is that oxygen therapy + diet + exercise + meds + not smoking again, ever, + avoiding situations likely to cause bronchial infections and irritation = the strong likelihood of a significantly longer and productive lifetime).

One will, then, learn from the Haas's book not only that one will probably die from the disease but also the many things that one can do before then to improve one's breathing and one's quality of life. So far as dying goes, I might add that I personally found it quite comforting to learn that my hitherto fantasied end of dying while gasping for breath -- is a fantasy. Most COPD patients will lapse into an irrecoverable coma when they reach the point where their lungs can't put enough oxygen into their blood stream even to maintain consciousness. Which is to say that we usually die painlessly in our sleep.

Which brings me to my last point, which neither the Haases nor anyone other than a handful of people working in the field discuss much, though one sees it often mentioned en passant: COPD can hinder one's ability to think. By diminishing the blood supply (and thus the quantity of oxygen) available for the frontal lobes to use, it can drastically reduce one's ability to think abstractly, to problem-solve. It also interferes with one's psychomotor skills (e.g., hand-eye coordination), but for most COPD patients that probably matters less. Pretty useful to know that you're not necessarily getting more stupid by the day, but instead that your brain is suffering from hypoxia (oxygen deprivation). Interestingly, the disease does not affect one's memory or language skills in the same way, which definitely suggests that the primary oxygen deficit is in the frontal lobes. [See Sean B. Rourke, Julie D. Rippeth, and Igor Grant "Neuropsychiatric Aspects of Hypoxemia and the Treatment Effects of Long-Term Oxygen Therapy" in Walter J. Odonohue, ed., Long-Term Oxygen Therapy: Scientific Basis and Clinical Application. Informa Healthcare, 1995 - available through Amazon.] This also means that dextro-methamphetamine (such as Adderall) can be useful for counteracting the diminished cognitive functioning by dint of increasing blood flow (and thus the quantity of oxygen) to the frontal lobes. So far as I have been able to ascertain, there is no experimental literature on this, despite the obvious logic of the hypothesis. Thus, not the Haases, nor the authors of the paper I cited, nor anyone else that I have read even suggests as a wild hypothesis that moderate doses of d-methamphetamine might provide considerable relief for cognitive disturbances in COPD patients, especially those with bronchitis dominant, since d-meth automatically also works as an appetite suppressant. For that very reason, however, it might be dangerous for emphysema-dominant COPD patients, since they already tend to be underweight and suffering from malnutrition. So how might a bronchitis-dominant COPD patient get Adderall or a generic for it prescribed? One way would be also to get diagnosed for adult attention deficit disorder, the symptoms of which closely resemble those caused by frontal lobe hypoxia in adults.

One needs to know the kinds of things I've discussed when one talks to one's physician, so that together you can plan a feasible strategy for stabilizing the disease. The damage already done can't be reversed, but there is much one can do to slow the disease's progression to a crawl. One can't count on the docs knowing everything. The COPD patient her- or himself needs to know as much as possible about the disease. For the physicians, even pulmonologists, your disease is one of many that they need to treat. For you it is -- or should be -- the main thing you need to know about. So buy the Haas's book and start acquiring the necessary information.
June 22, 2007

This is the book you need to read...

My Dad has emphysema and I got him this book, which of course, being the hard head he is, he refused to read it. My Mom, however, read it through and through and it just so happens it saved my Dad's life on more than one occasions. If you have any kind of COPD problem this is a great book to learn how to cope. Don't be like my Dad and wait for someone to do it for you. Life short...this book may help you to make it much longer and much easier to deal with if you are suffering with this disease or you know or love someone who is. My Dad just had his 73rd birthday. He is on oxygen 24/7. He play golf everyday. Before this book...he was a couch potato. My hearts and prayers are with all of you out there dealing with this. I hope this book helps you like it has helped my family.
June 18, 2007

Makes You Want to Shoot Yourself!

I absolutely found this book repugnant. The illustractions are frightening and grim. In fact Figure 3.1 a wicked line drawing of a "pink puffer and a blue bloater" looks like a dark ages depiction of hell. Everyone with COPD knows we are going to die and that we are going to die younger than our cohorts. At fifty-five and having been diagnosed at forty, this book temporarily robbed me of any hope to lead an even worthwhile life. This was all compounded by the once again grotesque illustrations by Kenneth Axen. Far better and more hopeful is the "Courage" book that offers a story of hope, dignity, and the ability to cope. As a licensed psychotherapist I actually think the "Handbook" could be psychologically damaging to some patients. Since depression and anxiety go hand in hand with COPD, the "in your face" approach to this book is best to be avoided
May 23, 2006

The Chronic Bronchitis and Emphysema Handbook

This handbook is a Godsend. Every website I went to gave mostly explanations of what COPD is. Those of us who suffer with COPD usually know what it is. This book is like a "COPD For Dummy's". It gives information on an enormous amount of topics in plain lay English. I can't thank the authors enough for this important tool.
March 16, 2006

The Chronic Bronchitis and Emphysema Handbook

I writing this review with the thought that I owe the authors a BIG thank you and it's my hope to do a little payback for their huge contribution to the health of my Father. Ten plus years ago, my father was diagnosed with severe Emphysema which was causing heart failure. The Doctor's managed to get his heart out of fibulation by putting him on an oxygen tank. They said he would always have to be on oxygen. My father did the breathing excercises in this book and was off the oxygen with in a few months and went on to live a much better life for the next 10 years. He always attributed his health to me for buying him this book. He amazed his doctors. He bought this book for other patients Doctors told him they wouldn't read and follow the excercises. I don't know if they did or not. At any rate I'm now purchasing this for my Father-in-law whom has just had a quadrople bypass yesterday and it was found that he has severe empysema. So, hopefully I can pursade him to follow in my Dad's foot steps and take charge of his healing by doing the breathing excercises in this book religiously!

December 02, 2005

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Life and Breath: Preventing, Treating and Reversing Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
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