On the eve of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) Day, civic health groups, artists and physicians yesterday said that it is not too late to quit smoking.
Taiwan Society of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine director Yu Chung-jen (余忠仁) said that patients who suffer from COPD may develop swollen lungs that are inflexible and have holes in them, like a loofah, and they suffer from frequent coughing, tightness of the chest and shortness of breath.
Yu said about 90 percent of cases of COPD are associated with smoking, but about 40 percent of COPD patients continue to smoke.
The John Tung Foundation said its telephone survey of more than 6,000 adults above 40 years old indicated that while the prevalence of COPD is about 2.1 percent, about 4 percent of people are experiencing chronic coughing, tightness of the chest and other symptoms, as well as 3.5 percent of people with a smoking history of more than 20 years — both high-risk groups for COPD.
Based on WHO statistics there are approximately 210 million people with COPD around the world and about 3 million people die due to COPD every year, the foundation said.
Sun Yue (孫越), a celebrity who is a volunteer anti-smoking activist at the foundation, said he smoked for 37 years before he quit 30 years ago, but that he still suffers from COPD and was diagnosed with a lung tumor in 2007.
Changhua Christian Hospital physician Lin Ching-hsiung (林慶雄) said people over 40 years old with a smoking history, a family history of COPD or who are often exposed to air pollution should have pulmonary function tests regularly.
The Health Promotion Administration said COPD can be prevented, but cannot be totally cured, so quitting smoking is critical to preventing the disease. Because many smokers are not aware of COPD, only about 2 to 3 percent seek medical treatment.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching