Can You Reverse Lung Damage?
From Covid-19 to wildfires, 2020 has been an assault on the lungs
The year 2020 has been an assault on the lungs. On top of normal-year issues such as air pollution and influenza, many people’s pulmonary systems must now deal with one or two added stressors: Covid-19 and wildfires. In the short term, both can cause respiratory symptoms such as coughing and shortness of breath. But data is lacking about how often these irritants damage the respiratory system in the long term. What pulmonologists do know is that they can cause irreversible lung injury, but that injury may not destroy a person’s ability to live an active life, says Panagis Galiatsatos, MD, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
The damage Covid-19 and wildfire smoke trigger varies from temporary, mild inflammation to permanent scarring and loss of function. And although virus and smoke particles are very different — one group is considered biological and the other is not — they share similar mechanisms of causing lung damage. In both cases, it’s not the…
