Welcome to Living Healthy Chicago.
Thanks so much for being here.
Let's kick things off with talking about our lungs.
Have you ever found yourself tired or out of breath?
Sometimes those symptoms can be serious,
but you can get help.
Let's meet a man who's worked with his doctor
to manage his lung disease and take charge of his health.
Whether it's in the office or on the golf course,
Mark Cochran likes to be busy.
- I live a full day.
There's not a day that goes by
that I don't use up the whole day.
- What's the date on that, that's 11/13.
- [Jane] So when he started to notice some health issues
a few years back, he was determined to work through them.
- Fatigue and shortness of breath and a slight cough.
I really thought that this is just
part of the aging process, you know,
deal with it and just keep moving.
- [Jane] About a year after those symptoms started,
Mark was diagnosed with pneumonia, which led doctors
to take a closer look at what was going on.
- I was diagnosed with IPF, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
- Pulmonary fibrosis means it's scarring of the lung tissue.
This scarring tends to destroy the lung tissue
and that destruction actually makes it more difficult
to take deep breaths in for patients.
It can actually precipitate a cough
and it makes your oxygen levels go down.
We don't really understand what causes IPF to occur.
We're finding that people who are over the age of 60,
men more than women are affected.
People who are smoking are more affected.
That's the unfortunate thing about
idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
It's irreversible and it tends to be progressive.
- Being told that you have a terminal lung disease is scary.
My obviously first concerns were my family, my business.
You go through all the emotions.
- [Jane] The first step was starting Mark on medication.
- I'm gonna take a quick listen to your lungs.
- Okay.
- What these medications do is stop the progression
or decrease the progression of the disease.
What we tell patients is that when you go on these
medications, we're not making your lung function better.
We just wanna keep it at where it's at.
- [Jane] Mark's doctors also encouraged him to get moving.
- I just started walking, increased the distance every day.
- I think exercise is really important
in this patient population.
It improves quality of life and while it doesn't actually
change lung function, it actually makes people
feel like they can get more air and that they can do more.
- I wasn't giving up.
They told me, you can do as much as you wanna do,
and that's when the light went off in my head.
Okay, well, I wanna be proactive on this thing.
I'm gonna try to do the best I can.
- He exercises almost every day.
He eats well.
He has a positive attitude about all of this.
What we tell patients is that these medications
and lifestyle modifications are really important
for you to continue to live your life to the fullest.
- So my mental wellbeing, knowing that I'm still capable
of doing these things and being able to monitor my health
has just been wonderful.
- [Jane] Mark's hard work has helped him
keep his lung function relatively stable.
- He is in control of his diagnosis, rather than
it controlling him and he's been doing extremely well.
- You can live with this disease.
I'm functioning, I'm active,
I still work a little bit, I play golf.
I still do all the things I enjoy.
You can live a wonderful, wonderful life with this disease.
I've done it.
I'm gonna do as much as I can as long as I can.
- [Jane] Mark hopes his experiences will encourage others
to talk to their doctors if they notice similar symptoms.
- I want people to hear my story so that when they do
have that cough or they do have that fatigue,
they know that, hey you know what, let me ask the doctor,
can we look further into this.
It is a bad, ugly disease and you don't wanna sugarcoat that
but that if you do the right things,
if you take care of yourself,
you can live with this disease.
- The symptoms early on tend to be so non-specific
and you shouldn't discount any of these symptoms.
I do think that when people start to have these symptoms,
you should get checked out, because earlier diagnosis
may actually stabilize the disease at an earlier point.