Pulmonary Rehab at Lee Health [Video]

Chronic lung diseases can be debilitating. “Patients feel short of breath. And as a human, one of the worst feelings is to feel short of breath. So, they stop doing what they want to be doing. They stop walking. They stop exercising. They stop going out because, you know, the oxygen and just how they feel when they’re short of breath,” said Pulmonologist Dr. Jordan Taillon.

Pulmonary rehabilitation can address those deficits through breathing exercises. “Just learning how to breathe. A lot of people with these lung diseases forget how to breathe, or the anxiety takes over because they’re trying to catch their breath, and so its breathing exercises reteaching how to breathe,” said Dr. Taillon. Education, strength, and cardiovascular training. “That’s just exercise. You know, when you start training for a marathon, you’re not going to run the marathon on the first day, but you have to build up. And sometimes even when you’re short of breath, you have to keep going. Not to a dangerous level, but you have to push it a little bit to get back in shape.”

The goal is restoring function. “It’s getting your life back. It’s a complete quality of life change from going to being non-functional, sitting on your couch, to moving again,” said Dr. Taillon. “People don’t understand or realize how much it can change their life, how much it can benefit them, and how it can really get them back to where they want to be.” You can learn more by searching for pulmonary rehab on leehealth.org.

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Lee Health in Fort Myers, FL is the largest network of health care facilities in Southwest Florida and is highly respected for its expertise, innovation and quality of care. For more than 100 years, we’ve been providing our community with personalized preventative health services and primary care to highly specialized care services and robotic assisted surgeries.

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