Bronchitis occurs when the mucous membranes that line the lung's air passages (bronchi) become inflamed. The condition is actually a common one, affecting most people at least once, if not several times, during their life. However, it's when bronchitis becomes a reoccurring illness that one has to worry.

The same viral infection that causes the common cold is the one most often responsible for causing acute bronchitis. The infection spreads from the head into the bronchi and lungs, changing from a cold to bronchitis. Influenza and strep throat can also cause the bronchi to become inflamed, resulting in bronchitis. If bronchitis does not clear up, it can become pneumonia.

Some people are more susceptible to bronchitis than others: the elderly, infants, smokers, asthmatics, alcoholics, individuals with compromised immune systems, people with lung or heart problems, individuals in poor general health, and people who live in moist, polluted environments.

Signs and Symptoms

A hacking cough that produces mucus

Wheezing

Shortness of breath

Burning, soreness, and/or feelings of constriction in the chest

Sore throat

Fever (in few cases)

Conventional Medical Treatment

If you are diagnosed with bronchitis, your physician will encourage you to rest as much as possible, increase your fluid intake, and use a vaporizer to keep phlegm loose enough to be easily coughed up. A physician may even advise aspirin or a non-prescription cough medicine.

If your breathing becomes especially labored, a bronchodialator drug may be prescribed to open narrowed bronchi passages. And if your phlegm becomes gray or green, your physician may put you on an antibiotic. If treated properly, an episode of bronchitis typically clears up within 1 1/2 weeks with no lasting effects.

If you are in one of the high-risk groups, your doctor will most likely prescribe all the above, but may also take a chest X-ray and phlegm culture to determine the seriousness of your condition and to rule out other conditions.

Conventional Medicine

In healthy people who have normal lungs and no chronic health problems, antibiotics are not necessary, even when the infection is bacterial. The productive (phlegm?producing) coughing that comes with acute bronchitis is to be expected and, in most cases, encouraged; coughing is your body's way of getting rid of excess mucus. However, if your cough is truly disruptive ?? that is, it keeps you from sleeping or is so violent it becomes painful ?? or nonproductive (dry and raspy sounding), your doctor may prescribe a cough suppressant. In most cases, you should simply do all the things you usually would do for a cold: Take or acetaminophen for discomfort and drink lots of liquids.

# Drinking fluids is very important because fever causes the body to lose fluid faster. Lung secretions will be thinner and thus easier to clear when you are well hydrated.

# A cool mist vaporizer or humidifier can help decrease bronchial irritation.