Juan: I'm Juan from Oakland, California. If I stop smoking, will my COPD go away?
Dr. Christian Sandrock: Well Juan, the answer is mostly no. The big thing about COPD is that, that is damaged that unfortunately has already been done to your lungs and with COPD, the damage that's there is irreversible meaning it's not going to change and come back as suppose to asthma which has reversible changes and thus go back to a normal baseline at times.
However, by stopping smoking, you'll stop the more rapid rate of decline of your lung function. So if you have some level of COPD already, by stopping smoking, that level will actually sort of plateau and stay roughly the same or go down just than a less rate than if you were smoking, where it would drop much more rapidly.
So, stopping smoking even when you have COPD allows your lungs some chance to plateau and potentially feel better over the long term.
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