Can you live a healthy life with CF?
Most people who have been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis are living well into adulthood. Many go on to attend college or pursue other education, get jobs, and have families. Your quality of life and survival depend on understanding how cystic fibrosis affects health and taking steps to avoid complications.
How do you stay healthy with CF?
Regular physical activity and good nutrition are important — especially when you have cystic fibrosis. By eating a high-calorie, high-fat diet,taking vitamins and mineral supplements, and staying fit, you can more effectively manage your CF and stay healthy.
Can CF patients live a normal life?
While there is no cure yet for cystic fibrosis (CF), people with CF are living longer, healthier lives than ever before. In fact, babies born with CF today are expected to live into their mid-40s and beyond. Life expectancy has improved so dramatically that there are now more adults with cystic fibrosis than children.
How does CF affect your daily life?
Because of the high rate of infection in the lower respiratory tract, people with CF may develop a chronic cough, blood in the sputum, and often even have a collapsed lung. The cough is usually worse in the morning or after activity. People with CF also have upper respiratory tract symptoms.
What is CF lifestyle?
Fitness and Nutrition
Evidence shows that regular exercise helps people with CF improve lung function; manage diabetes and heart disease; and prevent a host of other diseases and health issues. People with cystic fibrosis need to eat foods that are high in calories and protein, and take vitamin and mineral supplements.
What can people with CF not do?
Children with CF should not scuba dive, skydive, bungee jump or do high-intensity activities at high altitudes (mountain climbing). Children who have an enlarged liver or spleen should avoid collision sports such as football, basketball and soccer.
What do people with CF eat?
Focus on getting enough vitamin B12, omega-3 fatty acids (such as from salmon and other wild-caught cold water fish) calcium (from whole fat yogurt, whole milk, and other milk products), iron (green leafy vegetables such as spinach) and zinc (from legumes, and nuts such as Brazil nuts).
Will CF ever be cured?
While advancements in research have vastly improved the quality of life and life expectancy of people with CF, most will need to treat the condition for their entire lives. Currently, there's no cure for CF, but researchers are working toward one.
What is the longest someone with cystic fibrosis has lived?
Marlene's Story of Living 86 Years With CF | Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
How hard is it to live with CF?
Life outside of treatment
In spite of daily treatment needs and periods of illness that can lead to hospitalisation, most people with cystic fibrosis can live a normal, happy and fulfilled life.
How is quality of life affected by CF?
These results show that CF affects quality of life in adults primarily due to a limitation in physical functioning. Psychosocial functioning did not differ from that of healthy controls. Exercise capacity and dyspnea scores were related to the impairment in the quality of life.
Can people with CF marry?
Some patients function quite well sexually, even in the face of severe disease. Physicians can assure adult CF patients contemplating marriage that they have a reasonable chance for normal sexual functioning.
What happens if CF patients kiss?
Can you kiss someone with cystic fibrosis? A person cannot get CF from kissing someone who has the condition. However, people with CF are more susceptible to certain infections. As such, a person who has an infection should avoid kissing a person with CF.
Can a child with CF play sports?
In general, people with CF should play any sport or game they enjoy. There are very few activities to avoid. These are scuba diving, skydiving, bungee jumping, and high-intensity activities at high altitudes. Those with an enlarged liver or spleen should avoid collision sports such as football, basketball, or soccer.
Can 2 CF patients be together?
Germs can spread as far as 6 feet when someone coughs or sneezes, landing on surfaces or in another person's eyes, nose, or mouth. That's why it's important for people with CF to stay at least 6 feet away from others with CF and anyone with a cold, flu, or infection.
Do people with CF gain weight?
The causes of excess weight gain in CF are likely multifactorial, including: adherence to the high-fat legacy diet, reduced exercise tolerance, therapeutic advances, and general population trends. Increased weight has generally been considered favorable in CF, correlating with improved pulmonary function and survival.
Is Dairy bad for CF?
Calcium. Teens with CF, especially those with pancreatic insufficiency, are at risk for osteopenia or osteoporosis (weak, brittle bones). Dairy products are good sources of calcium (and the full-fat varieties also are good sources of fat and calories).
Can people with CF have birds?
There are certain well-known risks (for instance, birds are considered a huge “no-no”) but the potential risks involved in owning a variety of other pets are still up for debate. One study found that, for people with CF, cat ownership was associated with an increased risk of developing nasal polyps.
Why can't CF patients mix?
For people with cystic fibrosis (CF), cross-infection poses serious health risks - people with CF grow bugs in their lungs which are usually harmless to people who don't have the condition, but can be easily transmitted from one person with CF to another and be very harmful.
Does CF get worse with age?
Symptoms usually start in early childhood and vary from child to child, but the condition gets slowly worse over time, with the lungs and digestive system becoming increasingly damaged.
Do lung transplants cure CF?
Transplantation is an important treatment option for damaged CF lungs, but unfortunately it is not a cure for CF. The lungs that are transplanted into the recipient's body do not have cystic fibrosis because they have the DNA of the person who donated them, and not the DNA that the transplant recipient was born with.
Can you live to 60 with cystic fibrosis?
Compared to patients without CF, patients with CF have about a 12% lower life expectancy in 2022. This has improved significantly from a 65% lower life expectancy in 2008. In 2022, more than 60% of patients diagnosed with CF were 60 years old or older when they died.
What is the death age for cystic fibrosis?
Key takeaways: The median age at death for those with cystic fibrosis was 66 years in 2022 vs. 26 years in 2008. Life expectancy of patients with cystic fibrosis was only 12% lower than that of healthy individuals in 2022.
Do people with CF sleep more?
Adults with CF had lower oxygen saturation nadirs, with a trend towards reduced sleep efficiency and no differences in REM sleep. In addition, patients with CF cough more during sleep and experience painful events that interfere with sleep. Actigraphy and questionnaires suggest disturbed sleep and daytime sleepiness.
Does CF stunt growth?
Many chronic illnesses of childhood are associated with pubertal delay and impaired growth; children with CF can demonstrate this decrease in pubertal peak height velocities (16, 17) and delayed pubertal growth spurt, with greater delays in those with more severely affected lung function (16).
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