Respiratory Acidosis and Receiving Social Security Disability
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Acidosis is excessive blood acidity that is caused by an overabundance of acid in your blood, or by a buildup of carbon dioxide in your blood that results from poor lung function, slow breathing or a loss of bicarbonate from your blood.
Your blood will become acidic if an increase in acid is too much for your body's pH buffering systems to handle. The parts of your brain that regulate breathing are stimulated to produce faster and deeper breathing when your pH drops. This increases the amount of carbon dioxide that you exhale.
Your kidneys also try to compensate for this by excreting more acid in your urine. However, both of these mechanisms can be overwhelmed if your body continues to make too much acid. This can result in severe acidosis and eventually a coma.
Respiratory acidosis is a form of acidosis where your lungs are not able to remove all of the carbon dioxide that your body is making. When this happens, your bodys acid-base balance causes body fluids to be too acidic. This is especially true concerning your blood.
Respiratory acidosis is caused by your lungs not being able to expel carbon dioxide the way that they should. This may result from several things. These may include:
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- Drugs that suppress breathing like narcotics, downers, and strong pain medications, especially if these are combined with alcohol
- Severe obesity because it restricts your lungs ability to expand
- Diseases of the airways that send air into and out of your lungs like chronic obstructive lung disease and asthma
- Diseases of your muscles and nerves that are responsible for your lungs inflating or deflating
- Diseases of the chest that cause your lungs to be less efficient at emptying and filling.
- Shortness of breath or impaired breathing
- Lethargy
- Sleepiness and headache
- Confusion
- Becoming easily fatigued
- Stupor and coma.
