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It's only natural that they are anxious to know, because pneumonia can be fatal. Every now and then, we might read in the newspapers about some famous person who died of pneumonia, usually after a bout of cancer or some other long-tern.m illness.
Unfortunately, no one can really say how long does pneumonia last. Unlike the flu, pneumonia has no average lifespan.
The flu usually lasts seven to 10 days, whether or not a person receives medical treatment.
Whether you simply rest and drink plenty of water, or take the usual antibiotics (which doctors prescribe even though they are ineffective) and other medicines, you take about the same time to recover. If you take powerful but dangerous anti-viral drugs like Tamiflu or Ralenza, at best you recover one day earlier.
Pneumonia, however, can last as short as a few days. Or it can drag on for weeks and months, until the victim finally succumbs. So if you ask how long does pneumonia lasts? the correct answer would be from a few days to "the rest of your life",
Pneumonia from parasites
Pneumonia caused by parasites is rare and hard to diagnose. Here is one one case that I heard about... My friend visited an ex- colleague in China and was shocked that the person had been verly ill - coughing blood and feeling as if he was going to die - for nearly two years. He was diagnosed - by two hositals in China and one hospital in Singapore = with Tuberculosis. But treatment with tuberculosis drugs did not work. Finally, an old lady Chinese physician suspected that the TB might have been caused by a parasite infection of the lungs. She sought confirmation from her sifu, an older physician in his 90s who had long retired. The old physician had treated many such cases during the Korean war, when soldiers faced with food shortages ate raw shellfish. He confirmed the diagnosis and wrote out a prescription for a big packet of Chinese herbs that cost about US$1. Before the patient could finish his herbs, he recovered! That man was blessed. When he went to thank the older physician, he learned that the old man had passed away. He was the last patient. The lesson here is that we should explore alternative treatments, especially when regular doctors are not able to help. |
How long does pneumonia last depends partly on the type of pneumonia. Viral pneumonia - pneumonia linked to a virus - tends to have a more definite time frame of two to three weeks. It is somewhat like the flu and the patient may recover without medical treatment. But this form of pneumonia is less common.
And while pneumonia is normally considered a very serious, life-threatening disease, there is also another form known as "walking pneumonia". This is relatively mild and the patient is healthy enough to walk about, unlike typical pneumonia patients who are bed ridden, hence the name walking pneumonia. In fact, some sufferers of walking pneumonia do not even know they have the disease. This type of pneumonia also usually do not last long, and the patient typically recovers in two to three weeks.
The most common forms of pneumonia are those associated with bacteria. In fact, there are about 80 different types of bacteria that can "cause" pneumonia. Of these, about 10 are the most common but pneumonia vaccination against these common bacteria has led to an increase in the rarer forms of pneumonia.
Bacteria are unlike viruses that go through a "life cycle". If left unchecked - whether by drugs, natural antibiotics or the body's own immune system - bacteria will continue to increase and multiply. So in this case, how long does pneumonia last will depend on how effective your treatments are.
Here, it is important to note that pharmaceutical drugs are not necessarily more effective or faster acting than natural treatments such as homeopathy, traditional Chinese medicine, or even chiropractic and osteopathy. The common belief is that pharmecautical drugs are more powerful, but my personal experience has been that natural medicines and therapies often work better and faster. Drugs are more powerful only in terms of side effects!
Immune system
A key factor that determines how long does pneumonia last is the body's immune system and the overall health of the patient. Unfortunately, pneumonia tends to affect those who are already very sick to begin with, especially patients whose immune system has been knocked out my powerful drugs, such as chemotherapy for cancer.
It simply does not make sense to "recover from cancer" - by killing cancer cells with very powerful drugs - and then to die from pneumonia a few days later. But this is exactly what doctors, especially oncologists of cancer specialists, do. Their main objective is to destroy the cancer.
And even if the patient dies, they still declare their treatment "successful". After all, the drug did destroy the cancer cells, except that the patient died from pneumonia. Too bad.
And important aspect of treating pneumonia is therefore maintaining and boosting the body's immune system. We look at this more closely in Part II of this article about how long does pneumonia last and treating pneumonia.