Natural remedies for COPD/emphysema

What are the best natural remedies (food, herbs, behaviors, etc) for treating COPD or emphysema and their symptoms?

Jennifer Richardson wrote:What are the best natural remedies (food, herbs, behaviors, etc) for treating COPD or emphysema and their symptoms?

Herbs
Mullein. Stinging nettle.

Food
I suspect allergy elimination diet or anti flammatory diet would be most supportive. Ie, eliminate dairy, sugar, wheat, corn, and perhaps oxalates, solanine.

Behavior
Win hoff breathing, cold therapy

As well as doing the herbs for breathing issues, with mullein being foremost, keep in mind peppermint (smelling the oil) can open sinuses and dilate bronchial.   If you are dehydrated the lungs can’t absorb oxygen, so use a pinch of salt on the tip of the tongue and then drink a glass of tepid water.  What has worked really well for me in strengthening the lungs is to do the deep breathing exercises so you are stretching and using all the lung capacity you have and emptying it well.  Keep doing that several times a day, and it sure helps.  Make sure you do it in clean, pure air, not somewhere there are traffic fumes or other noxious odors/chemicals or excessive pollen.  

Humidity.  Keeping the level of humidity at 50 percent or more.

Please, please pardon me.  I really am not being snarky or nit-picking.
The recommendations on this thread are very good. But please keep in mind that they treat the symptoms. They do not treat the disease.
For examp,e, I have allergy-induced asthma (likely due to the 15 years I spent living in the southern San Joaquin valley in CA).  Some of the suggestions posted here help me to manage symptoms.  Must they do not treat the disease. I wish they did!

Why do I write about distinctions like these? I know it’s tedious and boring. But I unfortunately have known people who thought they could self treat a disease or condition.  Their evidence was that their chosen treatment made them feel better.  In the meantime the disease itself progressed until the disease itself was no longer treatable.

I also know that most everyone, including those on this thread, know the difference.  I just try to be really careful with my language no matter my audience because it’s important.

I am a big fan of treating symptoms. I am a bigger fan of doing so using natural (non-toxic) methods.  But being conscious of whether or not I am also treating a disease is another story.

Of course with some diseases the point is moot.  I have Multiple Sclerosis. Case in point. I have an arsenal  of methods for treating symptoms. But there is as yet no way to treat the disease, natural or otherwise.
On the other hand, I have also had breast cancer.  Again, an arsenal of methods for treating symptoms.  But none would have treated the disease. For that I relied on my doctors. I am 7 years free and healthy.

Dang. The one or two line post has turned into s soapbox. I guess my best treatment for MS fatigue has started working (side effect: soap boxing behavior). I better shut up and go outside now.

PS glad to learn of the peppermint oil! I hadn’t heard that one. Going to try it.

Yeast and mold are not friends to breathing. There are mold and yeast spores in vinegars and all condiments, cheeses, and yogurts. A low yeast/mold diet has helped me with breathing. If I breathe any vinegar or eat any vinegar or foods with yeast/mold, it never helps me and it always hurts my lungs. I learned from an allergist at Ft. Benning in 1975 about a diet for people with yeast/mold sensitivities. Ozone kills mold in breathing spaces. Ozone is not helpful to breathe! So air out the house/room/car when using ozone bubblers, laundry, or in a car cigarette lighter.  Nystatin is not harmful to the liver. Diflucan is harmful to the liver and needs tests for the liver after using it. It is a class C drug, so it has caused miscarriages. Lastly, eat your greens.