Symptoms of cystic fibrosis
CF, no doubt, is a very complex disease, and the severity of the symptoms can vary from person to person. Many factors are involved that can make the symptoms worse and directly affect an individual’s health. Following is the detail of symptoms that have been observed in the patients.
Salty skin
Having salty skin is one of the most common signs noticed in people with this disease. Commonly salt is carried to the skin due to sweat, and when the skin is cooled, the salt is reabsorbed into the skin. In people with cystic fibrosis, the salt does not absorb back into the body and stays on the skin. The body also faces difficultly in maintaining the average internal level of salt. If the weather is hot, the quantity of salt on the deceased person’s skin increases than normal. Before identifying this disease, the physicians knew that having salt on the baby’s skin is a sign of serious illness with poor outcomes.
Along with low absorption of salt by the body, the skin of patients excretes 3 to 4 times higher than the average level of salt produced by healthy people. A study conducted on three groups of people, one healthy group with natural high sweat sodium, the second was the group of people with cystic fibrosis while third was a regular control group. The result of studies showed that people with the disease drank 40% less water after exercise as compared to the other two groups. The logical reason was thought to be due to the physiological mechanism of preserving the salt balance then restoring the fluid in the body in the people with this disease.