Asthma symptoms???

[ady1779]

Hello! My breathing has been so erratic lately! Feeling like I have to take gulping breaths, yawning, feeling out of breath. I'm not wheezing or gasping. I can carry a conversation just fine. I find if I'm distracted I don't recognize it but the minute I think about m breaths or my mind is blessedly unoccupied with worries I notice it right away! Could I have suddenly developed asthma? Part of me believes it just anxiety but the recent chest tightness has me worried its asthma. It's been about two weeks of this and I will have days where I'm fine and then days where my breathing is off! I know you can't diagnose me with asthma just looking for someone who maybe had/have this too! Thanks all!

[AuntieMoosie]

This sounds like the classic symptoms of anxiety/panic.

I think you've got yourself a wee bit obsessed with your breathing, I did this years ago too.

The more you concentrate on it, the more you'll notice things that are really quite normal.

My doctor explained to me that if we breath too deeply for too long, we will start to feel that we're not taking in enough oxygen, because the deeper we breath, the even deeper we will want to breath.

Normally we only actually use a tiny bit of our lungs when we breath and that is quite sufficient, it's only when we are doing something physical that we start to use all of our lung capacity.

The trick is to try and stop yourself thinking about it, I know that is kind of tricky at first, but you will get the hang of it. Remember that our breathing is controlled by our brains, it doesn't need any input from us at all so therefore, we don't need to be thinking about it :)

Try to distract yourself when you think you're concentrating on your breathing, if you feel "gaspy" look around you, are others gasping? do you need to be gasping? No, you don't, so then distract yourself as best you can and your breathing will look after itself hun :)

Asthma is usually associated with wheezing of some sort and coughing, so it doesn't sound like an asthma related problem, having said that, I'm not a doctor, or medically trained in any way, so, my advise is, pop along and see your doctor just to have it checked out for your own peace of mind hun :hugs:

[blackbroom]

I'm asthmatic and, trust me, if it was asthma you wouldn't be able to not notice it or distract yourself from it some of the time. Asthma isn't always wheezing (I tend to cough, not wheeze, and sometimes I just get itchiness in the salivary gland under my chin), but I've never heard of anyone with asthma who has the symptoms you describe.

I'm not a doctor, either, though, and it probably is best to check with a doctor sometime, just to be on the safe side.

But even if it were asthma, it's not something to worry about - people don't go from never having had any asthma symptoms in their life at all to having life-threatening asthma attacks overnight.

[ady1779]

Thank you both so much, I do feel better!!! The breathing stuff is horrible and so hard to stop thinking about once you start! I'm just gonna try to move past this and if it's a bigger issue that is not anxiety then like blackbroom says, I'll know! Thanks again! Having support on here is huge :)

[kennethman1]

same, i have this from time to time , i try to focus on the outside world, less about my breathing