Help! Low oxygen sats!

[GreatGateway]

Been at A&E all day today witb video evidence that I am struggling to breath - an oxygej reader showing my numbers for saturation dunking below 90% frequently. They've sent me home and I still can't breath. Please tell me anxiety can affect oxygen saturation!!!!! I can barely walk.

[GreatGateway]

Sorry need to bump this one as a matter of urgency.

[Suziewuzie]

I'm a nurse. Sats of 90% aren't too much to worry about, most people saturate at 94 - 96%
Take some deep breaths while you've got a sats probe on and they'll increase. Anxiety and panic will affect your breathing, which will affect your saturation levels. Stop panicking, the hospital aren't worried so you have no reason to x

[GreatGateway]

I'm a nurse. Sats of 90% aren't too much to worry about, most people saturate at 94 - 96%
Take some deep breaths while you've got a sats probe on and they'll increase. Anxiety and panic will affect your breathing, which will affect your saturation levels. Stop panicking, the hospital aren't worried so you have no reason to x

Thank you, although I read anxiety is supposed to raise sats through hyperventilating; the opposite happens to me-! Also the warmer I am the more likely my sats will go below 90%. If I do somehow manage to take a good deep breath it only takes a few seconds for sats to start dropping again :(

[Suziewuzie]

Stop looking at your sats buddy. It's clearly making you panic. It's really not important what your sats are! As long as you're breathing then your sats are nothing to worry about.

[Carnation]

Hi Suziewuzie and GreatGateway, my 83 year old Mum has just been in hospital with low oxygen and they say that lack of movement can make this worse. Would you agree? My Mum just sits around all day hardly moving at all. I just wondered whether a walk may help GreatGateway? Doesn't it pump more oxygen in to the blood cells? x

[GreatGateway]

Hi Suziewuzie and GreatGateway, my 83 year old Mum has just been in hospital with low oxygen and they say that lack of movement can make this worse. Would you agree? My Mum just sits around all day hardly moving at all. I just wondered whether a walk may help GreatGateway? Doesn't it pump more oxygen in to the blood cells? x

Perhaps and I hope so; I struggle to move far without feeling like I've run a marathon, but I'll try.

[debs71]

If you were in A&E all day, presumably being monitored with a sats probe on, and the decision was made by medical professionals to send you home, I really would not - in all honesty - question that or worry about it.

It sounds like your anxiety is creating a lot of the problem here.

The trouble with sats monitors is that patients become fixated on them, and every little drop in O2 percentages. If they didn't have one on - which they don't in everyday life - then they would be none the wiser as to what their oxygen levels are doing. Sats machines are both a blessing and a curse in many ways. Medical professionals will be looking at the bigger picture, not just what an oxygen monitor is reading.

Anxiety will make you feel exhausted, as everything will be working overtime, and adrenaline will be surging. Try if you can to distract yourself in some way, be it watching some tv/a DVD, playing some internet games, etc. Whatever you get pleasure from. It sounds silly, but diverting the mind goes a long way to helping calm symptoms.