Originally Posted by
ankietyjoe
Absolutely 100% yes, it can be anxiety. It can make you feel like you're being strangled even if your O2 is at 100%.
The reason, is tight diaphragm muscles. Your body knows it's not opening your lungs as much as possible so sends you an alarm signal, even though you have more O2 than you need. The paradox is that you then try and gulp down more air and hyperventilate which makes you feel....you guessed it.....short of breath.
The second paradox here is that by deliberately slowing down your breathing, controlled slow in and out breaths...going completely against your instinct....you will probably find you can take a full breath again.
Something else you might find useful is just walking around slowly when you're short of breath as it has the habit of soaking up the excess O2 if you're gulping air and restoring blood gas balance.
And lastly, not paying attention to it. Again, hard....but the more you focus on it the worse it gets.