Breathing, please help!

I have not had any similar problem but, upon initial analysis, your problem seems to be related to breathing. My first question would be, do you experience any discomfort when you are not breathing? If the answer is yes then the obvious answer is to limit breathing during your competitions. Take the occasional breath rather than the constant rhythmic breathing that seems to be fairly common in the running community.

Yes, I think the problem is related to breathing, but occasional breathing isn't really an option for getting the amount of air necessary to both run and do normal things as well, particularly since deep breaths have become less and less productive.

Do you have acid reflux disease? I experienced some of these same symptoms last year and I, like you thought I had developed asthma. What happens is the acid comes up and gets into your lungs and inflames them much like asthma. Try prilosec or zantac

I had a similar experience after a cold that left fluid in the lungs.

I think I had scar tissue in my lungs.

For about 3 years I would have troubles, a clicking in my lungs in hot weather/stress.

Then it went away.

If it's just a problem with breathing then here's what you need to do: BREATH OUT!

When you breath out the diaphragm relaxes and rises. When you breath in the diaphragm contract and drops so that a vacuum is created in the lungs and air rushes in naturally. Thus there is no need for sucking in the air using the chest muscles, which is what a lot of people do, causing tension and resulting in shallow breathing.

ex.1 Stand easy, allow your weight to sink into the floor, drop your shoulders and then blow out as hard as you can on a "SH" sound. You belly should pull towards your backbone. Only when you reach the very end of your breath should you allow the breath back in and observe what happens. Do this a few times and get back to me with your observations. It might help.

Did you do it yet?

Yes, I did try it.

The concept of focusing on breathing out instead of breathing in was a helpful one. The exercise was also helpful. But, still, when i breathed all the way out, breathing in was still uncomfortable. I tried to focus on letting in air more than taking in air, but i still felt a lot of pressure in my chest and a restriction as if my lungs couldn't expand. Do you have any advice? Running has been getting worse and worse; today I had to stop every 10 min and walk a minute in order to stay out of distress. I tried breathing out hard instead of breathing in hard when running, but it didn't seem to help. I don't understand why this came up suddenly-- i've been running since 5th grade and im going into my 5th year of college now.

I also got blood results and my chest xray back today. I'm not anemic, don't have lyme's and don't have a certain autoimmune disease that they were testing for. My chest xray came out alright as well.

I bought prilosec and I'm going to start taking it regularly tomorrow morning. My diet isn't bad, but I've always had digestive trouble, so acid reflux is a definite possibility.

Does anyone have anymore advice? Thank you so much for your help!

Bearing in mind that I'm a singer by trade and a runner for fun here's what I say:

How long did you go for? You should be able to exhale for slightly longer, resulting in a deeper inhalation, as you repeat the exercise and hopefully release a bit of tension.

ex.2 Find your diaphragm, this is the muscle which actually allows you to breath. It is located at the bottom of the rib cage and divides the torso in two. It's flat and very wide (as wide as the rib cage) and it needs to move. Place a hand at the bottom of the rib cage and give a sharp cough, you should feel it kick. Keep your hand there and repeat ex.1 focusing on releasing the diaphragm. Imagine it getting wider as you breath out. While you do this think about releasing other areas that may be tight such as the chest, shoulders, head, neck, jaw, back and hips. Take you time.

It sounds like for whatever reason you are holding in a lot of upper body tension which will adversely affect your breathing.

BTW don't think about any of this shit when you are actually running, just run.

This is purely an exercise to get you breathing deeper and more into your body, right down to the pit of your stomach rather then shallow chest breathing (although the air technically doesn't penetrate that low it's useful to imagine that it does)

Do you do any other sports? Swimming?

Going back to your first post, did you take any time off when you got ill or did you just run through it?

I can't really comment on the medical stuff if you're problems run deeper then merely excess tension. Someone else will have to come in on that.

Two suggestions (or rather, two branches of the same thing)

1) Allergies.

You may have an allergy to some kind of pollen or airborne particle that you are constantly breathing (for example, mold or dust in your house). Try to find someone who can get you checked out for all of this. Ask around for a good lung doctor.

2) FOOD allergies.

Especially with a history of digestive trouble, you could have a food allergy and not know it. Nuts, citrus, dairy, eggs, wheat gluten, are all possibilities (as are many more). Again, see someone and get this checked out.

Good luck! I know two people who have had breathing trouble similar to yours; one had a pollen allergy and one had a food allergy. Both ended up figuring it out and running well afterward.

Good luck!

It's funny because though I was never a good singer, I did play an instrument all throughout middle school and high school, and thus I am pretty familiar with breathing techniques. I sometimes try to take these "stomach" breaths when i'm running now since my chest feels like it won't budge. It's extremely difficult to breath this sign, diaphragm or stomach breath when running though. Like you said, when you're running, just run, so I've been trying to do that, but this results in lots of trouble breathing, which eventually causes a lot of fatigue.

I used to swim-- for 10+ yrs and my sister is a very competitive swimmer. I hopped in the pool two days ago to lap swim and experienced the same symptoms that I do while running, so though upper body tension is definitely a problem, it doesnt seem to be a cause since swimming is a different arm/shoulder/chest motion than running is. My breath count was off, and the same lightheaded, short of breath feeling came very quickly.

Is it possible to suddenly develop a food or pollen type allergy? Is it possible to suddenly develop acid reflux disease? I'm not very familiar with these things, and thus I'm exploring these options. I have a pulminary function test in about a week and a half, but in the meantime, I've started taking prilosec; I figured I would give that a try. It says you should only take it for 14 days.. is that what you did? Did it clear things up? How long did it take until you experienced positive effects?

Thank you thank you thank you!

O, sorry I meant sigh not sign. And I didn't really take too much time off when I first was ill, though it forced me to slow down. When the doctor listened to my lungs though, he said they sounded fine, and thus I don't think there is any fluid in them. I guess scar tissue is a different story though.

Also of note is that the tightness very much seems to stem from right under my breastbone. When I try to run hard and push through the trouble, an aching will also seem to spread through my entire rib cage, making my ribs tender to touch. This could just be an aching from my lungs working too hard, though.

The doctor said that if I don't have asthma, vocal cord disfunction is a possibility. I'm not sure what this is, but I am hoping it is not this, since the solution is to "relearn to breathe" more or less, which sounds along the lines of what you are guiding me through with the diaphragm exercises. I will repeat these exercises, and maybe it will help!

Thanks again!

It's not that, whatever that is.

Ok I said I'm not a medical man but I did find this from google which sounds a lot like your condition:

Costocondritis:

I'll stop playing House now, hope you find a solution.

I had asthma from age 3 to 5 and agree with singer lessons regarding breathing exercises, especially blowing all the air out. None of the treatments worked for me, they all made the asthma much worse, and they made me miserable. I hated them, and especially would run around the house screaming when my parents gave me the shots. One time I accidently bumped the table running around, the syringe fell off and broke, and my parents decided to leave me to my own devices for awhile.

I felt that by compressing the tubules in my lungs as much as possible, that they would open up when I breathed normally. I would breathe out out out out out, holding my breath (without locking) and breathing out more, even when there was no more breathe to breathe out. Then I would breathe normally, and it worked! I never again had asthma after age 5.

My first impression from reason from reading your message is that you are suffering from fungi growth in your system, most likely from antibiotics and similar medications. The modern antibiotics are extremely invasive and difficult to get rid of. You have to kill them AND them out of your body. This takes months of a cleansing diet, preferably with herbs, and avoiding anything that would feed and promote the antibiotics to keep growing. You have to be ruthless, determined, kill the damned stuff, get it out of your body and stay away from medications from then on.

To be honest it took about a week for me to start noticing a big difference. When you do start running again just remember to take it easy and not let anything slip into your mind that anything is wrong. A lot of time the mind will play tricks on you and make you experience things that aren't really happening. One more thing...do you notice a sore throat when you drink acidic drinks or when you eat hot foods?

shonuff. wrote:

My first question would be, do you experience any discomfort when you are not breathing?

I do. I feel fine while breathing but have severe discomfort while not breathing (especially after about a minute or so). Is there something wrong with me.

Do you suggest that I take time off while I start taking the prilosec? I was intending to keep running as much as possible. I don't think I notice a burning in my throat, but I don't really drink acidic stuff or eat spicy food that often either. Did you continue taking it after the 14 days you're supposed to take it for? I really really want this to be the cause.

Another thing is, I noticed that I tend to have trouble falling asleep because it's hard to breathe lying down, which is another sign of acid reflux/ heartburn. I think I will try to eliminate any eating at least 2 hrs before bedtime and see if that helps as well.

Seriously, thank you for your help everyone. I really appreciate everyones advice and I probably would not have thought of any of this on my own

Coffee is a big contributor to acid reflux.

Na keep running. I did for about three weeks. However, its something that you have to keep controlling so this isn't a absolute cure-all to your problem. If it is acid reflux and prilosec otc doesnt help go see your doctor and talk to him about the reflux disease.

Acid reflux is caused by improper food combinations, usually eating carbs after fat. The food mass can sit undigested in the stomach for days.