I've been diagnosed with anxiety, but I'm having a hard time believing it's only anxiety.
My symptoms are essentially feeling like I can't take deep breaths, and even when I try to calm down and breathe slowly it doesn't pass. I had a spirometry while having the symptoms and it showed good results, oximeters always show between 98 and 100 sat, but I feel like I'm not getting enough air. 3 doctors have told me that it can't be ashthma without wheezing, but I've read that you can have it even if there's no wheezing. They just ignore me and tell me its anxiety, my family doesn't even want to take me to ER when I have these attacks because they say it's anxiety, and I feel like everyone is missing something.
My fear is to die of an asthma attack thinking it's a panic attack because nobody listens to me and just tells me it's anxiety...
I'm an otherwise healthy 16 y/o.
What do you think of this whole situation? What should I do? Thanks.
Take it as a good sign that whilst symptomatic your spirometry was good - it is a very good indication that it’s more likely to be anxiety than asthma!
One of the easiest ways to tell in yourself which it is, is to see when like this whether you find breathing in or breathing out more difficult?
Another is how do you get over the issue? Anxiety attacks are self limiting, meaning the worsen to a point but then calm and stop and you can recover fully with no medical attention. Asthma attacks with continue to worsen until you take medication, or you’ll be left symptomatic after the fact (wheezing, lots of coughing, SoB walking etc).
It’s also good to work out what triggers the attacks, as asthma attacks are rarely solely triggered by anxiety/stress, there’s normally a lot more going on such as cold/hot weather, hayfever, animals fur etc.
Yes you can get asthma with no wheeze, but you usually have other signs when symptomatic, such as coughing, waking up in the middle of the night SoB, low peak flow, low sats etc.
Has your doctor offered anything to help with the anxiety? Counselling, medication etc? If so, have you given them enough time to see if they help? If not and the attacks are debilitating it may be worth asking about them.
Hope that helps and that you start to feel better soon x
When I have these "attacks" I feel like I can't take deep breaths, I try to take a big mouthful of air and can't, I can breath out just fine.
It passes after some time, I'm OK when I'm distracted but then sometimes I have breathlessness for a few days.
I don't have coughing (I do now but I have an upper respiratory infection so I think it's related) neither wheezing, I don't wake up at night...
The attacks happen with no specific trigger, I can be at home in my room and suddenly start feeling it, or be walking in the street and suddenly start feeling SoB...
I'm going to a therapist who's teaching me relaxation techniques, but when I'm having these symptoms trying to relax is difficult for me.
Hi, i had normal spirometry which my consultant said i should do for my age and was told it had no reflection on severity of my asthma. I have asthma without wheezing which is becoming more and more common. Ironically i dont feel bad when im wheezing! Anxiety and asthma often go hand in hand so one can trigger the other. Have you had any blood tests? Low iron can give you a breathless feeling to. Hope you feel better soon.
Think the doctors might be right in your case. As Emma says, with asthma it is the breathing OUT which is the problem. However, to be sure you should have had a reversibility test when you had spirometry as wheezing is not a guide (I don't wheeze); if your peak flow improves with the reversibility test, then you have an asthma component to your breathing. It is possible, though, that your spirometry results were so good (at or above average) that the medics didn't consider it worth treating - after all "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"!
I have asthma, vocal chord dysfunction and after a few horrific big asthma attacks and a diagnosis of brittle asthma, I definitely started to feel paniced during attacks, and had an escalation where I was at A&E every other day.
When I saw the severe asthma nurse at my hospitals specialist service, she gave me two breathing exercises to do, which help to slow my breathing during attacks - this is helping a lot (I'm still symptomatic, and struggle to breathe with exercise and at night, but it's reduced the severity of the attacks when used with my inhalers).
1. Rectangular breathing - Find something rectangular to look at - a TV screen, your phone, a window etc and breathe in on the shorter edge and breathe out on the longer edge. You could also do this with counting instead of a rectangle, so breathe in for two and out for four. The reason it gets harder to breathe in (if it isn't asthma, or is asthma + other stuff) is the lungs are already full, so longer exhales help.
2. Diaphragmatic breathing - look it up. I was only breathing with the top part of my lungs, as a response to the attacks.
I received a hand out saying that these exercises would not be harmful regardless of if it was asthma, vocal chord dysfunction or anxiety. I do them each about 4 times a day for a few minutes each time.
Have you tried exhaling through pursed lips? You pucker up as if for a kiss, then exhale firmly and slowly as if blowing up a balloon. Then when you inhale, take a slow deep breath from the bottom of your lungs so your stomach rises. That helps to regulate your breathing, slows your heart rate and makes it easier to breathe in.
I suffer from both anxiety and asthma and this technique works for both. My anxiety started at a similar age to you, then got better after my teens. But then recurred with early menopause. Hormones can play a huge part in anxiety, and often I would feel anxious for nothing, I.e nothing was worrying me or causing stress.
Other than the breathing exercise, I found distraction was the best thing to do. If I could do something physical like cleaning, that was good, but the best thing for me is cardmaking, because it gives me something to do both physically and mentally. It is a great distraction and you don’t need experience to do it. I started out with a card making magazine. They give you step by step instructions and often have free gifts with examples of how to use them. Really hopes this improves soon for you, whatever the cause, it still feels awful to cope with.
I went to a pulmologist 2 days ago, I was in the middle of an attack and my sat was 98, the pulmologist listened to my lungs and everything was fine, did another spirometry and she said that my results were even higher than normal. So I guess that's good, but I still have the feeling I'm going to stop breathing
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