Severe Dysfuncional breathing pattern disorder.

[Ca12345]

Morning all, i just wanted to ask a quick question so i spoke to my physio and she said db wouldnt make my asthma worsen??, but then i spoke to my doctor she says it could?? Im confused anybody help me...

[EmmaF91 Community Ambassador]

As I (and others) have said before..;

DB is an asthma mimic as well as an asthma ‘side effect’. So it can occur due to asthma but then make you feel like your having asthma issues when you aren’t.

Also there as a whole load of different types of DBwhich will have different presentations. The key is to focus on getting that controlled then the ‘asthma’ should calm down. Anything residual afterwards might be asthma. But from the sounds of it your inhaler doesn’t help your symptoms which suggests that this is DB issues and not asthma. Do your exercises for the next month or so and see how things change. Hyper focusing on your breathing and the anxiety you are showing about it on here isn’t going to help you feel better.

When I had a DB it took a couple weeks work then it cleared then the docs could see what the problem actually was.

[Wheesy in reply to EmmaF91]

If it helps one of my highly qualified and respected consultant admitted that he suffers from DB and said that he has to concentrate a lot on how he breaths {He has a heart problem}. Not many specialist will admit to having problems but it does help us and probably themselves to cope with these problems

[twinkly29]

I agree with Emma.

You've been diagnosed by more than one person as having severe dysfunctional breathing and that it's this that is causing your symptoms, not asthma.

You need to focus on the things the physio has told you to do, regularly every day but also every time you have symptoms. If you don't, it's not going to get better. It won't be a quick fix but asthma meds won't help at all with breathing symptoms caused by dysfunctional breathing.

Dysfunctional breathing can be more debilitating than asthma - it sounds like this is the case for you as your asthma is controlled by your Symbicort but the awful symptoms you're having are caused by your dysfunctional breathing - so the DB is much worse. It's still real, it's still happening - but you need to do the exercises and give it time. It will improve but only you can do it.