Respiration rate: Do you find your... - British Heart Fou...

British Heart Foundation

51,112 members32,246 posts

Respiration rate

April_May profile image
4 Replies

Do you find your respiration rate is relevant to your heart health? I find when I get chest pains my breathing rate is really really slow. The other night at 1am, before I headed into A&E I could only manage 4 breaths per minute, I couldn’t increase it, I felt really stuck, like my chest was being crushed. Normal for me is around 6 right now. If I try to increase to match my partners rate (which is normal at around 12) it feels really wrong, but at my rate I have chest pains and find easy levels of exercise challenging. ECG and bloods at hospital were normal, got my first appointment with cardiologist next week.

Written by
April_May profile image
April_May
To view profiles and participate in discussions please or .
Read more about...
4 Replies
Doug6969 profile image
Doug6969

I know when I have had issues my respriarstion increases to a crazy amount. This has been caused by dehydration and before my op blocked arteries. In both cases my body trying to feed me more oxygen.

Sound like when you have your angina attacks your body has relaxed too much which causes the pain. Total opposite to what your body should do. Would love to hear the outcome of this.

I wish you good luck and hope it gets solved quickly.

April_May profile image
April_May in reply to Doug6969

Cheers, I’ll keep you posted! Everything I read generally talks about increasing respiration rate, apart from sleep apnoea so it’s definitely a bit odd. I only really noticed the first time when I went to doctors and A&E and they were asking me to take deep breaths but then would move to another point and ask me to take another breath but I couldn’t, they were moving too fast for me!

I haven’t been diagnosed with anything yet, but I’ll hopefully be able to update next week.

Doug6969 profile image
Doug6969 in reply to April_May

Good luck and let’s hope they find a solution.

Milkfairy profile image
MilkfairyHeart Star in reply to April_May

Hi April_ May

My respiratory rate is low too usually about 8 per minute drops lower when I am using breathing techniques to manage my vasospastic angina pain.

When I am in hospital I keep setting the alarms off on the cardiac monitor as my respiratory rate frequently drops below 8 per minute. This is a problem as I am on IV nitrates and morphine so need to be monitored.

I hope your appointment goes well and your Cardiologist is able to see beyond the usual causes of angina.

You may also like...

Max heart rate when exercising

calculation my ppm is around 150% of the recommended rate, even though I’m rowing at around 80% of...

Exercise, heart rate and bisoprolol

heart rate is staying the same wherever I am walking , up hill, downhill, always the same, around...

high resting heart rate

you guys think do you think this is a normal heart rate with a chest infection .thanks in advance...

sudden high heart rate

lol to notice my heart rate was 112 and before my eyes was gradually increasing to 124 all while i...

Heart rate, opinions

worse, I get a tight chest, I don’t gasp for air but I have to take deep breaths until this passes!...