You may switch from breathing through your nose to your mouth to try to get more air. But if you have a sudden onset of difficulty breathing doing routine day-to-day activities, it may be a medical emergency. It can be a warning sign of something serious. Shortness of breath occurs as a result of the interaction of many physical and even psychological factors.
A panic attack , for instance, is something triggered by the brain but with very real, physical symptoms. It could even be the result of environmental conditions if air quality is poor in your area. When you have shortness of breath on exertion, you should make an appointment to see your doctor. They will ask about your medical history and conduct an exam. Treatment for this condition will depend on the findings of the medical tests. Management will focus on treating the cause of the shortness of breath.
You may simply have to cope with the symptom until the cause is resolved. In pregnancy, for instance, your breathlessness should improve after the baby is born. A sudden onset of shortness of breath could be a medical emergency. People say they feel puffed, short of breath or winded. The medical term is dyspnoea. Your chest may feel tight and breathing may hurt. Everyone can experience breathlessness if they run for a bus or exert themself to an unusual extent.
But it is important to seek medical attention if you experience breathlessness, as it may be due to a serious underlying problem. If you have breathlessness, you experience shortness of breath and difficulty breathing. The reason for breathlessness is that the body needs more oxygen than it is getting. So you breathe faster to try to increase the flow of oxygen-rich air into the lungs. From the lungs, oxygen gets into the bloodstream and is pumped round the body by the heart.
Sudden severe breathlessness is one of the most common reasons that people call an ambulance or go to accident and emergency departments. Breathlessness affects all of us when we exercise, especially if we are overweight or not very fit.
But unpleasant breathlessness that comes on suddenly or unexpectedly can be due to a serious underlying medical condition. Pneumonia can affect the very young and the very old, asthma tends to affect young children, smokers are at greater risk of lung and heart disease and the elderly may develop heart failure. However, all these conditions can affect any age group and severe breathlessness always needs medical attention.
Give yourself a check-up with a general blood profile, now available in Patient Access. These details will help the doctor to make a diagnosis. Your doctor will examine you. They will check your heart, including your blood pressure and your lungs. You may be asked to have lung function tests including a peak flow reading. You may be sent for a chest X-ray. You may have blood tests for anaemia , for an underactive thyroid gland and for heart failure.
Further tests of your heart and lungs may be necessary. Long-term chronic breathlessness You will have been breathless for some time and it may be becoming steadily worse. Common causes include:. Nate, you run a specialty clinic taking care of patients that have pulmonary hypertension. Tell me a little bit about the difference between pulmonary hypertension and what we know as hypertension, or high blood pressure , in the population. Hatton: The real difference between those two deals with where the blood flow is coming from.
In systemic hypertension or laymen's hypertension, that blood flow is from the left side of the heart. And that's, that's when you feel your pulse in your wrist. That's the high-pressure system within our body.
Miller: And that's the common type of blood pressure that we're mostly aware of as the public might know it. Hatton: Correct. When you go into your doctor's office and they put the cuff on your arm, that's the blood pressure we're measuring.
Hatton: Pulmonary hypertension is really blood flow into the lungs, which is much more difficult to measure. The blood flow that goes into the lungs comes from the right side of the heart, and that's a very low pressure system.
And normally it's almost tenfold times lower than what it would be otherwise. Miller: So you might not know you have pulmonary hypertension just by taking your blood pressure in the usual way by putting a cuff around your arm and having somebody read the blood pressure?
Hatton: Yeah, that's very true. They are totally unrelated. You would have no idea that you could have pulmonary hypertension. When we measure it in the doctor's office, it could be totally normal. Miller: Many people know that high blood pressure eventually can lead to heart attacks and strokes.
Is that true for pulmonary hypertension? And what actually happens in folks that have pulmonary hypertension? Hatton: So pulmonary hypertension typically presents with shortness of breath and so that's your most common presenting sign or symptom.
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