It's hard to breathe: do you lack oxygen or are you just nervous?

You sit comfortably in a chair, and your body undergoes an infinite number of biological and chemical processes that you do not realize: the heart beats, eyes blink and, of course, you breathe. Although breathing can be consciously controlled, we simply allow our body to take care of it instead of us most of the time. Imagine that we would have to remember the need to breathe in and out fifteen or sixteen times per minute! But sometimes you may feel the need to breathe - consciously controlling your breathing, because it seems to you that you are not getting enough air. In other words, you feel that you "do not have enough breath." This very often happens after physical stress . It is quite normal to breathe heavily after you swam several times the water path in the pool or climbed six flights of stairs. Lack of breathing can also accompany imbalance, stress, stress or depression .

Hyperventilation is a nervous habit that gives you a sense of lack of air. You breathe deeper and deeper to make it enough, but you never reach it, and a vicious circle appears. This "air hunger" disrupts the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood, which leads to tingling all over the body, dizziness and even fainting. The tendency to excessive ventilation is associated with stressful life situations and usually lasts for a short while or improves after explanations, encouragement or tranquilizers. However, you can get better by breathing into and out of the paper bag. This "re-breath" replaces the missing carbon dioxide and helps restore the proper chemical balance in the blood.

But shortness of breath can be something more than a normal response to physical exertion or a manifestation of nervousness. It can also signal a real lack of oxygen. To get enough oxygen in the body, it must , of course, be enough in the air that you breathe. If you were suddenly transferred to the summit of Everest (in fact, any mountain above about 16,000 feet) or if the airplane on which you are flying depressurizes, it would be hard for you to correct your breathing.

If there is enough oxygen in the air, you should be able to direct it into the lungs. If there is any obstacle in the air passages , it will be difficult for you to breathe. Even if enough oxygen enters the lungs, it may not enter the blood, the final destination, because too much lung tissue is affected by the disease ( emphysema , for example), infected (with pneumonia ), destroyed (by a large blood clot ), or surgically removed (Due to a tumor ). Under these circumstances, there is not enough lung tissue to interact with the blood vessels waiting for the oxygen that you inhaled.

Now there is enough oxygen in the environment and your lungs are in order, but you still may not have enough breath if the heart does not work properly. Although oxygen can enter the bloodstream from the lungs, the heart muscle lacks the strength to push enough blood to other parts of the body. This can occur suddenly with an acute infarction or gradually, as the damaged heart becomes weaker and weaker. Or your heart can work perfectly, but you have severe anemia and there are not enough red blood cells that carry and distribute oxygen - and you will be hard to breathe. Also, the number of red blood cells can be sufficient, but the pathology inside them, so that they do not normally bind or release oxygen in a normal way. Some chemicals in the environment and even drugs can damage red blood cells.

Even if every mechanism from the ones that were just mentioned is in good order and normal oxygen concentrations fall into your tissues, you will still find it difficult to breathe if you have a condition that requires an abnormally large amount of oxygen. This happens at a very high temperature , rapidly growing cancer , increased thyroid function - and with any disease that speeds up the metabolism. In this case, you must breathe faster and faster to give more and more oxygen to the starved tissues.

Some medications can also stimulate the respiratory center in the brain, so that you breathe harder and you do not have enough breathing. Amphetamines ("speed") give this effect. And in conclusion. Have you observed a very obese person climbing the stairs? Shortness of breath, nervousness and difficulty breathing are usually a consequence of the fact that excess fat does not give the chest enough space to allow the lungs to normally straighten.

Whatever the cause - a bad physical shape, nervousness, heart or lung disease, blood pathology, - any long, troubling lack of breathing should be explained.

On the way to the doctor ask yourself some simple questions that will help explain your problems with your breathing.

If you have not experienced severe stress, it's hard for you to breathe and you feel dizzy or weak with a tingling sensation in your hands and feet, but you can lie down flat and not cough while you are probably over- breathing your lungs . In this case there is no physical, or, as doctors call it, "organic", the reasons for lack of breathing.

If you are obese, move little and, worse, smoke and catch the air after a little physical exertion, the doctor has nothing to do. You must take care of yourself. You are required to reduce weight, start physical exercise and quit smoking ! If you can do all this, the lack of breathing will disappear.

If you have heart disease (angina pectoris or you suffered a heart attack, rheumatic valve disease, chronic hypertension that you never effectively treated), your legs swell at the end of the day and you do not feel relieved by lying in bed, then the reason for lack of breathing is the heart Insufficiency . Your lungs are full of blood, which reduces their ability to direct oxygen into the bloodstream. The same symptoms, with the exception of edema of the legs, can develop with acute infarction.

You do not have enough air when you climb a mountain in cold weather? Does this happen soon after you stop? You probably have an angina pectoris . In some people, this disease manifests itself not by pain or squeezing in the chest, but by lack of air during exercise.

If your child is playing wonderfully in the courtyard and suddenly starts to breathe heavily, wheezing and gasping, but does not suffer from asthma, he probably inhaled some foreign object , like a piece of a toy or peanut. Quickly go to the doctor.

If you smoke and have always had a dry cough, but now you also start to feel a shortage of air and lose weight, lung cancer is real.

Regardless of smoking, if you had repeated attacks of asthma or wheezing along with a chronic cough and fingernails on the fingers and toes became bulging like a spoon, a lack of breathing is probably the result of emphysema or lung cancer .

If you wake up at night with a feeling of lack of air, with the separation of foamy pink sputum, - you have swelling of the lung : a condition requiring emergency medical care, often occurring with a heart attack . Sudden weakness of the heart muscle gave stagnation of blood in the lungs.

Dust can infiltrate your lungs and reduce their ability to deliver oxygen. Miners of coal mines that have started working before the use of the newest protective devices are especially prone to this type of damage, but everyone who spends time in a dusty environment is vulnerable to it. Various fungal infections of the lungs also lead to a lack of breathing .

If you have varicose veins and suddenly you do not have enough air - with or without coughing - you spit out the scarlet blood, you may have a blood clot in your lungs . It probably originated in the deep veins of the legs or pelvis, from where the detached piece traveled to the lungs. This especially happens after being in bed, long flights on the plane, pregnancy or surgical intervention of any kind.

If you are a young man and you do not have enough breathing for obvious reasons - you may or may not have chest pain and coughing - chances are that you have a spontaneous pneumothorax : a fall in the entire lung or part of it . Some people have small vesicles on the lungs, which usually do not give any symptoms until they break through, releasing air into the chest, which in turn will cause the lung to subside. In patients with emphysema, excess air in the lungs causes the formation of several such blisters. When one bursts, the lung collapses.

You just drank an "interesting" alcoholic drink, a property you do not know. ("You just have to try it: you'll like it!") His taste is not entirely customary, and immediately after you drained the glass, you did not catch breath and you began to breath convulsively. Some kind of complete idiot gave you a technical alcohol , completely different from food. Alcohol in a cocktail can disrupt your ability to drive; Technical - blocks the ability of red blood cells to carry oxygen. If this happens, go quickly to the doctor, and then show where the crayfish are hibernating, your benevolence is the "bartender".

Lack of breathing, sudden or chronic, always requires a serious attitude. Although many of its cases are harmless, obvious and correctable, this symptom requires a thorough medical evaluation.

Symptom: lack of breathing