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Mysterious shortness of breath: What has helped you?

Lung Health | Last Active: Oct 23 10:20am | Replies (3405)

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@gabrielm

@mcresh, thank you for taking the time to write here about your solutions! I really appreciate that. Been thinking about doing some kind of elimination diet to see if any food or drink has anything to do with it. How long did it take to improve when you cut out caffeine?

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Replies to "@mcresh, thank you for taking the time to write here about your solutions! I really appreciate..."

Since it's been almost a year since your original post - I'm curious - have you made any progress? I'll have to try the caffeine thing, although my caffeine intake is pretty consistent, so it wouldn't explain the whole good days / bad days thing. Like you, I have been journaling for about a month now and there is honestly no rhyme or reason to it that I can discern. I just went on vacation recently and completely changed almost everything. Diet, activity level, climate, etc. It was the same! I had some good days and some bad days.

It's definitely a really frustrating problem and my heart goes out to all of you in this thread. The only thing that I have found that makes ANY real difference is exercise. On days where my activity level is really high it seems to be a lot less. I'm not sure that it works that way for everyone else, but typically a lot of activity cures my SOB. The problem with this is that I'm a student and I have a desk job, so it's very difficult for me to get a lot of movement in. It can't be quick either, it has to be like 30 minutes of sustained movement. Usually on days where I'm very active, the SOB gives up at some point and I feel better. It doesn't give up without a fight though, it's usually there fighting for a while. On the weekend I jog on the treadmill for about 30 minutes. Sometimes the SOB is annoying during the entire workout, but it's usually better by the end. Other than that, I haven't found any magic pill. I should also note that I've been exercising for years so I doubt that it's just going to "go away" randomly because I was out of shape. I guess it just gets the blood pumping and opens my lungs giving me temporary reprieve.

Anyway, I'll keep trying things and keeping everyone posted. I was hoping the climate change, diet change, the vitamins I started taking, fish oil, meds from the doc, or SOMETHING would yield some serious results I could report back but I've got nothing.