I am allergy and immunology. I see pts with a variety of breathing problems and this issue is not uncommon to see.
Many posters question a role for allergy.
Academically speaking, this condition is absolutely NOT allergy-related. Allergy affects your eyes and nose (itchy, sneezy, watery, congestion); beyond that, if you have asthma, it can trigger asthma but you will have evidence of asthma on evaluation.
Many talk about going to an allergist, having allergy testing, testing allergic, and receiving treatment.
In this case, the allergist is simply treating your test result, but not this particular problem. Patients who have this condition may have any number of conditions, including allergy but finding evidence of that condition does not imply causation.
In patients searching for a cause of mysterious symptoms, to be told you have evidence of a condition, such as allergy, in some sense can be relieving if you believe, "Finally, they have discovered the problem." You may even improve with treatment directed at that condition but that is likely more a function of believing the treatment will work (and I don't dismiss the importance otherwise).
Until proven otherwise, I believe this condition stems from the brain and some type of aberrant response of your respiratory drive. Because there are no tests for this, all the usual tests for shortness of breath come out normal.
There are various factors which likely affect this aberrant response, with emotion playing a huge role.
The question is how to fix that response that is going haywire and there is no one good answer.
I have wondered about a potential relationship to migraine disorder. That condition can manifest in a number of ways such as irritable bowel (the two diseases are likely related to the same disease manifesting in different parts of the body). In patients with migraine, they generally are hypersensitive to various stimuli that end up triggering symptoms- an example would be someone who reacts to odors with a headache or other symptoms. Migraine is a dysfunction of the nervous system.
Several posters mention symptoms that might be attributable to migraine, such a facial pressure, ear pain, etc. After reading the posts and knowing this condition is more common in females, I've wondered if this is not some odd manifestation of that condition.
I would be curious if any of the posters have been diagnosed with migraine disorder or if they have wondered if they might have it.
Indications of this condition might include "normal" migraines, IBS, other types of headaches including tension and sinus, as well as things like vertigo or odor sensitivity. If it might be related to that, that might suggest treatments targeting migraine could potentially have a role.
There is no evidence to support this idea, just something I've wondered about and I appreciate the wide variety of ways migraine disorder manifests in patients.