This is interesting. I do feel like there is definitely something physiological with my throat. I think then i start to have a psychological response to it and the whole thing is just like a giant negative feedback loop. It is very difficult to tell if anxiety is causing the issue, or the issue is there and it causes more anxiety.

I also thought it might be allergy related, as I said I got tested for food allergies, at one point I had started eating a lot more nuts and thought that might be it. I cannot remember if they tested for gluten. Do you know how long it took your symptoms to go away when you removed the gluten? I could give that a try.

I also live in an extremely high allergy area in the Ohio River valley. When my symptoms are bad it feels like i have a deep congestion in my throat or kind of like you said a swelling in my esophagus, almost down to where my throat meets my chest.

Yeah, it is very common for doctors to blame anxiety for things that they just can’t find a cause for.

It reminds me of the days when “hysteria” was a medical diagnosis for aaaallll kinds of things (in women). These days, in addition to anxiety, doctors tell is that it is menopause because they can’t find a cause and “you’re at that age”. That just tells me that the doctor is not a good doctor. A good doctor will say “I don’t know. Here is a possible next step.”

Any patient’s search is limited by the availability of technology and the experience and determination of their doctor.

I had a shortness of breath upon minimal exertion problem for nearly ten years, along with chest pain/ stinging in left side and down my arm. My oxygen levels were 💯…I had a lot of eye rolling after all the tests at major hospitals cleared me. (I’m a female so I started taking my husband Along to validate my message. I just learned to live with it. I went from healthy working out at the gym 3 days a week plus daily walking and activity in my home to living life very slow, as even roll over in bed took me time …slow and wait to breathe, pant, then finished the roll. Wasn’t fun. Went to slip on shoes, sold our home with steps, and so on. But kept looking and reading as I began to get worse and couldn’t go from bed to bathroom and sat a lot. Began to lose my balance and left thumb went numb. My husband suggested our pcp check my spine. There was some narrowing. We found a neurologist that listened to us and did multiple MRI’s and found a herniated disc. After he dis anterior cervical disckectomy with fusion at C5/6 putting in a spacer, I could finally breathe.
Don’t give up. But try and accommodate and live too. I also have this problem that we are discussing here; I believe it was a little worse after surgery but today is better but seems to flare up on movement and angle that I sit in chair. So I’m careful on that. Who knows? Worth a shot to get your spine checked. Good luck.

As ive said a thousand times the way doctors test for is it anxiety or not is a few things.
1. If the SOB gets no worse during exertion
2. If the oxygen levels are normal WHILE you feel SOB(in a case of an allegy flare up it you would only feel SOB while that flare up occurred which is unlikely to coincide when you get tested by pulmonary doctor

These two things can make a doctor conclude most of the time that it is pseudodyspnea.

Just a question in your case, you got tested and it said you were allergic to dairy and gluten. Or did the symptoms disappearance coincide with when you werent eating dairy and gluten