Heavy breathing

[Vanset]

My cardiologist told me to he wants to do a CT scan with dye. No thanks.

My ultrasounds have showed leaky valve. This could explain out of breath, tired, etc.

What is your blood pressure?

 

[iLoveSugar]

What is your blood pressure?

Typically good. At my appointment yesterday, 119/83

 

[brightside]

Very interesting post. Do you have some experience with POTS/hypovolemia? Do you recommend trying B1? I think in my case it's caused by underactive HPA axis caused by extreme amount of stress, I think that my adrenals are FUBAR. What I have noticed is my symptoms are completely gone if I skip a night of sleep. I'm warm and flushed and vascular, my blood pressurure is normalized (no longer on the lower end) and no longer have the bounding pulse that I can hear. I think this is because lack of sleep increases ACTH? Do you perhaps have any advice?

Yep, have dysautonomia/POTS after a course of metronidazole over three years ago. Metronidazole did set it off, but it seems to run in my family, presumably from an environmental/infectious cause.

And yes, I do recommend trying high dose B1. It's a simple, cheap, and effective band aid that has little to no negatives.

In my opinion, the underactive HPA would be a secondary problem cause by the underlying issue. Sleep deprivation does boost cortisol, but it also augments the immune system a bit. It's nothing dramatic, but perhaps that can explain your experience. Why I think this way is simple. Consider this question, what caused your HPA to become dysfunctional? It seems a bit random to single out something like that when you realize that hypovolemia is partially a problem of low metabolism.

Since high levels of CO2 are needed to expel excess water from the cell, hypometabolism would induce a mild swelling of the tissues, and therefore hypovolemia. Peat talks about this in one of the articles discussing pregnant women and progesterone. Obviously the RAAS does kick in and constricts the blood vessels, but in the case of POTS people, that doesn't really happen, or at least not effectively. You can point your finger at RAAS but you still have an unanswered question of, what caused the hypometabolism in the first place? Additionally, could the same hypometabolism cause a dysfunction in RAAS? I think so.

POTS is under the umbrella of dysautonomia, which implies nerve dysfunction. Nerve dysfunction can also be explained by energy deficits (which B1 can partially resolve, not only by providing energy, but also by supplying Acetyl-COA to create acetylcholine for the vagus nerve). Therefore, if hypovolemia is caused by hypometabolism, and impaired stress response can also be caused by hypometabolism, your symptoms are explained. In which case, you need to look at what is causing that hypometabolism.

In my opinion, that would be caused by an chronic infection, immune dysregulation, or exposure to environmental toxins.

 

[iLoveSugar]

Thiamine doesn't seem to help here. Nights are absolutely terrible for me. At rest, I'm the worst. My breathing is horrible when laying down. I go for a stress test soon.

 

[golder]

Thiamine doesn't seem to help here. Nights are absolutely terrible for me. At rest, I'm the worst. My breathing is horrible when laying down. I go for a stress test soon.

My mum is in a similar position to you. My thoughts are with you. If you find anything that helps, please share it here :)

 

[iLoveSugar]

I'm in bed for a full 8-10 hours every night and just waking up completely exhausted because I'm tossing and turning all night in distress. It's awful!

 

[Peachy]

Thiamine doesn't seem to help here. Nights are absolutely terrible for me. At rest, I'm the worst. My breathing is horrible when laying down. I go for a stress test soon.

Hey @iLoveSugar. I'm sorry you're still going through this. Have you tried the herbal sedative, valerian? This used to help me a lot. I've had good results with both the tincture as well as the capsules. It smells really bad. It's not so strong that it'll make you loopy but it can help relax the nervous system.

 

[Peachy]

Also, I would personally use a little Benadryl (diphenhydramine) on occasion if I were going through this again.

 

[iLoveSugar]

Also, I would personally use a little Benadryl (diphenhydramine) on occasion if I were going through this again.

I actually have a prescription for cyprophetadine which works better for me than Benadryl. It just makes me incredibly tired, which I already am all the time. These skipped heartbeats, breathlessness, etc, are crippling.

 

[brightside]

Thiamine doesn't seem to help here. Nights are absolutely terrible for me. At rest, I'm the worst. My breathing is horrible when laying down. I go for a stress test soon.

Are you still taking the 300mg?

 

[iLoveSugar]

Yes. At first it seemed to help a little. Lately, I've been awful. Not sure if something I have eaten, or if allergies could be in play. The mitral valve just really seems plausible for me because when I do any walking, I have bad feet pain as well which seem like circulatory issues.

 

[Peachy]

I actually have a prescription for cyprophetadine which works better for me than Benadryl. It just makes me incredibly tired, which I already am all the time. These skipped heartbeats, breathlessness, etc, are crippling.

I’m sure you’ve thought of this but are you taking magnesium?

 

[iLoveSugar]

I’m sure you’ve thought of this but are you taking magnesium?

Magnesium glycinate once or twice a week. I probably should get into a nightly habit. Does it help with shortness of breath? It's many times daily where I just lose my breath.

 

[miquelangeles]

Magnesium glycinate once or twice a week. I probably should get into a nightly habit. Does it help with shortness of breath? It's many times daily where I just lose my breath.

Hey @iLoveSugar please take the time to read my thread Nothing in life comes free and if you do the experiments you'll be surprised.
I recommend you read the whole thread very carefully but to sum it up here - basically you need to sort out any dirty electricity issues in your home or work environment (this isn't hard), stop touching and carrying a smartphone, stop touching and spending time near computers especially monitors, screens, TVs, and completely turn off the breaker panel at night while you sleep. Also try to spend at least two hours per day barefoot in nature. As for magnesium, it is the chloride form or nigari salt that is known to help most with breathing issues. There is also a combination of magnesium aspartate and potassium aspartate that should be available as OTC. But any supplement will be useless until you take care of what I mentioned above.

 

[Peachy]

Magnesium glycinate once or twice a week. I probably should get into a nightly habit. Does it help with shortness of breath? It's many times daily where I just lose my breath.

Hi there! If I were having those symptoms I’d start with two at night and one each morning. Mag glycinate is great. LifeBlud has a good mag glycinate/taurate that I like as well.

It does help with shortness of breath. And heart palpitations.

To keep minerals balanced while you’re upping magnesium eat regularly and include salt and potassium-rich foods like coconut water, potatoes...

 

[yerrag]

My heartbeat is always annoying. It's hard to describe but heavy, sometimes flutters, etc. I always get out of breath doing absolutely anything. Things such as rolling over in bed, laying down, etc, I get out of breath, heart pounding, etc. It's so annoying and destructive to my life. I've had numerous ekg, different heart monitors, echos, etc., all to no avail. I desperately could use advice here as it's so scary being out of breath non stop, missing heartbeats, and just flat hearing my heart pound non stop.

I recently came out of heavy breathing problems so I may have an inkling to what you refer to.

Are you having trouble breathing because of bronchial problems deep in your lungs?

Breathing problems, in my case, result from phlegm being produced by the mucous membranes in the alveoli ( the tiny sacs that form the basic unit of our lungs when it comes to gas exchange, where oxygen is breathed in and CO2 is breathed out). This phlegm can be thick or it can be loose. It's the thick phlegm that blocks breathing, while the loose phlegm usually gets expelled out easily.

I had thick phlegm, and this also is associated with what's called pleural effusion, where there is water buildup on the lungs. The buildup can accumulate, such that there would be a pool of water building in the lungs. I could have a doctor drain the buildup, which I didn't do. Or I could just use postural drainage (google it) to get rid of some of the buildup. But either way, the drainage is never complete as that is just like picking the low hanging fruit. Still, there is fluid buildup left that I can compare to the amount of juice left after you squeeze an orange. Just the same, that isn't a problem if you can make your lung heal. In my case, I used aromatherapy and in a week or two, I am close to being healed. This involved the use of appropriate essential oils and encasing them in a suppository with a carrier oil such as VCO. What the therapy would do is to act as a mucolytic, softening and loosening the phlegm, and also act as expectorant, so that the phlegm would be coughed out or sneezed out.

Without the benefit of such a therapy, one would not even see phlegm and he would be coughing with nothing coming out. And because the supply of oxygen to the body is impaired, it is very stressful. The body has to compensate - all the organs, not just the heart. The heart rate is increased. My troponin levels went sky high.

I couldn't sleep for days, and this situation would have continued had I not dig myself out of this hole. I would have developed pneumonia because of the low immune resistance that would result. I had to sleep upright, as every time I lie down I would start to hiccup, and it would continue even when I went upright. It would be so bad that it would sound like my heartbeat, but it isn't my heartbeat as it has more of the beat that is closer to that of breathing. At its worst, it would echo, so I would hear two beats instead of one each time.

Needless to say, I couldn't sleep. On top of it, I also would have high serotonin in my brain as a result of the lungs being impaired and unable to do its job also of deactivating and clearing serotonin. I have a pretty good and healthy gut, so my serotonin production isn't high, but even so the gut will still make them and the lungs still have to clear them.

I believe the hiccups happen as the body's way of dealing with the stress. It is very annoying, but it is adapting to compensate for a stressful condition. Resolving the stressful condition is the way I handled it. Luckily for me, I had already bought the essential oil and books needed but for another issue, but they became handy for this situation. Otherwise, I would have to surrender myself to the hospital authorities where they will just be under the care of their respiratory care therapists, and be on salbutamol (which itself is serotogenic) and maybe budenoside (a cortisol - not good for the long term). And I will have to be paying a huge hospital bill because I would stay long there).

I would end now except for the fact that I was dealing with a double whammy. I got myself into a sort of ALS condition (using an essential oil wrongly, which was also the cause of why I had breathing problems,) To make this short, ALS impairs the throat's functions. The impairment I focus on is the ability to allow phlegm to be expelled easily from the throat. The phlegm would build up on my throat and would be backed up on my respiratory airways. This, I believe, is what caused my hiccups to be so intense to the point of creating echos.

I am almost fully recovered now.