Shortness Of Breath - Particularly After Eating?

MightyFall

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My breathing has been pretty unnatural and erratic over the past few weeks. At times I'd be gasping for breath, heavily and rapidly. This only started a month ago. My doctor dismissed it for anxiety and prescribed beta-blockers (which of course did not help). Especially after eating a meal, I notice my breathing becoming heavier and inconsistent. Most of the time I can breathe smoothly through my nose, especially in a fasting state (still doesn't feel optimal). It returns the next day or within a few hours. I've tried breathing in a bag method ad holding deep breaths, which have helped tremendously but not significantly to notice my breathing return back to a slow, smooth rhythm.

My dietary changes haven't been significant either, I just reduced my starch intake slightly and started eating refined sugar again (was eating plenty of fruit and honey before anyway), haven't been eating much dairy, added OJ. Bowel movements are normal and no stomach discomfort.
 

Mittir

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Is that home made OJ? There is heavy use of pesticide in orange.
Orange is also known to have histamine releasing capacity.
Does this happen after each meal? Are you taking any new supplement?
 
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MightyFall

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Mittir said:
Is that home made OJ? There is heavy use of pesticide in orange.
Orange is also known to have histamine releasing capacity.
Does this happen after each meal? Are you taking any new supplement?
It started long before the OJ. I'm not taking any supplements and exercise regularly. It varies, one day I could have a bowl of rice and feel fine, the next day I would have the same meal and hyperventilate.
 

Mittir

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It seems bit sudden . Only major change in diet is inclusion of sugar.
You can try going back to your diet before you started having this problem.
I sometime have breathing difficulty after meal when i eat too much starch.
It could be high insulin and cortisol or lack of glycogen.
I do not have this problem when i eat sugary foods like milk with added sugar/honey
or ripe fruits. Recently, one of my friend was having sudden anxiety in the morning
and evening. I suspected low glycogen storage and told him to eat1-2 tbs of honey with each meal and his anxiety attack went away. Increased carbohydrate increases metabolism and
need for extra nutrient. All 4 alkaline minerals, especially calcium and sodium helps
a lot with breathing problem.
 

jyb

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I had this post-meal short breathing today after eating a tiny amount of liver. I eat liver rarely as it doesn't seem to do much good to me - I really prefer oysters (4 or 5 per meal max when I have some) as a nutrient rich food. I will probably stop the liver entirely if I continue to observe these side effects.
 

Ari

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I have experienced this a few times - it sucks. Haven't had it occur while eating this style of diet except for one occurrence where I drank 2 cups of OJ in a few gulps. That was gas I think, from swallowed air.

Anyways...

The cause could be something as simple as gas in stomach, or overeating. I would look towards the simplest cause first before suspecting anything on the metabolic level.

If you find relief through certain postures/poses/movement it may be gas.

After that I suspect a high fat meal could cause the same symptoms through different mechanisms.

---

And now that I read this thread, i'm starting to experience the same symptoms.. must be contagious
 

Dutchie

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I requently read p3ople saying when metabolism is up,you need more nutrients and calories but its still a mystery to me,how you know metabolism is up? Bc the temp. and the pulse thing arent trustworthy indicators for me.
 

Dewitt

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I've got several ideas:

1) Since a higher carbohydrate intake raises CO2 levels and high CO2 levels increase the desire to breath/the breathing frequency, the reaction can simply be caused by CO2. This is the least probable cause, as a meal shouldn't have that big of an influence on CO2-levels.
2) A histamine reaction can induce breathing problems. Since CO2 prevents the degranulation of mast cells, it would make sense that the bag breathing helped in your case. You could try taking an anti-histamine for a few days and see if it gets any better. As for why the histamine reaction may occur, I'm not sure.
3) A general stress reaction may cause breathing problems too. This explanation is especially probably if you experience an increased heart rate and sweating along with the shortness of breath. Again, I'm not quite sure what may trigger this reaction in your case.
 

Mastemah

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Juice=potassium=need more sodium w potassium to not have histamine response. Add sugar to oj until better. Get off starches for a while.
 

staytuned

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Mastemah said:
Juice=potassium=need more sodium w potassium to not have histamine response. Add sugar to oj until better. Get off starches for a while.

Do you mean add salt to OJ until better?
 

Poppyseed13

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I just saw this post.

Shortness of breath or "air hunger" is very common with hypothyroidism. I've had it pretty much my whole life--and the only thing that has helped it has been NDT (Thiroyd).

If you google "shortness of breath" and hypothyroidism you will find quite a lot of information (or google "air hunger" and hypothyroidism).

Cheers,
Poppyseed13
 

charlie

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Poppyseed13, :welcome

Very true! Totally forgot about air hunger. Which actually might be CO2 hunger IIRC.
 

4peatssake

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Poppyseed13 said:
I just saw this post.

Shortness of breath or "air hunger" is very common with hypothyroidism. I've had it pretty much my whole life--and the only thing that has helped it has been NDT (Thiroyd).

If you google "shortness of breath" and hypothyroidism you will find quite a lot of information (or google "air hunger" and hypothyroidism).

Cheers,
Poppyseed13
whoa, thanks for this! Knocked me right between the eyes. Just more evidence for me being undiagnosed hypothyroid for over a decade. I've never been able to figure out why I was always starving for breath.
 

HDD

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Didn't Peat talk about this in his latest interview? I was distracted during that part so I didn't hear it all or what he said.

Maybe it was another one I listened to recently? Does anyone remember? IIRC he talked about sleep apnea too.
 

SAFarmer

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Great post , thank you so much. This is just another piece in the puzzle that explains my son's illness that the best doctors and lung spesialists could not solve over a period of 3 months a year ago. This included countless tests , like CT scans, lung x-rays, handfuls of different drugs, including various forms of cortisone and inhalers . Eventually they wanted to put him on anti-anxiety drugs, which we refused, and that led me to start researching myself, and I found Ray Peat ... the rest is history, lots of sugar and later T3 + T4 and he is back and better than his self again competing at a high level in tennis.

Here is good article with lots of references by Dr John Lowe about shortness of breath and hypothyroidism.
http://verbal-0rchid.com/wp/2010/03/air ... -patients/
 

Mittir

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Haagendazendiane said:
Didn't Peat talk about this in his latest interview? I was distracted during that part so I didn't hear it all or what he said.

Maybe it was another one I listened to recently? Does anyone remember? IIRC he talked about sleep apnea too.

RP did talk about asthma/hyperventilation in many of his interviews, particularly
in Josh Rubin : Serotonin and Endotoxin( Little bit on Josh: Thyroid) ,
KMUD : Altitude, Serotonin, Serotonin and Depression, Calcium and Phosphate.

It seems obvious to me that hypothyroidism will lead to asthma/hyperventilation.
He thinks Asthma is a type of hyperventilation.
He mentioned Serotonin and Estrogen are directly involved in hyperventilation.
There is a cycle of serotonin and co2.Low co2 increases serotonin and high serotonin increases
hyperventilation,which lowers co2.This is a really bad cycle.Often bag breathing can instantly
break this cycle. Estrogen, Serotonin, inflammatory prostaglandins, Histamin, Latic acid
and all other stress hormones are high and co2 is low in hypothyroidism.
Thyroid's ability to increase co2 lowers these stress hormones and protect against
hyperventilation.
Calcium plays a big role in maintaining PTH, which can increase serotonin and histamine.
Until Ray Peat i have never seen any where saying calcium plays role in asthma or allergy.
Endotoxin increases serotonin,estrogen,cortisol and lowers thyroid.
Lactic acid and serotonin increases each other.
Stress hormones usually go up and down in a group. Increase in one stress hormone
increases many other stress hormones and creates a stressful condition.
Thyroid and all other anti-stress hormones are needed to change that.
MD's can not think beyond inflammation and anti-inflammatory cortisone
and other horrible drugs. If they really studied physiology they would have
adopted a wider approach in treating this kind of disease.
 

charlie

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Mittir said:
This is a really bad cycle.Often bag breathing can instantly
break this cycle. Estrogen, Serotonin, inflammatory prostaglandins, Histamin, Latic acid
and all other stress hormones are high and co2 is low in hypothyroidism.
Yep, hungry for C02.
 

jyb

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In my experience, I can often predict my thyroid function (or at least, measures like temperatures and mood) just based on how deep I can breathe. If I can breath very slowly almost like apnea and still feel comfortable (no stress feeling triggered), my hypo symptoms are absent. Sadly, when I feel like I need to breath tensely, nothing can be done to switch to a slow breathing mode: sugar or bag breathing may slow it a bit but its quite temporary. It seems like good breathing is a consequence of good function, and that actively trying to breathe well might help but is not enough to revert whatever has caused hypo symptoms.
 

charlie

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jyb said:
In my experience, I can often predict my thyroid function (or at least, measures like temperatures and mood) just based on how deep I can breathe. If I can breath very slowly almost like apnea and still feel comfortable (no stress feeling triggered), my hypo symptoms are absent. Sadly, when I feel like I need to breath tensely, nothing can be done to switch to a slow breathing mode: sugar or bag breathing may slow it a bit but its quite temporary. It seems like good breathing is a consequence, but that actively trying to breathe well might help but is not enough to revert whatever has caused hypo symptoms.
Exactly this. Your breathing respiration rate and depth is a reaction to your metabolic function.
 

raypeatclips

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I had this post-meal short breathing today after eating a tiny amount of liver. I eat liver rarely as it doesn't seem to do much good to me - I really prefer oysters (4 or 5 per meal max when I have some) as a nutrient rich food. I will probably stop the liver entirely if I continue to observe these side effects.

Did you work out why liver caused this?
 

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