Dear Reader,
What do asthma and anxiety / panic attacks have in common? They both have the symptom “shortness of breathe”. If you’re experiencing “shortness of breathe” for the first time, how can you tell if you’re suffering from anxiety / panic attacks or asthma? To make things even more confusing, a common symptom of asthma is anxiety / panic attacks.
I experienced childhood asthma as a kid, and quickly grew to have anxiety about breathing. I’d walk into the restaurant and we’d be seated next to the smoking section, and I’d be afraid I wouldn’t be able to breathe. Before long, I’d have the experience of difficulty breathing. Was it my asthma being triggered? Or stress causing similar symptoms?
I very fortunately grew out of childhood asthma, but then would occasionally have breathing episodes as an adult. One fall, I ended up outside in the cold (which can sometimes trigger breathing difficulty), and suddenly was experiencing shortness of breathe. This triggered a spike of anxiety, and shortly after I started losing sensation in my fingers and toes. I didn’t realize it at the time, but in my long steady breathes I was taking to counterbalance the sensation of shortness of breathe, I was actually hyperventilating (there was too much oxygen and not enough carbon dioxide in my system.)
Years after that, I saw an allergist who specialized in asthma to get more help on managing my occasional breathing difficulties. He asked me if I had trouble breathing in or breathing out. I said I had trouble breathing in – and he told me I was allergic to dust and that I did NOT have asthma, My breathing episodes were something called “stress breathing”. He said people with asthma actually had trouble breathing out. I took that with a grain of salt and started managing my dust allergy and reminding myself that difficulty breathing might be stress induced. My breathing issues went away completely for a period of time!
And yet… sometimes I still have difficulty breathing. It can be when I find myself in a stuffy room, or a smoggy city or in a plume of dust when someone starts sweeping. Is it asthma? Is it stress breathing? Is it a little bit of BOTH?
Here are interesting related articles:
https://www.healthline.com/health/asthma/asthma-attacks-and-panic-attacks
https://www.webmd.com/asthma/stress-asthma
If you’ve had a related experience, please share!
Thank you,
M