The feeling of breathlessness is affected by many factors, including how well you are able to get air into your lungs, your lifestyle and how you think and feel about your breathing.

Breathing Pattern

Sometimes you can develop a breathing pattern that makes you feel more breathless.

When you start to feel breathless, you may feel you need more air. This leads to you breathing more rapidly, and sometimes you then don’t empty your lungs properly. This means you don’t use the whole of your lungs to breath, which is more work for your muscles. This makes you feel even more breathless. In some cases, it can mean you don’t breath out enough Carbon Dioxide, leaving you feeling shakey.

What can you do?

Fortunately there are plenty of breathing techniques you can use to improve your breathing pattern. This link to the British Lung Foundation has some good examples.

Keeping fit and active will help you to use your muscles effectively, reducing your breathlessness when you move around.

Sometimes breathlessness is made worse by having phlegm on your lungs. Doing regular chest clearance exercises can help you to clear your phlegm.

Making sure you take any medications properly will help to reduce your breathlessness. Research suggests that lots of people don’t take their inhalers effectively, so it’s always worth getting you inhaler technique checked.

There are medications to help relieve breathlessness. This link from the British Lung Foundation has more details.

If you’d like more specific advice you can be referred to a Physiotherapist through your GP. You can also click here to find out more about the services that Severn Physiotherapy offer, or give us a call today.