Breathlessness

Breathlessness is the condition where in people feel they cannot breathe. Usually people who strain themselves physically tend to experience this. But in other cases, breathlessness can be a symptom of some disease.

If a person does physical exercise regularly, he will be able to use oxygen more efficiently. So very less amount of carbon dioxide will be produced. The persons who are subjected to regular physical exercise have lesser chances of experiencing breathlessness than a person without exercise.

In certain cases, diseases may tend to imitate the cases similar to that related with unfitness. But in such case, even a very low level of exertion can cause breathlessness.

Acute conditions of breathlessness happen when it happens severely and all of a sudden. Chronic breathlessness conditions occur over a long period of time.

Causes

In majority of the cases, lack of fitness causes breathlessness, which is worsened if that person is obese. Breathlessness under this situation can be treated by proper sustained exercises and by shedding the extra weight in the body.

Acute breathlessness can be triggered by:

chest infection or asthma pneumonia
Inefficiency of the heart to pump enough oxygen due to chronic heart diseases.
In some cases, lung infections like emphysema, worsens suddenly
Over breathing in cases of anxiety which is known as hyperventilation.

Chronic breathlessness is normally triggered by any one or more than one of the following:

• Lung diseases those are obstructive and chronic in nature.
• Obesity
• anaemia
• inefficient pumping of oxygen by the heart
  and
• asthma

Smoking can contribute to breathlessness due to the presence of the poisonous carbon monoxide in the cigarettes that can prevent the normal performance of haemoglobin.

Failure of the left heart can also cause severe breathlessness condition. This occurs if the heart fails to remove blood from the lungs quickly. This forms major symptom of the failure of left heart. It happens even if the person is doing something with very less exertion or it can even occur during a rest period. In certain cases, severe breathlessness attacks occur in the night.

Breathlessness can be an outcome of a panic reaction. In this case, hyperventilation occurs. The persistence of this condition can cause the breathing out of carbon dioxide resulting in the dropping of calcium levels and the blood becoming alkaline.

Another condition that can trigger the intensity of breathlessness is anaemia. In anaemia, the blood’s capacity to transport oxygen falls down to a very low level.

Any inefficiency of the heart can cause breathlessness, because of the lack of power of the heart to circulate pure blood.

Treatment

The treatment for breathlessness depends on the cause which triggers breathlessness.

Prevention

This condition can be prevented by;

• Avoiding smoking
• Reducing body weight, if obese.
• Try to maintain a good physical health by regular physical exercising. One of the best aerobic exercises which can be practised is walking briskly for 30 minutes daily, at a pace of one’s own comfort.