Difficulty Breathing

[runner34]

Hi, I'm a 23 year old graduate student and I had bad allergies (running nose, watery eyes..you name it) while growing up and at that time I was naive and didn't want to take any medications for them so i'd just wait it out.  The one remedy that I did find helpful was running, and for the most part this proved successful until one day three years ago.  At that time I just got accepted to grad school and I was elated. My allergies started to act up so I decided to go for a 7 mile run (before every run I would decided how far i would go before I started and no matter how poorly I felt I would finish that distance...im very stubborn).  On this day about two miles in my run i began to feel terrible and ache all over but, being the stubborn person I was, I continued to run the remainder five miles at a snail pace.  At the completion of that run i felt o.k but the next morning i woke up and had this sensation that I couldn't take a deep breath.  I went to the doctors and I had my heart and lungs checked out and everything came back normal.  Since that day I've tried to ignore the fact that I couldn't take a deep breath and continue with my life, however it's gotten to the point where I'm so conscious of my breathing that it's very hard to do anything else and I've become very depressed.  I constantly feel like my breathing is impaired and I have to work to get a breath in (I was checked for asthma and I don't have it).
    Due to the fact that all the medical tests came back as normal everyone says this is all in my head, and to a certain extent I believe them, but I think anxiety and depression have resulted and compounded this problem but they are not the underlying cause. The one strange thing about all of this is that since that day my allergies haven't nearly been as bad.  If anyone has been in a similar situation or could offer any advice i would greatly appreciate it. Could over-exerting myself while having bad allergies caused all of this? thanks!

[National Jewish Health]

Anxiety and depression may be playing a role in your response to this illness, but both the onset and persistence of your symptoms for 3 years suggests that there may be a physical component to your respiratory problem.  The effect of your symptoms on your life is clearly considerable.  If you are to get on with your life and enjoy it you will have to have more complete physiologic testing performed by one or more physicians with expertise in exercise physiology.

Most academic medical centers and/or universities offer programs in exercise physiology.  Or you might want to consider an evaluation at the Cooper Institute in Dallas, Texas.

Wherever you are evaluated it will be most important that both heart and lung function be assessed.

[radagegi]

Wow we totally have the exact same problem..