Fatigue Muscle Weakness And Shortness Of Breath Causes

How Is Shortness Of Breath Diagnosed

Your doctor or other health care provider will ask you about your symptoms. Try to give him or her as much information about your symptoms as you can.

Your provider will listen to your heart and lungs with a stethoscope. He or she may order additional tests, which could include:

• Chest imaging scans

Visit your health care provider when a normal activity causes unexpected shortness of breath. Get your breathing difficulty checked if it:

• Comes on suddenly
• Interferes with your daily activities

Its important that you contact your health care provider if your shortness of breath doesnt get better with treatment or is combined with other symptoms, such as chest pain. In such a case, you may need to seek emergency care.

Conditions Of Muscle Inflammation

Inflammatory diseases of muscle typically affect older adults and include conditions such as polymyalgia rheumatica , polymyositis and dermatomyositis. Some of these conditions respond well to steroids . Unfortunately, as explained above, steroids also cause muscle wasting and weakness.

Conditions of generalised tissue inflammation such as systemic lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis can cause muscle weakness. In a small proportion of cases of rheumatoid arthritis, muscle weakness and tiredness may be the only sign of the disease for some considerable time.

What Can Make You Short Of Breath And How Doesshortness Of Breath Relate To Muscle Diseases

Breathing problems can have a broad range of causes that are more common than muscle disease. Sudden shortness of breath can be caused by life threatening conditions, such as a heart problem or an asthma attack, and may require immediate medical attention.

Long-term shortness of breath is most commonly caused by a problem with the lungs, but anything that affects function of the muscles required to breathe can also cause serious breathing problems. There are three main muscle groups involved in breathing: the diaphragm, intercostal and abdominal muscles.

In a number of muscles diseases weak breathing muscles can be a major health issue. This will often occur in the latter stages of disease progression but can also be one of the first symptoms that encourages somebody to seek help from their doctor, such as in Pompe disease.

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Around Half Of Patients Discharged From Hospital For Covid Still Suffer From At Least One Persistent Symptom

Fatigue and shortness of breath still afflict many patients a year after their hospitalisation for Covid-19, according to a new Chinese study calling for a better understanding of the pandemics long-term health effects.

Around half of patients discharged from hospital for Covid still suffer from at least one persistent symptom most often fatigue or muscle weakness after 12 months, said the study published in British medical journal The Lancet Friday.

The research, the largest yet on the condition known as long Covid, added that one in three patients still have shortness of breath a year after their diagnosis.

That number is even higher in patients hit more severely by the illness.

With no proven treatments or even rehabilitation guidance, long Covid affects peoples ability to resume normal life and their capacity to work, The Lancet said in an editorial published with the study.

The study shows that for many patients, full recovery from Covid-19 will take more than 1 year.

The study followed nearly 1,300 people hospitalised for Covid between January and May 2020 in the central Chinese city of Wuhan the first place affected by a pandemic that has since infected 214 million people worldwide, killing more than 4 million.

The share of observed patients with at least one symptom decreased from 68 percent after six months to 49 percent after 12 months.

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What Can You Do About Trigger Points That Might Be Interfering With Respiration

Muscle trigger points are unpredictable and mysterious: exactly what they are and how to treat them is controversial. Sometimes they seem to melt as easily as ice cream in the sun, and so the first thing to try is just a little simple self-massage, or a warm bath, or both. The problem could be solved by a self-treatment as simple as digging with your thumbs into some aching muscles between your ribs. Voila no more shortness of breath! Ive seen it go like that many times, and even experienced it myself

My story: I am generally prone to muscle pain, and one of the most persistent specific challenges Ive had is with breathing pain not shortness of breath in my case, but breathing limited by pain. For about twenty years, I had routine episodes of strong pain that choked off my breath. Once every few days, I would be nearly paralyzed by it for several minutes, and sometimes nightmarish episodes of an hour or more. The pain would ease when I relaxed for long enough but its hard to relax when you cant breathe.

I recovered! I experimented with self-massage of my intercostals, discovered that I could easily stop any attack of this pain within a minute just by rubbing between the ribs near the pain. It was a revelation. Ive probably never been so happy to learn anything! Over a year or two, I massaged my intercostals regularly until I stopped having these episodes at all, and that benefit has now persisted for many years.

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He Can Feel Breathless If He Tries To Do Something Too Quickly

Well when you feel breathless its like… walking up hill, and when I feel you know walking up, or running up and downstairs we’ll say, and I feel breathless, I don’t run up and down stairs but if that’s what it feels like I’ve run up and down stairs you know, up and down a few times you now puffing hard you know. You know you’re gasping for air a bit more. But it’s a lot better now that I’m on the medication, I don’t get so much breathlessness, only if I approach a bank or I do something rather quicker than I should have done like go upstairs faster than I should, then I might feel a little bit breathless you know. But other than that it hasn’t affected me too badly now. It did initially before I had the medication I felt I was, I was puffing walking on level ground you know I was out of breath then so that’s how it felt.

What Syndromes Occur With Mitochondrial Disease

Some syndromes associated with mitochondrial disease are:

Barth syndromeOnset: infancy

Features: Typical symptoms include cardiomyopathy, general muscle weakness, and a low white blood cell count, which leads to an increased risk of infection. This syndrome was once considered uniformly fatal in infancy, but some individuals are now living much longer.

Inheritance pattern: X-linked

Chronic progressive external ophthalmoplegia Onset: usually in adolescence or early adulthood

Features: PEO is often a symptom of mitochondrial disease. In some people, it is a chronic, slowly progressive condition associated with instability to move the eyes and general weakness and exercise intolerance.

Inheritance pattern: autosomal, but may occur sporadically

Kearns-Sayre syndrome Onset: before age 20

Features: PEO and pigmentary retinopathy, a salt-and-pepper pigmentation in the retina that can affect vision. Other common symptoms include cardiomyopathy, conduction block ataxia, short stature, neuropathy, and deafness.

Inheritance pattern: autosomal

Leigh syndrome Onset: infancy or early childhood

Features: Brain abnormalities that can result in abnormal muscle tone, ataxia, seizures, impaired vision and hearing, developmental delays, and respiratory problems. Infants with the disease have a poor prognosis.

Inheritance pattern: maternal, autosomal recessive, X-linked

Mitochondrial DNA depletion syndromes Onset: infancy

Inheritance pattern: autosomal

Inheritance pattern: maternal

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A Quick Success Story About Sore Breathing Muscles

I once developed a sharp pain in the side of my neck when I coughed or sneezed. It was clearly a muscular pain, specifically of the scalenes muscle group that kick in when you breathe hard. If I took a really deep breath, I could feel it a little too but it was mostly only clear when I coughed or sneezed.

Until I went for a run.

After a few minutes of huffing and puffing, that pain started up. I also felt distinctly short of breath, despite being generally quite fit. The pain was like a stitch in my side, but in my neck, and I was not getting full breaths. I realized I was barely using my diaphragm to breathe, and so my scalenes were working overtime to make up the difference and hurting and failing. I started using my diaphragm again and the pain steadily eased even though I kept running.

Not only was the pain clearly caused by over-using my scalenes while breathing, but I was able to fix a fairly significant pain problem without stopping my workout just by breathing differently. Thats a good, clear example of the easiest kind of breathing trouble to fix. What was going on?

Rating Of Dyspnea And Leg Fatigue

Subjects continuously rated their intensity of perceived dyspnea using a previously validated 010 numeric scale . The rating was made using a PC-based system with a computer monitor mounted in front of the treadmill. The number displaced on the monitor was controlled by a clicker attached to the handrail of the treadmill. The displayed number changed by 0.5 unit with each click, and subjects had the option of increasing or decreasing the value according to level of breathing exertion they experienced during the exercise. We also obtained a single measure of the level of leg fatigue, using a similar 010 number scale, during the last 10 s of exercise .

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Iii: Anxietyhead Games And Shortness Of Breath

Maybe you feel so stressed that its obvious that the stress is squeezing the breath out of you or maybe its not. If youre not sure, its time to ask yourself some hard questions: could that be me? Could I be choking myself? Almost literally? Dont underestimate this possibility.

Anxiety excessive worry, either too much, or too long, or both13 is a surprisingly potent and amazingly common cause of many odd symptoms. Shortness of breath and chest pain are among the most frequently reported.

Although its common, anxiety is badly neglected as an explanation for many problems. Even though its almost the same thing as stress, many people dont recognize that they are anxious, or they deny it or minimize it. And many people just dont know that shortness of breath can be caused by anxiety! It really can.

Theres no clear explanation for how anxiety causes shortness of breath, chest pain, or any other strange symptom: its just one of those things. And while anxiety can cause shortness of breath as a direct and immediate symptom, it can also probably cause trouble indirectly by chronically eating away at us in other ways, like creating the dysfunctional breathing pattern discussed above.

Eyes Eyelids And Face

• difficulty making facial expressions

In around 1 in 5 people, only the eye muscles are affected. This is known as “ocular myasthenia”.

But for most people, the weakness spreads to other parts of the body over a few weeks, months or years.

If you’ve had symptoms affecting your eyes for 2 years or more, it’s unusual for other parts of your body to be affected later on.

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Conditions Affecting Brain ‘drive’ To Muscles

Anxiety: generalised tiredness can be caused by anxiety. This is due to overactivity of the body’s adrenaline system.

Depression: general weariness and a feeling of generalised tiredness can also be caused by depression.

Note: anxiety and depression are both conditions which tend to cause a sense of tiredness and ‘fatigability’ rather than true weakness.

Chronic pain: a general effect on energy levels can result from chronic pain. Like anxiety, it stimulates the production of chemical substances in the body which respond to pain and injury. These chemicals lead to feelings of tiredness or fatigue. In chronic pain, true weakness can result, as muscles may not be used due to pain and discomfort.

Symptoms Of Anxiety And Shortness Of Breath

Anxiety is your bodys natural fear response. This is known as the the fight-or-flight response. Your body reacts in physical and mental ways to prepare you to either fight or run from the situation.

Shortness of breath is one of those responses. You may feel like you cant catch your breath, tightness in your chest, or like youre suffocating or hungry for air.

Studies have shown a strong association between anxiety and respiratory symptoms, including shortness of breath.

Other symptoms that can occur during this response and as a result of anxiety include:

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Symptoms Which Vary In Type Severity And Combination May Include:

• Drooping of one or both eyelids
• Double or blurred vision
• Weakness in arms, hands, fingers, neck, face or legs
• Difficulty in chewing, smiling, swallowing or talking
• Excessive fatigue in exercised muscle groups
• Shortness of breath, difficulty taking a deep breath or coughing

MG is often called the snowflake disease because it differs so much from person to person. The degree of muscle weakness and the muscles that are affected vary greatly from patient to patient and from time to time.

For most people, the first noticeable symptom is weakness of the eye muscles causing drooping eyelids or double vision. In others, difficulty in swallowing and slurred speech may be the first signs. The onset of the disease is usually gradual over weeks or months, but may be more sudden. Symptoms may come and go over time, and even resolve completely for months or longer. Symptoms often are not immediately recognized as MG, especially if they are subtle or variable.

Most individuals do not develop all of the symptoms of MG. In some patients weakness remains limited to the eyes for entire course of the disease. These patients have ocular MG. Most patients have generalized MG where symptoms also involve muscles besides the eyes. When muscles involving speech or swallowing are involved, this is sometimes called bulbar weakness.

This information was abstracted from these sources:

Special Issues In Mitochondrial Disease

Respiratory careMitochondrial diseases can affect the muscles or parts of the brain that support breathing. A person with mild respiratory problems might require occasional respiratory support, such as pressurized air. Someone with more severe problems might require permanent support from a ventilator. People should watch for signs of respiratory problems and have regular checkups with a respiratory specialist.

Cardiac careSome mitochondrial diseases can cause cardiomyopathy or arrhythmia . Although dangerous, cardiac arrhythmia is treatable with a pacemaker, which stimulates a normal heartbeat. People with mitochondrial disorders may need to have regular examinations by a cardiologist.

Other potential health issuesPeople with a mitochondrial disease may experience gastrointestinal problems, diabetes, and/or kidney problems. Some of these problems are direct effects of mitochondrial defects in the digestive system, pancreas , or kidneys, and others are indirect effects of mitochondrial defects in other tissues. For example, myoglobinuria stresses the kidneys ability to filter waste from the blood and can cause kidney damage.

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What Are The Complications Of Myasthenia Gravis

The most serious complications of myasthenia gravis is a myasthenia crisis. This is a condition of extreme muscle weakness, particularly of the diaphragm and chest muscles that support breathing. Breathing may become shallow or ineffective. The airway may become blocked because of weakened throat muscles and build up of secretions. Myasthenia crisis may be caused by a lack of medicine or by other factors, such as a respiratory infection, emotional stress, surgery, or some other type of stress. In severe crisis, a person may have to be placed on a ventilator to help with breathing until muscle strength returns with treatment.

Precautions, which may help to prevent or minimize the occurrence of myasthenia crisis include:

• Taking anticholinesterase medicines 30 to 45 minutes before meals to reduce the risk of aspiration

• Taking anticholinesterase medicines exactly as prescribed to help maintain the strength of the breathing muscles

• Avoiding crowds and contact with people with respiratory infections, such as a cold or the flu

• Taking in proper nutrition to maintain optimal weight and muscle strength

• Balancing periods of physical activity with periods of rest

• Using stress-reduction techniques and avoiding emotional extremes

Tell your healthcare providers about your condition when any medicines are being prescribed. Certain medicines may interfere either with the disease or the action of the medicines you take for myasthenia gravis.

Preparing For Your Appointment

To prepare for your appointment, see the topicMaking the Most of Your Appointment.

You can help your doctor diagnose and treat your condition by being prepared to answer the following questions:

• What is your major symptom, weakness or fatigue?
• Have you had these symptoms before? If so:
• Did you see a doctor for an evaluation of your symptoms?
• What was the diagnosis?
• How were your symptoms treated?

While you are waiting for your appointment, it may be helpful to keep a diary of your symptoms .

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Where Exactly To Massage

The main muscles of respiration are:

And heres one more minor respiratory muscle in the low back that could be clinically significant:

• The quadratus lumborum is a sheet of muscle spanning from the pelvis to the lower rib. A crampy quadratus lumborum can pull down on the lower rib like an action hero clinging to the landing skid of a helicopter. It may painfully resist elevation of the rib cage during inhalation and/or hurt when contracting to pull it down during exhalation. Read more about quadratus lumborum massage.

It is also well worthwhile to massage other muscles throughout the neck, shoulders, and chest. Even the upper back! Soothing them may indirectly help the actual respiration muscles. And even if they dont control breathing themselves, they often produce sensations that feel related to breathing in a way that is hard to describe. Feeling stiff in the upper back often has a lot of sensory overlap with shortness of breath they are similar and probably related sensations.

For instance, its startling how much trigger points between the shoulder blades can feel related to breathing . After professional massage of this area, patients often say something like, I feel like I can breathe again! Even if they didnt feel short of breath to begin with!