Fatigue Headache And Shortness Of Breath
- Medical Author: Melinda Ratini, DO
Reviewed on 6/15/2020
If you have sleep apnea, you may wake up tired with a headache, and you might feel short of breath. Chronic lung disease like COPD can cause these symptoms as well. An extremely high blood sugar is just one of the other things that can cause these symptoms.
While the list below can be considered as a guide to educate yourself about these conditions, this is not a substitute for a diagnosis from a health care provider. There are many other medical conditions that also can be associated with your symptoms and signs. Here are a number of those from MedicineNet:
When To Talk To Your Healthcare Provider
If you have symptoms that could be CAD, such as fatigue, nausea, heartburn, chest pain, shortness of breath, or diminished physical endurance, you should call your healthcare provider to describe how you are feeling and follow the recommendations for an appointment or diagnostic testing.
When you see your healthcare provider, be sure to describe the timing, frequency, and duration of your symptoms. Include details such as what you were doing when they occurred and what made the symptoms go away. Our guide below can help you understand terminology your healthcare provider may use, as well as give you questions to better understand your condition.
Coronary Artery Disease Doctor Discussion Guide
Get our printable guide for your next healthcare provider’s appointment to help you ask the right questions.
What Can You Do To Help Ongoing Breathlessness
There are some breathing control techniques that can help to reduce breathlessness. Examples include:
- Relaxed, slow, deep breathing: breathe in gently through your nose and breathe out through your nose and mouth. Try to stay feeling relaxed and calm.
- Paced breathing: this may help when you are walking or climbing stairs. Try to breathe in rhythm with your steps at a speed you find comfortable.
- Controlled breathing. This involves using your diaphragm and lower chest muscles to breathe instead of your upper chest and shoulder muscles. Breathe gently and keep your shoulders and upper chest muscles relaxed.
Use different comfortable seating and standing positions when you feel breathless. Different positions suit different people but examples include:
- When standing up, lean from the hips with your forearms resting on something at a comfortable height, such as a chair or kitchen work surface.
- When standing or walking, put your hands on your hips or in your pockets.
- When sitting, lean forwards, resting your forearms on your knees, on the arms of a chair, or on a table.
Arrange the things you use every day to make sure they are easy to reach. Try to stay active but take a rest when you feel breathless and then start again.
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What Is Heart Failure
Heart failure occurs when the heart is no longer able to pump a sufficient amount of blood through the body. Similar to COPD, people with heart failure can be somewhat stable, or they can experience exacerbations . There are many conditions that can lead to heart failure, the most predominant being coronary artery disease.
When the heart is too weak to pump enough blood to the cells, tissues, and organs, every system in the body is affected: Muscles weaken, weight loss occurs, fatigue and breathlessness are common, and physical activity becomes increasingly difficult.1
Research For Your Health
The NHLBI is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services National Institutes of Health the Nations biomedical agency that makes important scientific discoveries to improve health and save lives. We are committed to advancing science and translating discoveries into clinical practice to promote the prevention and treatment of heart, lung, blood, and sleep disorders, including iron-deficiency anemia. Learn about the current and future NHLBI efforts to improve health through research and scientific discovery.
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Is An Oxygen Level 94 Bad
It is essential to know what is normal for you in order to answer this question accurately. For some people, an oxygen level 96 is fantastic, while for others, an oxygen level 94 can be quite worrisome. The answer is entirely dependent on your overall health. An oxygen level 94 might be considered low for someone in average health, or it can be in the upper levels for someone living with COPD. If you are concerned about your oxygen saturation, talk to your doctor about what your normal O2 sat should be.
Musculoskeletal Causes Of Dyspnoea
Musculoskeletal disorders are a rare source of dyspnoea in the general population, though the physical demands of certain sports can cause injury or exacerbate anatomic deformities, which can ultimately lead to dyspnoea in athletes. Musculoskeletal sources of dyspnoea can be grouped into two general categories: 1) pain-causing dysfunction of the ribs and spine and 2) deformation of the thoracic cage.
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Shortness Of Breath Swelling And Swelling
- Medical Author: Melissa Conrad Stöppler, MD
Reviewed on 8/30/2021
Your symptoms can be caused by a variety of different medical conditions. Swelling up the feet and ankles can be related to trauma or injury, or it can be related to conditions affecting the circulation or liver and kidneys. Keep track of your symptoms and when they occur. Discuss any troublesome symptoms with your doctor.
While the list below can be considered as a guide to educate yourself about these conditions, this is not a substitute for a diagnosis from a health care provider. There are many other medical conditions that also can be associated with your symptoms and signs. Here are a number of those from MedicineNet:
Best Quit Smoking Resources
Stop smoking or vaping, if you do. Inhaling tobacco smoke is the major cause of lung cancer and COPD, according to the National Cancer Institute’s SmokeFree.gov website. Within two weeks of becoming tobacco-free, you could notice that youre breathing easier. The cilia will also begin coming back to life, boosting your ability to fight off colds and infections.
Stay hydrated. Taking in plenty of fluids helps keep the mucus in your respiratory system thin, so it can trap large particles that you breathe, says Varner. This helps your lungs cleanse themselves.
Be active. Like the rest of your body, vigorous activity gives your lungs a good workout, which helps expand their capacity, Varner says.
Lose weight if your body mass index is 30 or higher. Being significantly overweight or obese forces your heart and lungs to work harder, which can make breathing more difficult and aggravate conditions like COPD that are linked to shortness of breath.
Minimize your exposure to smog. Check daily air pollution forecasts in your area at AirNow.gov. Keep windows closed and limit your time spent outdoors when levels are high. A study of more than 300,000 people published in July 2019 in the European Respiratory Journal linked exposure to outdoor air pollution with decreased lung function and an increased risk of developing COPD.
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Possible Reasons For Shortness Of Breath And Fatigue
Shortness of breath literally means facing a difficulty in breathing due to lack of sufficient quantity of oxygen. It may affect one’s productivity while performing even daily tasks.
Shortness of breath literally means facing a difficulty in breathing due to lack of sufficient quantity of oxygen. It may affect ones productivity while performing even daily tasks.
Shortness of breath generally occurs due to infections, allergies, asthma or other nervous and respiratory disorders. Difficulty in breathing and fatigue are closely related to each other as the latter is a prominent indicator of a person suffering from shortness of breath. Frequent cough, fever and pain in the chest are the most general signs which highlight the presence of this disorder in an individual. You should contact your family doctor immediately, if you face any of the above problems as prevention is better than cure.
What Are Breathing Difficulties Symptoms Causes Diagnosis Treatment And Prevention
Feeling as if its hard to catch your breath for a minute or two is not unusual, especially if youve been exercising or doing similar activities such as vigorously cleaning the house or carrying heavy bundles. Thats because when we exert ourselves, our muscles require more oxygen than they do when we are at rest. Our breathing rate momentarily quickens, and our heart beats faster to meet that need.
But if its hard to catch your breath for longer than a few minutes, it may be due to other causes. Oftentimes, those causes are easily fixable or explainable. You may, for example, simply need to loosen a too-tight belt or take it a little easier after spending a long time in bed.
In other cases, however, breathlessness what doctors call dyspnea may signal the presence of an underlying health problem such as a respiratory illness, heart disease, allergies, or obesity.
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About Shortness Of Breath
Sudden shortness of breath, or breathing difficulty , is the most common reason for visiting a hospital accident and emergency department.
It’s also one of the most common reasons people phone 999 for an ambulance.
It’s normal to get out of breath when you’ve overexerted yourself, but when breathlessness comes on suddenly and unexpectedly, it’s usually a warning sign of a medical condition.
The information below outlines the most common reasons for:
- sudden shortness of breath
- long-term shortness of breath
This guide shouldn’t be used to self-diagnose your condition, but should give you an idea of what’s causing your breathlessness.
Iron Depletion And Deficiency And Anaemia
Iron deficiency and anaemia should be considered in those athletes who report shortness of breath but do not have signs or symptoms of airway disease. Iron deficiency or anaemia may cause the sensation of breathlessness or laboured breathing during exercise, ultimately due to decreased availability of oxygen to the working muscles. Inadequate red blood cell or haemoglobin availability or function can lead to tissue hypoxia, which results in various compensatory mechanisms, including increased heart rate and ventilation . Ultimately, this can result in decreased endurance exercise performance, especially at higher intensities, as well as impaired recovery from sprint-interval exercise . If untreated, iron deficiency can ultimately develop into anaemia. Patients with iron-deficiency anaemia typically present with a variety of hypoxia-related physiological symptoms including fatigue, dyspnoea, syncope and cardiac issues related to the increased cardiac output requirements.
The prevalence of iron-deficiency anaemia in athletes is 3%, which is comparable to the prevalence in the general population . However, this condition may be especially common in endurance athletes , who often report decreased performance during exercise. For instance, one study in 45 elite marathoners identified 15 athletes with iron deficiency .
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He Noticed He Was Breathless At Night And Went To See His Doctor
Nobody told me that, well I was told that every time I had a heart attack the muscles in my heart died a little or were damaged, and that they wouldn’t recover at that time and up to the present time there is no recovery, although they’re working on it! And…the consultant, no not the consultant, the surgeon that actually did the thing said that he didn’t think he would get rid of my breathlessness completely with this but it should do me. It should prevent any more heart attacks coming and should look after me for… I think approximately 10 years. And that was that. I had a triple bypass and I had a nurse come and take out the stitches and see me here, and then she went ill and I never saw anybody again for about 7′ years. When I started getting very alarmingly puffy, and especially alarming was getting breathless lying down in bed and I thought well this is not right, this is something wrong. And… it was then I went down to the local doctor and it was an emergency appointment so it was a lady doctor, who was very good, and she decided to send me for a scan in the the hospital. And there was an Irish lady doctor there, who had a good look at everything and said there hadn’t been any great deterioration in my heart, but it might be a good thing to see the consultant.
Causes Of Iron Deficiency
Many potential contributors to the development of anaemia in athletes have been identified. Dilutional pseudoanaemia is related to the exercise-induced decrease in Hb concentration that often occurs in endurance athletes . Training causes an increase in both red blood cell count and plasma volume but plasma volume increases at a disproportionally higher rate, creating a net decrease in Hb concentration. Foot impact is the main cause of haemolysis in athletes who participate in high-volume foot-strike activities. Intravascular haemolysis may also occur through oxidative damage, membrane damage related to osmotic homeostasis or compression of muscle groups on capillaries . The incidence of haemolysis is correlated to the intensity of acute exercise . Iron insufficiency can also be a result of nutritional deficits. Iron loss in athletes is typically associated with gastrointestinal bleeding, haematuria, sweating, and menstrual blood loss in women .
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Treatment Of Iron Issues
There are differing opinions regarding the best treatment options for iron-deficient athletes, with oral iron supplementation serving as the classic treatment to increase biomarkers of iron storage . Some studies have shown moderate increases in athletic performance of nonanaemic iron-deficient individuals, while others suggest that nondeficient athletes do not benefit from iron supplementation . One recent meta-analysis revealed anaemic and nonanaemic women with iron deficiency may have an increase in submaximal and maximal aerobic performance through iron supplementation . Clinicians should use laboratory testing to confirm that iron supplementation is actually necessary, as increased iron stores have been associated with gastrointestinal distress, liver malignoma and impaired immune effector functions . Intramuscular and intravascular iron injections have not provided definitive positive outcomes on athletic performance, but in some cases have improved perceived fatigue levels in nondeficient athletes . Peelinget al. and Bleeet al. found that intramuscular iron injections improved serum ferritin levels but did not increase exercise performance in iron-depleted athletes.
Shortness Of Breath: When To See Your Doctor
Sep 30, 2019Cara Martinez
Shortness of breath can be brought on by many thingssome more serious than others.
Causes can include aerobic exercise, intense physical activity, asthma, anxiety, or being in high altitude. And in some cases, shortness of breath can be the symptom of a lesser-known life-threatening condition.
“When searching for an undetected cause of shortness of breath, we first look to the heart, lungs, and circulatory system. Then, we look for 5 signs that will guide us toward the right diagnosis.”
Here, Cedars-Sinai experts explain some of the conditions responsible for shortness of breath and when you should see your doctor.
Read: Pulmonary Embolism: Finding the Hidden Threat
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A Stiffening Of The Heart
Cardiac amyloidosis is an often overlooked medical conditionalthough it is becoming increasingly recognized. The most common form is usually diagnosed in men over the age of 70.
Amyloid proteins build up in the heart, causing stiffness and pressure. The condition often leads to heart failure.
Read: Living With Heart Failure
“The first symptom for many patients with cardiac amyloidosis is shortness of breath,” says Dr. Jignesh Patel, director of the Cardiac Amyloidosis Program.
That’s because as amyloid proteins take up space in the wall of the heart, the heart’s ability to fill up with blood between heartbeats becomes more difficult, leading to breathlessness.
Dr. Patel says that as many as a quarter of patients over the age of 80 may suffer from cardiac amyloidosis, but many aren’t diagnosed for an average of 3 yearsmaking it crucial to see a specialist if you or a loved one suspects the condition.
To diagnose cardiac amyloidosis, patients often undergo a series of tests, including imaging scans of the heart, blood and urine tests, and in many cases, genetic testing.
Treatment for the condition varies depending on the severity and type of the disease. It usually begins with medications, but can include a bone marrow transplant or a heart transplant.
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Follow Your Treatment Plan
Do not stop taking your prescribed iron supplements without first talking to your doctor. Talk to your doctor if you are experiencing side effects such as a bad metallic taste, vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, or upset stomach. Your doctor may be able to recommend options such as taking your supplement with food, lowering the dose, trying a different type of iron supplement, or receiving intravenous iron.
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When Shortness Of Breath Signals Heart Problems
Title: When Shortness of Breath Signals Heart ProblemsMany different heart problems can lead to shortness of breath. It may happen suddenly or gradually over time. It may also occur only during physical activity or in stressful situations.
You should never ignore unexplained breathlessness, as it may be due to a serious underlying health condition. If you experience shortness of breath, please seek medical care.Here at Metropolitan Cardiovascular Consultants, we partner with our patients to prevent and treat conditions and diseases that affect the heart while preserving and improving quality of life.Dr. Djamson offers a wide range of cardiovascular services at our outpatient clinics. Patients can access advanced cardiac technology to diagnose and treat conditions that range from simple to complex.If you have heart health concerns, a visit with a cardiologist is paramount. Symptoms of heart disease range widely, and a comprehensive evaluation is needed to identify and treat problems.
Unexplained shortness of breath may signal an underlying problem with the structure or function of your heart. Below is a list of potentially serious and frequently diagnosed heart conditions which may present with Shortness of Breath.
Coronary Artery DiseaseTwo main coronary arteries, the Left main and Right coronary arteries supply blood to the heart. These arteries may develop problems leading to serious and potentially life-threatening conditions
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