Factors Affecting Breathlessness: Doing Less Not Always Best

Breathlessness itself is fatiguing and its easier to sit and rest and let someone else do the job at hand. This is great in the short term and having friends and family assist gives us a lovely feeling of connectedness. But its a sliding scale when we begin to delegate more and more for others to do and we are engaging in less activity than ever before.

We can lose independence sooner than what could have been as arms and legs decondition and instability and weakness prevents access to things that use to bring enjoyment and engagement outside of the home.

The solution? Delegate the hardest things that involve heavy lifting or bending and manage your breathlessness as would an athlete in training to keep the moderate tasks to maintain fitness and mobility. Work out a plan with your practitioner and family to ensure you are maintaining your ability for good quality of life.

Factors Affecting Breathlessness: Reduced Activity

A big question  people with breathlessness face is how much activity is too much?

We need to take a look at what they are doing, how breathless they get and what measures are in place to manage that and return to a pre-activity level when the task is finished. The bottom line is the need to keep moving. If you say I’m breathless and stop then you will decondition and the breathlessness will increase. You need to be active to a level you can use techniques to control the breathlessness and not let it get out of hand in order to keep daily activities  maintaining muscle conditioning. Muscles that preserve your balance, help you breath and maintain mobility and independence.

Factors Affecting Breathlessness: Thoughts (3)

I mentioned in my last post that thoughts affect behaviour. A great way to manage breathlessness is to keep moving. So here is where your thoughts come into play. The activities you choose to keep moving in have to be meaningful, they have to be something you get positive feelings and thoughts from, they need to matter to you. So if nature moves you then find something that engages that meaningfulness. It could be gardening, going for a walk by a stream, having breakfast with a view of the trees and flowers blowing in the wind, the clouds scudding across the sky. Positive and meaningful activity will keep you moving through your breathlessness.