From the Guidelines
If you're always out of breath during exercise, it's crucial to start with low-intensity activities and gradually increase duration and intensity to improve cardiovascular fitness and manage breathing. To address this issue, consider the following steps:
- Begin with low-intensity activities like walking, swimming, or cycling for 15-20 minutes, 3 times per week, and slowly increase duration and intensity as your fitness improves 1.
- Focus on proper breathing techniques during exercise—breathe deeply through your nose and out through your mouth, and avoid shallow chest breathing.
- Consider interval training, alternating between periods of higher intensity and recovery, to improve your aerobic capacity over time.
- If you're new to exercise, the "talk test" is helpful—you should be able to speak in short sentences while exercising. Being consistently out of breath may indicate that you're pushing too hard too soon, or it could signal underlying health issues like asthma, anemia, or heart problems, as suggested by studies on exercise-induced bronchoconstriction 1. If breathlessness is severe, accompanied by chest pain, dizziness, or persists even with mild exertion, consult a healthcare provider for evaluation, as respiratory muscle function can be a limiting factor in patients with lung disease 1. Proper hydration, warm-ups before exercise, and cool-downs afterward can also help manage breathing during workouts.
From the Research
Causes of Shortness of Breath During Exercise
- Exercise-induced shortness of breath can be caused by various factors, including reaching one's physiological limit or dysfunctional breathing 2
- Dysfunctional breathing is an umbrella term for alterations in normal biomechanical patterns of breathing, resulting in intermittent or chronic symptoms 2
- Careful history and examination, along with spirometry, can help identify individuals with dysfunctional breathing patterns, such as thoracic pattern disordered breathing (PDB) and extrathoracic paradoxical vocal fold motion disorder (pVFMD) 2
Treatment and Management
- Accurate assessment and diagnosis can prevent excessive use of drug therapy and result in effective management of the cause of shortness of breath through cost-effective approaches, such as reassurance, advice, breathing retraining, and vocal exercises 2
- Inhaled salmeterol, a long-acting beta2-adrenoceptor agonist, has been shown to improve lung function and reduce symptoms in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) 3, 4, 5
- Combination therapy with salmeterol and ipratropium has been found to have additive effects on lung function and symptom control in patients with COPD 3, 4
Exercise-Induced Dyspnea
- Exercise-induced dyspnea can be a common complaint, and its causes can be multifactorial, including organic pathology, reaching one's physiological limit, or dysfunctional breathing 2
- A thorough evaluation, including cardiopulmonary exercise testing and continuous laryngoscopy during exercise, can help identify the underlying cause of exercise-induced dyspnea 2