Can being overweight cause shortness of breath when bending over

If you have heart failure and become short of breath when you bend over, tell your doctor. This symptom may be a warning sign for a more serious type of heart failure that demands additional medication or other treatments.

That's according to cardiologists at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, who noticed that many of their patients with heart failure said that they became short of breath when they bent over to put on their shoes or socks. So the doctors recruited 102 people with heart failure for a study. Most were white men ages 60 to 65, and all were slated for a procedure to assess their heart function. Nearly a third of the participants had shortness of breath when bending over, or "bendopnea," as the cardiologists dubbed the symptom. They found that people with bendopnea had too much fluid in their bodies, which caused increased pressure and strain on the heart. Bending boosted the pressure even more.

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I Find I Find L Get Short Of Breath Immeadiatly After Bending Over Anyone Els Notice This? I'm Not Overweight.

Bending over reduces the lungs and often causes you to be sob. You can't breathe as well bent over, never could, but before you had more lung capacity.

As related to our COPD, exertion of energy causes most of our shortness of breath. Bending over is exertion beyond sitting for example. Shortness of breath after bending over can also be attributed to blood pressure, or heart issues.

I have a long enough hose on my oxygen tank that I can take the hose into the shower with me. Without the oxygen,I wouldn't be able to breathe thru the whole shower. It helps alot.

My oxygen drops in the 70,s in the shower as well. Try taking a col orjust warm shower. Not hot that helps. I have my oxygen right out the door and use it sometimes during the shower dand finetly the mi Ute I set my foot out the shower. I k ow some people take there oxygen right in the shower

I have the same problem. I have learned to exhale as I'm bending over and inhale when I stand up. It seems to help some.

What Triggers Your SOB? Any Advice On How To Avoid Or Recover From It?

Does Anyone Get Really Short Of Breath Just Bending Forwards And Tying Up Shoe Laces Or Cutting Toenails?

Panic Breathing

New research offers an answer for why some people diagnosed with obesity develop breathing problems.

The reasons people who are obese often develop respiratory problems, from simple shortness of breath to a potentially life-threatening condition known as obesity hypoventilation syndrome (OHS), remains somewhat a mystery.

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This puzzle led Michigan Medicine endocrinologists Eric Buras, M.D., Ph.D., and Tae-Hwa Chun, M.D., Ph.D., to assemble a team of researchers to model obesity-associated respiratory dysfunction in mice.

Alterations in diaphragm structure

Their goal was to specifically test whether alterations in diaphragm structure, movement and strength occurred when these animals became obese.

The researchers placed mice on a high-fat diet in which 45 percent of their caloric intake came from fats, and serially measured diaphragm motion by ultrasound during a six-month period.

Their groundbreaking work was featured as the cover story in the January 2019 edition of Diabetes.

“After six months of feeding, we observed that diaphragm motion on ultrasound was significantly reduced in obese mice versus lean mice eating a normal diet,” says Buras, a clinical lecturer at U-M.

To take things a step further, the team wanted to determine whether or not this functional change was within the diaphragm itself, or simply a result of slowed movement due to pressure from excess chest and abdominal fat tissue.

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So, the team removed strips of diaphragm muscle from the mice and analyzed their contraction. In order to do this, they electrically stimulated strips in an ion-rich bath, and measured contractile force with a “force transducer,” or a mechanism that measures both tension and compression forces through electrical output.

“We were very pleasantly surprised to find lower contractile force in samples from the obese group,” says Buras. “This reinforced the idea that the diaphragm muscle itself was compromised, rather than simply affected by increased fat tissue inhibiting motion. This was very fascinating.”

Next steps

The team then focused on analyzing the anatomy of the diaphragm. Surprisingly, they observed no obvious differences in the appearance of muscle cells from high fat-fed mice. They did, however, observe large inclusions of adipocytes, or fat cells, and an increase in fibrosis, or higher deposits of collagen than normal surrounding muscle cells.

The team noted that when other muscles show increased numbers of adipocytes and excessive collagen deposits, they tend to have difficulty contracting. However, this is traditionally in the context of other disorders and not due to obesity, specifically.

SEE ALSO: Clues to Obesity’s Roots Found in Brain’s Quality Control Process

Further, they focused on a specific cell type called the fibro-adipogenic progenitor (FAP) in order to identify the cellular source for these increased fat cells and collagens surrounding the diaphragm.

“Upon observation, we found that FAPs, which are stem cells within muscle, gave rise to all adipocytes and many collagen-producing cells in the obese diaphragm,” says Buras. “Additionally, we saw that obesity activated these cells to rapidly increase in number, ultimately leading the diaphragm to become fatty and fibrotic.”

Buras and his team also found that thrombospondin-1, a protein that circulates in the blood and increases with obesity, can actually cause FAP proliferation, something that has never been discovered before.

Future impact  

Overall, Buras and Chun’s study established a new framework for understanding obesity-induced respiratory dysfunction. It also highlighted the FAP as a potential target for improving diaphragm functionality in patients who are obese.

Chun even hopes to team up with other experts at U-M in pulmonology and sleep medicine to develop a translational clinic to improve the diagnosis and treatment of OHS, while using this work as a foundation. 

“This study allowed us to better understand the impact obesity has on the most important muscle in the body, the diaphragm,” says Buras. “And while our work was only on an animal model, it opens up a new way of thinking about obesity-associated respiratory dysfunction, which can one day be applicable to patients, and potentially life-changing.”

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