no one ever told me this but apparently: asthma makes your posture suck
Adults with persistent asthma have musculoskeletal dysfunction and chronic pain that is independent of the severity of their disease but tha
after having an asthma attack that put me in the ER last february i realized i tend to habitually breathe in a way that hides the fact that i am actually wheezing pretty much 24/7. i hunch forward and breathe extremely shallowly out of habit, because if i breathe deeply it's painful and you can hear me wheeze.
following this, i had the realization that my upper back, chest, and shoulder muscles are actually EXTREMELY fucked up. long story short, i have hand and wrist symptoms reminiscent of thoracic outlet syndrome (separate issue affected by shoulder muscle flexibility), and asthma provides the most sensible explanation for why my shoulder muscles became so tight in the first place.
so i did some googling and, lo and behold: this is a thing.
anyway to my fellow lifelong asthmatics, if you find it harder to breathe when you're doing any kind of upper body stretching, you should probably look into controller meds and/or increasing the dose of what you're on. most people can't audibly wheeze on command while their throat is relaxed. i didn't actually realize that i was wheezing 24/7 because i unconsciously altered my posture to make it easier to breathe, making the wheezing not audible despite that i have a constricted airway.
