Are my chest pain and shortness of breath cause by stress?
Had similar symptoms as a teenager, doc put me on an inhaler as well, and it also had no noticeable benefits for me over a few months. Then I saw a younger resident in my doc’s office who didn’t prescribe anything but just told me his point of view on how closely physical ailments can be related to mental anxiety / stress, and very often the key to curing the former lies in relieving the latter. I had a fairly stressful adolescence / teenage experience as these things normally go, and two things that helped me immensely in getting back to normal were a) Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff…, and b) learning about meditation and practiced relaxation at my local traditional Tae Kwon Do gym. Find what works for you but in the meantime, get thee to the stress mgmt classes to at least give them a shot.
I’m a regular ask.metafilter reader, and I’ve often considered registering an account, but what made me do it was my urge to respond to this topic. I have had a similar problem for a number of years. I’m 23 years old, 71 inches tall and 175 pounds. My chest pains probably started about two years ago (I weighed about 140 lb. at the time, and I was composed of considerably less muscle) – it’s a dull ache around the area of my heart, accompanied by the feeling of shortness of breath. I actually have experienced all of the symptoms that jimdanger described, except for the yawning (which I’ve never noticed). After about six months of this, I saw my physician, who sent me for x-rays and the whole nine yards. He told me the same thing – nothing wrong, it must be stress. The problem is that I could swear I’ve never been under undue amounts of stress. At least not to the point where it has haunted me mentally in any way. In any case, my chest pains have calmed considerably in the last few years
Please see a doctor. That said – I was having recurring pain in my chest, pretty much dead center, a bit above and kinda between my breasts (I’m female). It would come on at night, start as a dull pain, then get worse and worse and I’d try stretching, Tums, everything, it just killed. It was coming on about 4-5 times a month. I got worried and went to see my doc, who (rather quickly) diagnosed costochondritis, which she explained was an inflammation of the cartilage in the rib cage. She told me to prophylactically start taking like 600 mg of Aleve every 8 hours and call back in 2 weeks. I did not take the Aleve, it happened once more, and I haven’t had it since.
Ok, again, as everyone else mentions: keep pestering your doctor until he figures out what the deal is. Now my story: About 3 years ago, I decided to quit smoking. It took my a few tries to finally do it, but I had some interesting stuff happen. After about 2 months of not smoking, I started getting strange chest pains and random times, and usually centering around my heart. The first time they started, my doctor sort of wrote it off after first thnking it was a virus, and then a Cardiolyte stress test showed everything as normal. Eventually, the pains went away after I started smoking again. This happened twice. The last time I quit (will be 2 years in Feb) this all happened again. I had a new doctor this time, and an EKG showed my heart doing something strange, so I ended up having to wear a 24-hour heart monitor. Heart monitor showed a little strange activity, but nothing that my doctor said should be worried about. Then I asked about anxiety/stress. After a long discussion, we deci
