Made healthy changes, but I have had constant chest pressure and trouble breathing 24/7 for a month.

Frankly, I think your healthier choices in the last month were a downgrade from what you were eating before. Good to hear that your nutrient levels are good and your iron too.

When you gave your symptoms, I thought of "blood clot", "kidney failure", and anxiety. It sounds like the experts have ruled out the first two.

DumbledoresPhoenix wrote: »

Graelwyn, do you feel pressure around the center of your chest or have any weird breathing issues, too?

I was wondering if it might be a digestive issue. I used to never have digestive problems, and everything was always regular. Now, I am almost always constipated, even after eating healthier foods for two months. You'd think my body would have gotten used to it by now. Thanks for your suggestions! I will try them.

Yes, if I have bread, cake, sometimes potatoes, sometimes dense dairy, it will feel as if my chest is all tight and it can make it difficult to take a deep breath. It usually goes when I have a warm drink or, to be blunt, burp a lot. Gentle rubbing where it feels tight can also help.

How much coffee do you drink? My husband has had to see a cardiologist on two different occasions, for chest pressure only to be told not to drink so much coffee.

This kind of sounds similar to something that happened to me a couple of years ago. I had this heavy feeling in my chest and it felt like I had to breathe in very deep to be able to get enough air. I would also get this radiating sensation in my chest that would go down my left arm and sharp stabbing pains in my neck and chest. My heart kind of felt like it was fluttering at random, too. It went on for several months before I went to the doctor. After an EKG came back fine, he said it was most likely GERD and to keep track of foods I was eating. I realized that too much fat caused my pain to get worse. On days I kept my fat down, I felt better. On days that I ate a ton of fatty foods, the pain came back. Now I make sure that my fat levels are kept lower to prevent it. Every once in a while I will start to feel it come back again, especially when I've eaten a lot of fat for several days in a row.

Foods that seem to bother me in large amounts are nut butters, cream cheese, full fat yogurt, cake (feels like it's sticking on the way down), and having too many high fat, buttery sweets at once (cookies, brownies). I also noticed that I ate very fast and didn't chew my food enough, which probably wasn't helping anything.. Eating slower and chewing more does seem to make things better. I hope this is helpful to you in some way!

You've had some tests, not all the tests.

Have they looked at your coronaries with CT coronary angiogram or better yet a formal cardiac angiogram?

Have the sent you for electro physiology testing to investigate your tachy arrythmia?

Have they done a right heart cath to measure pulmonary pressures and sarurations?

Have you been evaluated by a psychiatrist to investigate psychological component?

This is not an exhaustive list.

Chest pain/pressure should be taken seriously and investigated to completely rule out cardiac cause.

It's reasonable to go to the emergency department; at very least go back to the gp and insist they get to the bottom of this.

Be your own advocate.

Just saying first off, I'm a lay person, not a professional. :-)

I'm just gonna address what you've mentioned, plus a few things people have said.
1. The idea that if we go off food for a month or two we may have trouble digesting it when we reintroduce it? That's a myth, even if it's one that's touted even by some doctors. The pattern of eating the same food, all the time, all year round, is actually the unnatural pattern. Our bodies developed to digest food that would only be available a few months out of the year and would be completely out of our diet for the rest of the year. Your body can handle a month, or even a few months, without a food just fine, without major adjustment or problems afterward.

2. HOWEVER, if you are eating a food that is actually BAD for you in certain ways (which I'll get to in a sec), if you go off of it and try to go back on? Your body can have some real problems, some similar to what you describe.

This commonly happens to celiacs who go gluten free to try the diet, and then try to go back ON gluten - some get very, very sick, and some even become more sensitive to gluten than they were before. Doctors do not know why this happens, but again, it is not uncommon. The problem with this scenario has three parts.
-- Doctors are still, sadly, extremely ignorant about celiac disease and are unlikely to recognize many of the symptoms, unless they match a few common ones (that only affect about 2/3 of celiacs). Like fatigue, depression, and/or brain fog are common celiac symptoms. Doctors also quite frequently don't understand the testing very well. So them suggesting any celiac testing based on a physical response like yours is unlikely.
-- You actually can't be tested for celiac disease currently. The test is still pretty crude, so to be tested, you have to have about 1-2 MONTHS of accumulated biomarkers from daily reactions to gluten. Without that, it gives a false negative. So unless you feel comfy eating gluten daily (about 2 slices of bread worth a day) for 1-2 months, you can't get the test any longer.
-- A celiac level of gluten free diet is NOT the same as simply 'gluten free.' Think peanut allergy level sensitivity (including avoiding foods processed on equipment that processes wheat, or sometimes even in facilities that do), but only involving things that go into your mouth. The reason this matters is that if you go ALMOST gluten free enough, it can be enough to trigger that extra sensitivity, which can start you having problems (the big D OR constipation can be one reaction). And if you are still getting gluten contamination, you will continue to be sick. Many folks end up in a situation where they can't be tested for Celiac disease because they get so sick on gluten, but they CAN try the celiac level diet - there's lots of information out there.

also a couple things about celiac disease that might be relevant. It can increase problems in other areas, like if you have almost non-existent asthma, it can make it worse. And it can also cause problems with certain organ, the liver, kidneys, and gall bladder being some of the more common. The gall bladder is needed to properly digest fats, so if there is a problem with that, it impacts your fat digestion. Some celiacs have reported heart palpitations, although I do not believe it is currently a recognized symptom officially.


Another issue that can make things worse if you drop a food and then add it back in? Food allergies. Doctors, according to my own doctor, are taught in med school that if there are physical problems, it's pretty much NEVER because of food. Which means they will seldom actually look to food for your problems. However, allergies do NOT just present as hives, itching, swelling, and anaphylaxis, you know? I mean, some folks are allergic on contact to some plants, while some folks just have hay fever like allergies.

The same is true of food. Some folks have severe reactions, while some end up with inflammation, extra mucus (like nose runnier or congested), lungs feeling tight or congested (even if there is no asthma or restriction noticed during testing), palpitations (some measurable, some are just described but don't seem enough to register as anything, going by the allergic community), throat maybe a teeny bit more phlegmy, gut or bowels a little unsettled (can be achy, bloaty, sharp pains, the runs, constipation - many variations, depending on how a person's body reacts), maybe if you have arthritis or other inflammation based problems they are a little worse. Most doctors won't send you to an allergist for this. And prick tests don't always work on this either. According to my own allergist, if you aren't reacting to the food with skin contact or very obvious swelling on contact with the mouth, you are less likely to react to a prick test even if you ARE allergic.

Juts anecdotally, I've been meeting more and more people who have more than one low level allergy, like 2-3. And also, for information - When it comes to egg allergies, there is a protein only in egg whites, a different protein in egg yolks, and then a third protein that is present in both egg whites and egg yolks. So some people do only react to whites or yolks, but not the other.

If you eat a food and it gives you a runny nose? Unless that food was spicy, I would seriously consider an allergic response.


For both of the above, allergies and celiac disease, it seriously messes up your insides. So even if your body can recover, while eating the things that get to you, you may start having gut problems. A GI doctor might be worth seeing, honestly. There can be evidence of inflammation and/or celiac disease internally, if they feel like scoping you is worth your and their while.


Wishing you good luck. Myself, I had a slightly different experience, but some similarities. I'm a celiac who went gluten free after diagnosis, and all of a sudden I started having huge problems with breathing, inflammation, sick all the time after I ate, awful stuff. Best we can tell, my immune system was so depressed due to celiac disease, that it didn't have the ability to respond to allergens I had problems with. But when I went gluten free, when the gut healed and the immune system started getting nutrients again, then it COULD react to allergens, and started to do so, and hit me like a hammer.

Doctors had no idea what was going on, took me years for them to figure it out. So while you and I are obviously different people, I'd just say from my own experience, it is totally worth it to explore foods. The problem may be nothing of the sort, but if a food IS the problem, it's such a simple fix that you can start getting better right away, you know? And considering that a change in diet precipitated this, it seems the the odds would be higher that food is connected in SOME way, even if you don't know what way, yet.

Definitely make sure other things have been ruled but like a couple other people this sounds a lot like my anxiety. I am also asthmatic, not severely so and a few years ago I had an incident when I attempted C25K that triggered a days long panic attack. Thought it was asthma. Ambulance, A&E, the whole bit. Nobody realised it wasn't asthma because I was visibly unable to take a breath. Why no-one put two and two together I don't know but a couple years later I realised that was the start of my chronic anxiety problems (thanks random creep in the park). Up until that point I wouldn't have said I was an especially anxious person at all and you don't need mitigating life factors for it either. Can just pop up unhelpfully out of the blue.

So definitely something to think about too.

DumbledoresPhoenix wrote: »

Lizery, I am going to go back to the cardiologist soon. I hopefully will get more thorough tests, and I will nag if needed.

Ninerbuff, I went to a pulmonologist and got a chest x-ray and pulmonary function test, and the results didnt show anything. My toes turn blue sometimes when it's cold, but they have no fat or padding on them really, so I don't think it's an oxygen thing.

Shaumom, thanks for writing all that. It was really helpful.

Indy cruizer, did you have a normal chest x-ray, or did they go right to the CT scan? Is your difficulty breathing and chest tightness constant?

Purplish-blue (or very pale) fingers and toes is Reynaud's Phenomenon. They also get red (and sometimes minorly puffy) when they get warm again. It's constriction of the blood vessels in the extremeties that is an overreaction to exposure to even minor cold (for me, 72 will do it). It is oxygen deprivation to those tissues, but through markedly reduced blood flow. When I had my doctor diagnose it, the blood oxygen monitor on my finger gave a reading of 48%. Read 99 on the doctor's finger.

Your doctor needs to know about this, because there are medications that are contraindicated in people who experience it. It can easily be demonstrated by running a finger under cold water. You would see it change color, and even the exact line of demarcation.

Sounds Like me before I found out I had heart disease you should have it looked at closer they misdiagnosed me for a long time now I need a heart transplant