Manitoba researcher working to better understand breathlessness

Not being able to catch your breath can be a scary and isolating feeling. As we all experience breathlessness differently, it can be tough to understand and treat, researchers say.

This is why a Manitoba scientist is working to find out what the normal range is.

According to Yannick Molgat-Seon, an assistant professor of kinesiology and applied health at the University of Winnipeg, your body and mind play a role when it comes to the sensation of feeling out of breath.

"Let's say you have a 30-year-old who’s maybe outside running. They would experience breathlessness when they are at quite a high intensity, but for somebody that’s a bit older, it might be something they experience while they’re doing gardening or daily house chores,” he said.

Molgat-Seon is working to understand what the baseline level in healthy adults is for shortness of breath, which in medical terms is called dyspnea.

"We sort of need to understand the normal before we can start really appropriately treating and managing the abnormal,” Molgat-Seon said.

He's also working to explain how breathlessness is experienced differently between men and women, and said a similar sensation that's better understood is pain.

"A lot of research in the area of understanding the causes of pain has looked at sex and gender, whereas it hasn't really happened in dyspnea or shortness of breath, even though they are quite comparable sensations,” he said.

At the gym, Trish Roche can manage her breathing really well, but it wasn't always the case.

"It’s the reason I quit smoking actually because I noticed shortness of breath going up stairs, so that scared me into changing things,” she said.

That was six years ago now, and she said she hasn't really worried about breathing since.

Molgat-Seon recently received a grant from the Manitoba Medical Service Foundation for his research.